Eating out during a hurricane...

It has been a crazy week when it comes to Mother Nature!  First she shakes Virginia with a 5.8 earthquake on Tuesday, canceling nursing school for a week and breaking an ice wine glass in my house.  (OK, we also had a picture fall off the wall in a spare bedroom, a candle in the guest bathroom had to be fished out of the toilet, and a bunch of games for the Wii were scattered throughout the living room).  Thursday night, Fredericksburg is hit with a "freak storm" with high winds, heavy rain, and lots of lightning.  It was during Thursday's storm we were able to see the physical damage to the house from the earthquake, both back doors were leaking water.  Luckily it just took some caulking to fix.  Friday was calm, but Saturday ushered in Irene, a category 1 hurricane with wind gusts of up to 40mph and about 4 inches of rain.  I think I would say that Thursday night was a little worse than all day Saturday.

My restaurant adventures began on Thursday.  We had guests that arrived during our storm.  Afterwords we decided to go out to eat.  The storm knocked out power to a great deal of the City of Fredericksburg, but found TGI Friday's to be open.  I decided to go with my normal chicken fingers and fries.  Nothing exciting, and a meal I cook regularly (using a really cool recipe from Bisquick).  I will not be writing about this one.

Saturday, we decided to brave the rain and went to the Spotsylvania Towne Center to see the new bookstore, Charming Charlies and Le Gourmet Chef.  While there we stopped at the pretzel place for a quick snack, and then to A&W for a hot dog and cheese curds.  I'll admit... I'm the one who wanted the cheese curds.  We got the hot dog just so we could say "We chased down a dog in a hurricane!"  OK, long story... guess you had to be there.

Saturday evening, we decided to take our guests to Capital Ale House in Downtown Fredericksburg.  This is definitely one of my favorite places to go downtown.  They have approximately 65 beers on tap and an additional 300 in bottles.  You can find something for everything.  The staff is very knowledgeable about the beers and can recommend one or a few for you.  You can also get samples for $.25 each.  The food is also amazing!  I have not had a bad meal there yet.

So, I said this is one of my favorites... admittedly, my visit on Saturday was my second of the week.  We were there Wednesday night with some other guests.  Wednesday I had a great lamb burger with brie cheese and Dijon mustard, served on a croissant, with the baby spinach held (one day I may be brave enough to actually start eating those pesky green things).  The lamb burger was well seasoned with rosemary and perhaps some thyme.  The rosemary was very strong, and sorta overpowered most of the other flavors.  I've had this burger before and it was amazing every other time I've had it.  It comes with a side of frites and a flavored mayo for dipping. 

On Saturday, we ordered an appetizer of the frites with the four flavors of mayo: garlic, dill (my favorite), chipotle, and regular.  It was raining pretty good outside, and the wind was blowing pretty strong as well... I would say sustained winds in the upper 20mph.  The power went out.  Our meals were not quite ready yet, but the kitchen could not continue to cook because the vents were not working.  The manager was really great about it and gave us a Bavarian pretzel with three different cheeses, two sausages, grapes, and a mustard dipping sauce, all free of charge.  The cheeses were a yellow cheddar, smoked Gouda, and a mild Swiss.  The sausage were two types of polish sausage, the fresh and the smoked.  Under the circumstances, it was a great meal.  Oh... and not that I got my main meal, but being true to my challenge, I ordered the Cheddar Beer soup.  I would really like to try to make this at home, but I really would like to try some at a restaurant first.  I was also saving room for dessert... the chocolate cake with ice cream is the best!

On Sunday, the weather was perfect!  Beautiful blue skies, comfortable temperatures and a bit breezy.  We decided to head out to Potomac Point Winery, in Stafford County, VA.  The power was out there, but the tasting bar was still open and the Bistro was serving a limited menu.  We decided to have lunch there.  Darryl and I split a cheese platter (with a dill Havarti, brie, and muenster), pita bread, preserved cherries and olives.  It went very well with the bottle of wine we got for the table, the La Belle Vie.  As we were finishing our meal, the power returned, so we were able to get a tour of the winery.

Besides the lamb burger, I will probably not be making these meals and blogging about it.  If you've been to my parties, you've experienced similar cheese platters.  I've also served the chicken fingers at a few parties. 

