The Friendly Market

I recently rediscovered a local farmer's market in our small town. I've seen it before, but I'd never been to it. It's actually been here for five or so years, but it's on a back street that I don't go on often, so I had forgotten all about it. Since I've been cooking more and more in the past few months I've noticed that veggies and other produce at the store are expensive, and while reading other blogs saw a few posts here and there about trips to a market and I was so jealous, but now I don't have to be because I have one! It's called The Friendly Market in Morehead City. I was so excited when we stopped while running some other errands. It's full of produce and plants, and they even have a small kitchen, sadly when we went the kitchen was closed so I didn't get to go in, but it's adorable.

They even placed little picnic tables outside. All of the plants there are so pretty. I found some beautiful balloon flowers and they also had a little waterfall/pond area too.

The waterfall/pond is small, but it's in the bottom right picture.

 

 Top left: Balloon Flower

Top right: mums! (fall is coming!)

 

Bryan looking at plants

 

I think what I was most excited about was the produce that Quinn's farm brings to the market. The lady there said that she wished I could take pictures on a different day because she would be getting more of a variety later in the week, but I loved what I saw.

 

 Everything looked so yummy.

 

 

I was amazed at the prices too. Bryan and I ended up getting two large, beautiful onions, three bell peppers, seven peaches, and a bunch of chili's and jalapenos. We only spent ten bucks! You can't beat that, I know at a grocery store I probably would have paid double that.


















All in all, we had a great visit to The Friendly Market, and I can't wait to go back.

Who Knew We Actually had Good Food Around Here?!

As I mentioned in my review of Twisted Spoon Frozen Yogurt and Desserts, they are owned by another local, successful restaurant. When I sent the review of Twisted Spoon to the manager there, he found out I'd never tried Circa 81 (the place that owns TS), he gave me a coupon for a free appetizer to go try Circa. I was psyched. I immediately went to Circa 81's website to check out their menu. They are unlike anything we have around here, and you can tell just by looking online. Not only is the name itself unique, but the dining experience is as well. The restaurant is filled with beautiful tables and romantic lighting.

As you can see through the entryway, there is a full bar with seating. It's a small space, but I think they placed everything well so you aren't tripping over tables.

For our free appetizer, we got a plate of pork pot stickers, and let me tell you, they were divine. There were five on the plate, and we fought over the last one, before cutting it in half and splitting it. We demolished all five in about two minutes.

We were deciding what to eat and we had previously noticed they had small, medium, and large plates listed online. We both thought some of the sandwiches on the medium plate menu looked good. We got the menu and there was no medium section to be found, we asked the waitress and she explained that the medium plates were generally a lunch menu, but she was nice enough to let us order anyway. I will take this time to also explain how great the staff was too, I always say thank you to drink refills and such, cause my momma taught me manners, and at most places I get a passing glance, but our waitress was very genuine. I settled on The Havana which is described on their menu as "Thinly sliced ham and turkey with cream cheese and spicy fruit jelly, served on a sub roll and grilled Cuban style" I was a little apprehensive, I've never tried anything like this. Meat with cream cheese and jelly? I got it with a side of potato salad. Bryan got the Circa 81 club which is "Your choice of turkey, roast beef, or chicken with lettuce, tomato, mayonnaise, mustard, onion, bacon, and Havarti cheese, on grilled white bread" he chose roast beef, and got a side of homemade fries, I was also a little nervous about these too, because homemade fries are easy to screw up and become to crunchy and inedible. When Bryan and I got our sandwiches the were already neatly cut in half, so we traded one half each so we could have some of both. These were the best sandwiches I've ever eaten! I'm not lying. I cannot describe the party in my mouth when I bit into my sandwich and got some ham, turkey, jelly, and cream cheese. So good. SO GOOD! And the heartiness of Bryan's pick was awesome. Oh, and the potato fries? Perfect! Great prices for their lunch menu, and I can't wait to try the dinner menu.