If you would like to visit Capital Ale House or Potomac Point Winery, please visit their websites: Capital Ale House and Potomac Point Winery. 

Inspiration from my other meals!

I know my challenge is to eat at a different restaurant, and then make the meal at home... but I thought I would write about some of my other meals, that were in some way inspired by the meals I've made so far, or by the great Williamsburg Cookbooks that I bought to make my tavern meals.

I had a turkey breast in the freezer, so I defrosted it, seasoned it like I normally would do a turkey for my special "Canadian Thanksgiving" meal, and popped it on the grill.  I did the tavern potatoes as well, slicing small potatoes into wedges, coating them with oil and seasonings, wrapped them in foil and put them on the grill as well.  For my vegetable I chose corn on the cob from the farmer's market.  I made biscuits from scratch (using a recipe in a Williamsburg cookbook) and a gravy in the other Williamsburg Cookbook.  I really enjoyed this meal.

My turkey was wonderful!  Nice and juicy, full of flavor from the thyme, rosemary and sage (all fresh from my garden).  It was skinless, but the outside was grilled nicely and had a bit of a crunch from the herbs.  The potatoes came out perfect... the way I wish they would have come out when trying to replicate my King's Arms Tavern meal.  They were very flavorful from the olive oil, sprig of thyme, salt, pepper and onion and garlic powders.  They had a nice crispy outside, with tender potato inside.  My biscuits were pretty good.  I liked the taste, unfortunately I should have watched them a little more closely, or removed them from the oven while I went out to the grill.  I stayed by the grill for just a moment too long and when I came in, my biscuits were quite brown, but not burnt.  I was disappointed in the corn I bough from the farmer's market.  We were not the first to feast on it, and there were many kernels that never developed properly.  I was kinda shocked by this, since all the other produce I get from that vendor is usually perfect.  I guess that's why they had the little sign "please do not open the husks."  Only the very top was damaged by corn worms.  The rest of the corn that was edible did taste pretty good.  I just boiled water, and then applied butter and salt once they were done cooking.  The gravy was really good.  I really thought about cutting down the recipe to make less, but the book said it was to be served with a pound of turkey... I had a piece of turkey that was just over a pound.  I had enough gravy to feed a small army.  It was very flavorful.  I have to admit though... when I warmed up the chicken stock, I did add the same herbs I used on the turkey to add some flavor to the stock.  I could taste the thyme later in the gravy and I'm happy I did that.  Overall, a very successful meal.

After my failed attempt on Friday, I wasn't in the mood to cook Saturday.  But I was back into it on Sunday.  I decided to use leftovers up... mostly the chicken and the gravy from turkey.  Low and behold, a Williamsburg Cookbook had a recipe for "King's Arms Tavern Chicken Pot Pie."  Hum... chicken, gravy... all I had to add were the potatoes and some carrots and peas.  I pre-cooked all the veggies, and then made a nice pie dough (also found in the Williamsburg Cookbooks).  Put them all together and I had two beautiful pies, ready to be eaten.  We ended up having these for two nights because they were so big.  You'll notice in the pictures that one has an R and the other has a D... well, I prefer the dark meat, and Darryl likes the white meat, so that's how I made each of ours.  They were wonderful and tasted so much better than the ones in the freezer section in the store.  I bet they even had a lot less sodium!

Well, hope you enjoyed this distraction from my normal restaurant/cooking stuff.  I had lunch at a cool little place in Downtown Fredericksburg that I'll be writing about soon, and tonight, I'm headed to Park Lane Tavern with some friends.  Wow... I'll have a bunch of writing to do.

King's Arms Tavern, Part II

I was so excited last week Tuesday when I was grocery shopping.  I always check out the meat department at Wegmans to find these amazing little orange stickers that say "special today."  Usually they can be found on meat that is nearing the last days it should be sold.  Of course this is Wegmans, so that date is sooner than any of my other local grocery stores... Giant would probably try to sell it for another week, and I don't even want to guess how much longer Food Lion/Bloom would wait.  Anyways, as I was looking around the beef section I noticed two beautiful Fillet Mignon's half price!  I got both of them for $13.  YES!  I could try to recreate my King's Arms meal!!!!  Since it was my favorite, I was really excited.

When making my weekly menu out, I decided to put the King's Arms meal on Friday so that I would have plenty of time to make it.  Well, by the time Friday rolled around, I was really tired.  I didn't feel like cooking, and I don't think Darryl did either.  But I could not let the beef go to waste.  I decided to make the meal anyways.

The Williamsburg cookbook had a short cut for making the brown sauce using gravy mix.  I decided not to try that, since everything I've been making has been just about from scratch.  Also, I didn't have the short-cut type ingredients.  Darryl makes a very similar brown sauce, and we usually freeze a bunch in ice cube trays, so I thought I would use that.  You just pull out a few cubes right before the meal is ready and pop them in the microwave.  Heat and serve.

I cut up the potatoes like I'd been doing for all my other meals last week, seasoned them, and wrapped them in tin foil to put on the grill.  They were taking about a half hour or so to cook, so I went ahead and put them on the grill and went back in the house to get the beef ready.  I should have looked at the thermometer on the grill to see that it was oh... 500 or so degrees.  I had been cooking the potatoes around 350 degrees. 

I just lightly seasoned the beef with salt and pepper and just a touch of garlic and onion powder.  Took them out to the grill and put them on.  I got beautiful grill marks on each side, but when I cut into the larger steak, it was still very red.  I decided to leave them on just a few minutes more.  We enjoy our meat medium-rare.

Ok, time to talk about the disaster I should have called dinner.  First, we didn't actually have any brown sauce in the freezer.  I think I found something that once perhaps was... but it was now an icy clump of mess that you may find on the side of the road after a really bad snowstorm.

My beef, well, I over cooked it.  It was a medium to medium-well.  I read in a cookbook that you want to pull the beef off a few minutes before you think it is done, because the meat continues to cook.  Now I understand why.  Besides being cooked more than we normally like, we did eat it and enjoy it.  I probably could have used a little more salt and pepper because they were thick pieces, but overall it was pretty good.

Now for the potatoes.  Does anyone need any extra charcoal for their grill?  Yep.  Burnt to a crisp.  I even have the picture to prove it:

I know, they don't look so bad, but the smoky flavor given off by the ones that were bad penetrated all the other ones.  Besides, if you flip over the good looking ones (if you can even get them off the tin foil), you will find they are just as bad.

You'll notice, I have not talked about any vegetables...  that is because I didn't make any.  My anti-veggie protest of sorts. 

So, my lesson?  Don't give up, but don't cook something nice when you really don't feel like it.  Perhaps I should have made my chicken pot-pies that day... (those were made from left overs from the Shields Tavern dinner).

I plan on attempting this meal again.  And I will make sure my head is in the game when I do.  It was an awesome meal at the tavern, and I think it could be an awesome meal here.  Perhaps I'll make it for a group and even include the relishes and creamed Spinach.

The King's Arms Tavern, Willilamsburg, Part I

The King's Arms Tavern was my favorite... no FAVORITE dining experience in Colonial Williamsburg!  Rather than just a meal, this was a dining experience from the moment we walked in through the door.  We were seated at a small table on the very edge of the one dining room we were in.  The table was right next to a window and had a perfect view into the kitchen when the waiters and waitresses walked out.  Our table was also near the door to the next dining room, so most of the waiters and waitresses had to walk right by our table.  Sorta high traffic, but also a nice distance away from the other diners in the room.  It was also nice that we could see the different meals as they went by, which helped us make our decisions.  Our room was decorated very nicely with carpeting and wallpaper and nice candle holders and looking glasses (mirrors).  We had an early reservation at 5:00pm because we had an evening program to attend, so the room was lit by daylight.  Our waitress was amazing!  She was so friendly and knowledgeable, and very entertaining. 