Left side: The Havana

Right side: Circa 81 Club

Back: Yummy Potato salad

Perfectly cooked home fries

 

Bryan double fisting the sandwiches. He was

trying to figure out which was better.

He couldn't decide.

 

I am delighted that we have such a unique locally owned place. Most of what we do have are chain restaurants, not the best either. Circa 81 is definitely a must try!

 

Post mouth party bliss



 

Our Small Town is Getting Bigger, Bigger

Last night was date night! Boyfriend and I went to Kyoto Asian Cuisine for appetizers and sushi, our favorites there!

I got Krab Rangoons, and Dumplings for appetizers. For my sushi choices I got:

1. Eel Cucumber Roll
2. Philidelphia Roll- Cream Cheese and Smoked Salmon
3. California Roll

Now onto the purpose of my post, my review of where we had dessert: Twisted Spoon Frozen Yogurt and Desserts. As I've written before, we have a small town, hence Small Town Finds, but, in the past few years we've been getting more and more stores. Back in March I noticed that we were getting two frozen yogurt bars at once! One called BrrrBerry (I haven't been there yet and I likely won't go, because my first experience at Twisted Spoon was sooooo good!), and one called Twisted Spoon. Twisted Spoon is owned by a local restaurant, and it's the one and only, not a chain. Bryan and I were both Froyo virgins, and the ladies in there last night were so nice and walked us through everything! They even let me take pictures for my blog! I will definitely be going back again and again.

 

First you get your bowl. You can get a waffle bowl in Sprinkle, Chocolate, and Rice Crispy flavor. Then you load on the yogurt, they had Chocolate, Vanilla, Luscious Lemon, Pomegranite Raspberry, EuroTart, Peanut Butter, Pecan Praline, and Cake Batter were "on tap", but the flavors can change as well, so there are more than eight kinds. We were able to sample all the flavors, and Bryan got Chocolate and I got Chocolate and Vanilla.

 



Next we went to the topping bar! They had tons of countless toppings to choose from, I believe I got Cookie Dough pieces, M&M's, White Chocolate kisses, Nutter Butter Bar pieces, and Oreos, and topped it with Reddi Whip, I couldn't tell you what all Bryan got on his, I do remember Swedish Fish and Fruity Pebbles. I even tried these little things I'd never heard of before that are called "Bobas", the lady behind the counter described them as Gushers, they're very interesting.

 

Last you go to the weighing station, you put all of the yogurt you're paying for on the scale and you pay according to how many ounces it weighs. I think the price is pretty reasonable at .45 an ounce. The lovely ladies also gave me a punch card, every time you get Froyo they punch it and the tenth time you get a free ten ounce!

 

 





The also have other desserts available, we came in pretty late, so most of their selection had been put away for the night.

 

These pictures show a little of the character of their shop, they have adorable rocking chairs and cornhole games outside, decorative spoons on the walls, a huge chalk board where they keep up with their newest Froyo record holder, and they used the space very well for the tables and chairs for customers.

 

 

My Froyo loyalty lies with Twisted Spoon! I was very satisfied with my first visit and I can't wait to visit again. 



Wal*Mart Disappoints Me

This post was not scheduled, but as soon as I heard about what I'm about to write, I was outraged. A friend of mine posted this article on Facebook and I couldn't believe what I was reading! To summarize the article:

A couple read in a recent issue in the newspaper warning again leaving animals in hot cars during the summer (duh!), it advised if you saw an animal shut into a car on a hot day to call the police. On a recent trip to Wal*Mart in MHC they were in the garden department and heard an animal somewhere making some distressing noises. They were finally able to locate the vehicle where the dog was and it turns out it was a puppy, approximately 4-6 weeks old with only one window cracked and no water. The outside temperature was more than 90 that day, so you know the inside of that vehicle felt like hell on earth. Bystanders said that the puppy had been locked in for about 45 minutes by that time. The woman entered Wal*Mart to see if they could call the police or do anything to help, the employees refused and she sought the manager, he informed her that it was against company policy to "rescue or assist in the rescue in any animals left in the hot weather, and are also prohibitted from calling the police" and anyone employed by Wal*Mart that violates this policy is to be fired. Finally someone with compassion and a heart let her call the police and she went back out to the van, when she was about to try to rescue the pup, the police showed up and told her if she opened the van he could arrest her for breaking and entering, and that it wasn't his responsibility to rescue the animal, it was Animal Control's job, but they weren't open on Sundays. By this time it had been another 45 minutes and the puppy was laying sprawled out on the floor twitching.