Not long after being sat, we were told all about the history of our dining room.  Then our napkins, and their size, were explained to us.  The napkins were like mini-tablecloths!  Why so big?  (good question... same one I had... so happy we are on the same page!).  Well, the napkins were traditionally tied around the neck since the tavern was frequented by your upper class or gentry level of society.  The diner could tie the napkin around their neck to catch any food they may drop and protect their beautiful clothing.  Apparently they didn't have quite the clothing collection I have in my closet.  :)  The waitress then noticed the puzzled look on my face and said "I bet you are wondering why they may have dropped food?"  Please tell!!!  Forks were different... they really didn't hold food like they do today, so diners would use their knives to shovel food into their mouth.  (I know, red flag... mom always said "don't eat your food with your knife!"  Good thing times have changed.)  Since I was wearing a summery button-down shirt and a skort, I opted to place the napkin in my lap.  The table of teachers from California opted to tie them around their necks. 

We started our meal with a cheese plate.  There were four cheeses: gouda, sharp cheddar, bleu and brie.  There was also some green grapes, two strawberries cut into slices, and a piece of French baguette bread.  It was all delightful.  I really enjoyed the bleu, it wasn't super strong.  It was dry but spreadable.  The brie was a mild brie.  The cheddar and gouda were pretty standard.

Remember how I said this was more of a dining experience than just a meal?  Well, it was time to learn about relishes.  Our waitress brought a sample of three different relishes.  There was pickled watermelon rinds, a corn and pepper relish, and then a very salty ham mash relish.  I tried the pickled watermelon a few years ago on another trip to Williamsburg and did not enjoy it then, so I skipped it this time.  The corn was interesting, it's served cold.  I could taste the corn and red and green peppers, and then I'm pretty sure there were pickles as well.  I don't like pickles.  I did not care for the ham relish at all... again I think I tasted pickles.  I'll admit, I have trouble being adventurous with my food.  Upon serving these relishes our waitress explained that now-a-days, if you relish something, you cherish it.  Back then, if you relished something, it meant that you put relish on your food to hide the stale taste of the meat.  Don't forget, they didn't have quite the same methods of preserving meat like we do today, nor did they have refrigerators.  I know I don't like my meat once it's lived in the refrigerator for more than a few days.  During the "relish" stage of our meal, we were also presented with a basket of bread, again a bread that would have been served by the tavern in the 1772.  It had the density of a pound cake, but it was not as sweet.  Definitely more dense than bread that would be served at a restaurant today.  I enjoyed it with some butter that melted right in.

Meal time!  I ordered Deuling Beef Collops: two fillets of Beef that were served over a bed of roasted red potatoes with a brown sauce and some yellow and green squash.  If you have read my other posts, it will not shock you that I only took a small bite of my squash.  It was cooked nicely, but it's a vegetable and and really didn't have any more of that.  My potatoes were wonderful.  They were nicely roasted with a hint of rosemary.  The beef was good.  I did ask for medium-rare.  It was slightly more done than I would have liked, but I also order knowing that each own cook has their own idea of each level of doneness.  And really, only one of the beef pieces was more medium, the other was just about perfect.  They both still had an amazing taste.  The outside was nicely seared with the simple flavor of salt and pepper.  It paired nicely with the brown sauce.  Speaking of the brown sauce, you could taste the complexity of flavors, from the first layer of carrots, onions and the bouquet of herbs, to the second layer that had more onion and tomato.  Really the sauce was a perfect complement to both the beef and the potatoes.  It was also a useful tool to hide the fact that I was eating some of my veggies. 

It's a good thing I proof read... I almost forgot.  During our main course, the waitress brought out a bowl of creamed spinach.  This was another traditional item that would be found on the dinner table.  There was shredded Parmesan cheese on top.  I tried the cheese, but I'm sure you've already guessed that I skipped the green part.  Sorry, I just can't do spinach.

When our waitress came to collect our empty dinner plates, she asked if we enjoyed it.  Our answer "we definitely did NOT relish our meal!" It was perfect and did not need to be hidden by the relish.  :)  She cracked up laughing and you could tell she was impressed that we had listened to her earlier.