Thankyfully, the owner of the van finally came out and the puppy was fine, but who does stuff like that? I could understand that anyone employed by Wal*Mart shouldn't be breaking into vehicles to rescue animals, but why not allow people the use of the phone? I cannot imagine if someone had done that to one of my fur babies. Why not just leave the pup at home? Or better yet, find the pup a better home than the current owner is obviously not providing.

People make me sick.

Restaurant Review: Kyoto Asian Cuisine Bar and Grill

A few months ago a new Japanese restaurant opened up in Morehead City, NC. In MHC we have a few Asian buffets that are alright, a couple restaurants like Kabutos and a local (I believe) chain called Musashi which is the most popular around here, which is what I am comparing Kyoto to. I wasn't expecting much from Kyoto, the outside of the building isn't much to look at, just a small building, not very pretty. But the inside was set up very nice, for the small space they had, they managed to set up a bar and a few very nice seating areas. There weren't too many decorations like some places have, very sleek and simple.

Bryan and I were the only customers, so we got our orders taken very quickly. The salad was alright, Musashi's has a few more carrots and other veggies in it, which I like, but salad is salad. I loved their broth (I think it's called Dashi?) soup much more than Musashi's though, much less salt in the broth and way more veggies in the soup. Instead of the half slice of onion and one mushroom and a few chives that I usually see when I get my soup at Musashi's, I got several onions, fried and non, a ton of mushrooms and chives. It was great.



Next we got our sushi course. Now, I'm a new sushi eater. I wasn't all that fond of it until recently, and now I'm all about some sushi. We were going to order an appetizer sushi, but that was ridiculously priced at only five pieces for $7.95 when a whole roll is usually six pieces. So we looked at the sushi menu and they had three rolls for $11.95. I would much rather pay about .70 for each piece than $1.60. But let me tell you, the sushi was AMAZING! We got an Eel roll, a California roll, and a Salmon roll. It tasted like they had just gotten the fish off the boat. It was so good, I will definitely be getting sushi from there, exclusively. Since I said I was a new sushi eater, I don't know if dipping sushi in the white sauce is weird at all, but I've never been a fan of soy sauce.

We got our meals after the sushi. Bryan got General Tso's Chicken which came with steamed broccoli and rice, and I got Hibachi Chicken. Kyoto's pricing on their meals is pretty much the same as Musashi's, But Kyoto has a bigger selection of entrees to pick from. Bryan's chicken was really good, but his broccoli was WAY to crunchy, like inedible crunchy. My meal was pretty good too, but my chicken was very dry and almost looked like the canned chicken that you buy to make a quick chicken salad, so I wasn't impressed with that.

I was very impressed though that their hibachi included carrots in the vegetables, it was a nice edition.





Lastly we both ordered one appetizer to go, I got Crab Rangoons (my favorite!) and Bryan got a Soft Shell Crab. We were going to wait til we got home to try these things out. Needless to say, I was very impressed by their Rangoons, they were a different shape than what I normally find around here, most of the time they're in triangles while Kyoto's were more of a bunched up baggie. I was also very impressed at how fresh and moist they stayed all the way home. After a few minutes, most Rangoons get dried out and tough to eat, but they were so awesome! Bryan said his crab was alright (I didn't try any) but he wasn't fond of the crust they put on before deep frying.

I liked reviewing this restaurant a lot and look forward to doing more reviews for my blog in the future.