Time for dessert.  I had the Chocolate Williamsburg ice cream.  It was amazing, but I was a little disappointed to find out it was no longer actually made in Williamsburg.  Williamsburg rather contracted with Eddy's to produce it.  It does make sense from a cost standpoint, and it is the same recipe as before.  It was rich and creamy and amazing.  Darryl had a signature dessert called a Syllabub.  It is a wine-laced cream whipped to a froth, seasoned with lemon zest and garnished with seasonal berries.  He really enjoyed it.  There was a strong lemon flavor.  I was only able to grab a very small spoonful to try before being told that if I really wanted it, I could have ordered one for myself.  :)  There is a recipe for the Syllabub in the cookbooks I bought, so I do plan on making it at some point.  I'll need help eating it though, the recipe serves 8. 

So, back to the "experience," we had the chance to meet the tavern keeper.  She was excited to hear that we were from Fredericksburg and wondered if we knew her cousin.  We played along and said we'd visited with her many times and she is doing well.  We learned more about the history of the tavern and heard stories of some of it's more famous visitors.  I bet you would like to hear who those visitors were... but you'll have to visit the tavern yourself to find out.

We were also entertained by a roving musician.  Our dinning room had the pleasure in participating in a few sing-a-longs, the most memorable being about Nottingham Ale, the finest of all the ales.  After the song, we asked our waitress if we could try this ale and were disappointed to find out that they didn't carry it.  We didn't actually expect them too, so we weren't truly disappointed.  But we did jokingly give our waitress a hard time about it.  She was really wonderful.

As our meal finished and we paid the $150ish bill, we walked out very full.  Our waitress did give us some pointers on some of the things to see and do while in Williamsburg and promised us that our dining experience at The King's Arms Tavern would be our best.  She definitely was not wrong.  It was by far the best dining experience we had while in Williamsburg.

Thank you for reading!  I hope you enjoyed my tale of The King's Arms Tavern.  If you wish to visit from home, you can check out this website to The King's Arms Tavern.  The history of the tavern can be found on the last page of the dinner menu.

Dinner at Shields Tavern, Williamsburg, Part II. It's my turn to cook.

Ok, the picture doesn't do the dish justice.  I did take it with my phone.  And, this is only my plate, so you'll notice there's only a few bites of squash in the upper corner.  :)

I think I did pretty good with this dish.  I decided to plate it a little differently than it was plated at Shields Tavern... let each food item stand on it's own and put the Madeira sauce in the middle.  There's a reason for that... read on.

I decided to cook almost everything on our grill, kinda sorta in the fashion that would be done in colonial times... except that they cooked in a kitchen that was not attached to their house and had a fireplace and coals and such.  I figured the grill was outside of my house (although run off a gas line attached to the house).  The whole idea of having a separate kitchen was a great idea.  You didn't have the smell of the food lingering for hours in the living spaces, and if your kitchen burned down, you didn't lose your whole house.  I hope to NEVER burn down my kitchen, and I really wish I had cooked the Madeira sauce outside.  My house smells like onions, still, today, and I made this meal yesterday!

I'll start with my least favorite item: the veggies.  I got some green and yellow squash at the Fredericksburg farmers market by Hurkamp park.  I like that I can get the variety of fresh produce daily at that location... helps with fresh meals.  I cut them into 1/2 inch thick pieces, brushed on some extra virgin olive oil (evoo) along with some salt and pepper.  They went on the grill for about 6-8 minutes as the chicken and potatoes were finishing up.  I'll admit, I did enjoy them... and think I'll make more for dinner tomorrow. 

The potatoes:  red potatoes I picked up at the farmer's market as well.  I cut them into equal-ish sized wedges, coated with evoo, salt and pepper.  I put them into a foil pouch and placed them on the grill for about 20 or so minutes.  They turned out really good.  Nice and soft on the inside.  Slightly crispy on the outside.

The chicken:  I borrowed this recipe from a weekend trip we took to our friends' house in Waynesboro, VA.  They made an awesome beer can chicken.  So did I.  The recipe is in a Weber's cook book "Real Grilling."  I figured it was a great way to make a roasted chicken.  It used the same herbs I could taste on the chicken I had at Shields Tavern... thyme and rosemary, and a hint of garlic.  The recipe also calls for paprika, which I did use, but think I should have used a spicier pepper to more closely mimic the kick the chicken at the restaurant had.  This was one of my "live and learn" moments.  None the less, the chicken was great.  Very moist on the inside and out.  Very flavorful from the herbs and spices, and nicely crispy from the flames that enjoyed the dripping fat.  (another live and learn moment when I opened the grill to a bonfire).  In the picture above, you are seeing just the leg and thigh... I'm more of a dark meat fan, so Darryl had the pleasure of enjoying the white meat.  During carving though, I did sneak a piece and it was just as moist as the dark meat.

The Madeira Sauce:  this was probably my best "live and learn" moment.  First off, don't cook onions in a house with closed up windows.  Like I said, my house still smells like onion.  This is one of the recipes I took from a cook book I bought in Colonial Williamsburg: "Favorite Meals from Williamsburg."  In the book, the sauce is introduced for the Yuletide Supper and served on top of boneless breast of chicken with Virginia ham.  I don't want to give away the whole recipe, but it does involve minced carrot, minced onion, butter, beef broth, flour and about an hour of simmering.  Then you make a second flavor layer by simmering shallots in Madeira for about 10 minutes.  You mix the two layers together and simmer for another 15 minutes.  Serve warm.  My flavor was great, you could really taste each ingredient, and I used low sodium beef broth, so it was not too salty.  My only problem was that it was so thick.  Even thicker than gravy.  I had to stir in extra beef broth to thin it out.  This is why I decided to serve it in the middle of the plate and not over any of the ingredients, allowing the diner to add as much or as little of the sauce to their food as they desired.

As much as I really enjoyed the Whipped Chocolate Pudding, I did not make it as a dessert for this meal.  I will make that another time when I have dessert loving people around to help me enjoy it.

So, overall, I would definitely cook this meal again.  It was a bit time consuming since the sauce takes about an hour and a half, as does the chicken, but it was a really good meal.

The cost?  Well, I spent $5 at the farmers market, but picked up potatoes for two days worth of meals, garlic, a red and green pepper, the two squash, an onion (which I only used a very small part of) and two carrots (again, only using a small part of one carrot).  Wegmans came in handy for everything else.  With the chicken, broth, Madeira, butter and beer (only using a half a can), the total meal for the two of us, with some leftovers, cost about $30.00.

Dinner at Shields Tavern, Williamsburg, Part I

I loved Williamsburg!  While there, we took the time to eat dinner at two of the historical taverns.  The first one we ate at was King's Arm Tavern.  A wonderful experience that I will write about later.  The second one we ate dinner at was Shields Tavern.  You can check out their website here: http://www.colonialwilliamsburg.com/visit/diningExperience/shields/index.cfm.

Our reservations were at 5:45pm.  We arrived about 15 minutes early and were seated right away.  We sat downstairs in a room that was at the very end of the tavern.  I believe the kitchen was directly behind us, but they did a great job of hiding that from us (except when people like me do a little bit of snooping).  There was not much decor in the room we were in except for the candle on our table, which was lit.  In fact, there were no electric lights, so had the sun set, I think we would have had a wonderful dinner by candlelight.  But, in August at 5:45pm, there is still plenty of sunlight.  The building did have A/C, which was nice... it was so hot and humid outside that after walking around all day our clothes just seemed damp.  Since they use the older style panes of glass in the windows, there was condensation on the outside due to the high humidity.  That was a neat effect on the windows.

We did not start our meal with an appetizer.  I'll be honest, I don't remember what Darryl had for dinner, so I'm not going to write about that.  I enjoyed the Barnyard Chicken.  It was a half chicken that was roasted with herbs and served with a Madeira sauce over tavern potatoes and vegetable of the day.  The vegetable was yellow and green squash.  My chicken was perfect!  I am a fan of dark meat over the white meat, so I started with the leg and thigh.  The skin was crisp and had the flavor of thyme, rosemary, and garlic.  There was also a spicy kick to it, but I'm not sure which pepper it was.  Did not taste like black peppercorn, more like a cayenne.  It did have salt and black pepper as well.  You could taste the seasoning in the meat as well, and the meat was perfectly moist.  The Madeira sauce was very good.  It was not quite as thick as a gravy, so it did not have a heavy overbearing presence.  It was there as a background flavor that worked nicely.  You could pick up hints of onion and carrot in the sauce. 

As I'm sure I've said before, I'm not a big veggie fan.  Admittedly, I only had a few bites of the squash, just enough to see that they were nice and soft and well flavored with salt and pepper.  The simple flavors let the taste of the vegetable shine through.  I did enjoy the few bites I took.

My potatoes seemed to be the only problem.  I don't think they were fully cooked.  They were small red potatoes that had been cut into wedges and then roasted with simple flavoring of salt, pepper and oil or butter.  The Madeira sauce was poured over them as well.  They still had a bit of a crunch to them.  They were still edible and did still taste good.  I did not complain or send my dish back.  Darryl had the same potatoes and his were done perfectly.

You can't go to a nice place like this without having dessert.  I had the Whipped Chocolate Pudding.  It was wonderful.  It was more like a mouse the way it was whipped until light and fluffy.  The whipped cream on top was a perfect balance to the more semi-sweet chocolate underneath.  I think I also picked up a hint of cinnamon in the pudding as well.  There is a special sipping chocolate (hot chocolate) that was served in the reproduction of the colonial coffeehouse... it had a similar taste.  I should have purchased the mix while I was there and perhaps I could describe the taste better.  It was not as sweet as the hot chocolate we drink today.  I rather enjoyed it!

Since this is a historic attraction, in a tourist destination, you can expect to pay tourist prices.  Dinner was quite pricey.  My main course was $25.50 (not including tip or tax).  I'll let you know what I spend to recreate it in my Part II post.  Overall I did not mind spending the money on the meal.  The money goes back into Colonial Williamsburg and their ongoing efforts of presenting history. 

I would go back to this restaurant again.  In fact, I did.  Actually, we had lunch there earlier that day.  I had a really great turkey, swiss and bacon sandwich (hold the lettuce and tomato please) that came with fried tavern potatoes (that were perfectly cooked).  It was a fresh turkey breast, so I will work on recreating that meal again soon.  And I'll tell you about the meal at that time.

Williamsburg, VA

All I can really say is WOW!  I just returned from a great and much needed vacation to Williamsburg, VA.  We checked into our hotel Sunday night and literally walked in the door of our house within the last hour.  There was so much to do that we will need to go back again, hopefully soon.

Being away from home for that long means one thing: lots and lots of eating out.  We managed to eat at every Colonial Tavern in one way or another.  Most of the food was amazing.  I did have a plain ham and cheese sandwich for one lunch which I do not plan on writing about... or the day we got really lazy and just had pizza for dinner.  I've already talked about pizza.

I don't plan on starting to cook any meals until at least Tuesday, so I won't describe any of the restaurants yet. 

Today I'd like to jump into my own personal past as a tourism professional and talk a little bit about Williamsburg and the Historic Triangle.  My experience was just amazing.  Admittedly, I am exhausted and plan to sleep for at least three days straight.  I know my legs could really use the break.  Once we parked my car in the hotel parking lot, it did not move!  There were shuttles from the Williamsburg Visitor Center to Jamestown and Yorktown as well as one that looped around Colonial Williamsburg.  For the most part, we did walk around Colonial Williamsburg, only catching a shuttle at night after some of our evening programs.  During the day was exploring Colonial Williamsburg by foot, and touring though the many houses, taverns and shops that were set back into the colonial time period.  Every single interpreter knew so much about the various place they were representing, showcasing, or the character they were reenacting.  Every one of them were friendly and welcomed questions, many times without breaking character unless you were asking questions more geared towards today.  We attended three evening programs and during each we encountered the same great knowledge and enthusiasm from every cast member.  I got to enlist in the Continental Army, attend an inquisition of a military officer, and be a juror for a witch trial.

Of course, what vacation would be complete without a little shopping?  I did get a nice little tea set that I will proudly display in my nice living room, and a set of cookbooks.  OK, I admit, the cookbooks are to assist me as I try to make the meals I got to enjoy on my trip.  There were also a great number of recipes that I didn't get to try at any of the taverns, so I would like to try them at home.  As always, I will share the results with all of you.  As for the recipes... well, you'll have to support Colonial Williamsburg and purchase the books for your self.  Sorry.

With that, I must get going.  I know I just got back, but I'm sneaking away to Buffalo for the weekend.  :)