Cranberry Almond Couscous

Cranberry almond couscous

Delicious creation from last night's mediterranean family night night dinner (:

Varasano's

2171 peachtree road ne - atlanta, ga 30309

Flat, crispy pizza, flash baked for 3 minutes with a delicious sourdough crust that needs no dipping sauce to eat. That's the bottom line at Varasano's. We also just found out they started Sunday brunch, so we'll have to go back to review that as well. We decided to go around noon on a Sunday. We got seated immediately at a nice table on the patio.

We each started with their Spinach salad which has a raspberry balsamic dressing, candied pecans and gorgonzola cheese. All fresh and a perfectly balance of salty and sweet.

We decided to try two pizzas. This first one is their Nucci. It has Garlic, Olives & Emmenthaler finished with Arugula, Capicola & Herbs on top. Now it doesn't have any red sauce, but olive oil instead. It had great flavor and was easiest to eat once we folded in in half like the restaurant suggests.

And here is the Salumi. An assortment of Thinly Sliced Italian Cured Meats with Mozzarella, Tomato Sauce & Spiced Olives. Truly a man's pizza, so sinful but sooooo good.

We finished up with a mug of tiramisu. It was so rich and delicious. Just be careful! We both inhaled the cocoa powder on top and had coughing attacks!

This is a great spot to meet up with friends for a salad, sandwich, pizza or brunch. The atmosphere is relaxed and classy and the prices are very affordable. They have excellent thin oven fired pizza. Salute!

Desi Spice

931 monroe drive ne - atlanta, ga 30308

Indian food is amazing...especially when it's authentic and priced fairly. Enter, Desi Spice. This little hole in the wall is located behind the Trader Joes on Monroe. We were on the hunt for traditional Indian cuisine and are thrilled to announce we found some!

We started off with Samosas. They served them with the most amazing chutney (on the far left). They were good sized and crispy on the outside.

Vegetables and lentils make up the filling. They were really tasty!

Then we got several pieces of Pappadum. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a paper thin piece of crispy bread made from lentils and spices. It melts in your mouth. The sauce is cilantro.

We also got two pieces of garlic Naan. We usually just get plain Naan, but this was ten times better. Definitely recommend.

We ended up getting three different mains and two types of rice.

This is just the plain basmati rice. It was made perfectly so that its not sticky and doesn't clump.

Here is Rice Pallao. It contains peas, almonds, raisins and traditional spices. We were really glad we tried this. Our go to rice from now on.

Lamb vindaloo. Classic. Amazing. Period. Best thing we ordered. The great thing about this restaurant is that you can order each dish with either chicken, beef or lamb and you control how spicy it is!

This is Tarka Daal. It's made from lentils and is a vegetarian dish. We ordered in "medium" but it still wasn't spicy. Good pick for people who can't stand spicy curry or meat.

Lastly, this was Chicken Dhansak. It's cooked with lentils, sweet, sour and hot spices. This is considered Persian style and is also medium. The chicken just fell apart. It was more of a tomato base than cream.

This restaurant turned out to be a great find. All of the food was terrific and the manager comes to each table and takes the time to chat and visit. We definitely recommend this spot if you love Indian...and if you've never tried it, here's a great place to start!

Parish

240 n. highland ave - atlanta, ga 30307

Saturday brunch is our new favorite pastime...especially when the weather is as lovely as it was this weekend. We discovered Inman Park a few weeks back and vowed we would go back and hit up as many of the brunch spots as we could in the near future. So this Saturday we settled on Parish. Parish offers delicious southern traditional foods with a modern twist. Very New Orleans type foods.

Their menus are printed on paper bags which is awesome. We sat on the patio, which is also covered, so you aren't forced to sit in the blaring sunlight. Their brunch menu covers the thicker menu, with specialty drinks listed on the back. The skinny menu is also dedicated entirely to beverages.

We ordered an English Breakfast tea and a Bloody Mary. Both had really great flavor...and look how cute the tea bag is! It has a little leaf on the end of the string.

With the drinks they bring out fresh, hot beignets.

Warm and crispy on the outside, moist and gooey on the inside. perfect.

Now onto the food. There were three of us on this visit. First up, the shrimp and grits. This consists of local shrimp, tomato and andouille gravy, logan turnpike grits, and a poached egg. Verrryyyy southern and a little spicy with a kick. Filling, but it doesn't leave you in a food coma.

Next, here is the fried green tomato benedict. What you see is an open faced buttermilk biscuit, poached eggs, smoked ham, fried green tomato, bernaise, and grits (which we substituted for their usual side of hash browns). Now this was our first encounter with fried green tomatoes, a southern staple...this was just fantastic! The perfect choice if you're craving something savory.

Lastly, you can tell we had a good ole american boy with us...not too adventurous (and possessing a massive appetite) he went with the American Breakfast: two eggs any style, housemade-ginger sage sausage or applewood smoked bacon (he took the bacon), hash browns or logan turnpike grits (obviously he picked the grits!). He also took the extra beignet!


We all left happy and full. The service was excellent and everyone was extremely friendly and accommodating. Our waiter kindly informed us that if we ever plan to come back on a Sunday we should definitely call ahead because it gets a little crazy. Parish is definitely on our list of places for brunch and if you get a chance you should definitely stop on by!

Success!

So one of us spent the Easter holiday basking in the Florida sunshine while the other stayed here all alone ):

To keep myself busy I cooked, ran around, laid by the pool, etc...

...and then Sunday I extreme couponed...and SERIOUSLY succeeded. Here is what is pictured above:
- (4) 3-packs of Soleil Razors
- (2) 100 count boxes of Splenda
- A massive bag of Stayfree maxi pads
- A Yakisoba mac and cheese dinner
- A Voskos greek yogurt cup
- (2) Luster teeth whitening tooth paste (normally $8 each)
- A Smart Balance skim milk
- A package of Hormel Naturals smoked ham
- (3) tubes of Crest toothpaste
- (2) full size Dove men's deodorant
- (3) travel size men's/women's deodorant
- (2) bags of M&Ms
- (4) Reach flosses
- A bag of Always pantyliners
- (2) 2-packs of Purel laundry kits
- A Wet-N-Wild nail polish (I forgot to put it on the table!)

Now the funniest part about all this stuff is first of all, I don't use men's deodorant, maxi pads, or pantyliners. I also don't even eat Splenda because I'm allergic to it...but it was at the same store and I was buying other things and its FREE!!! So why wouldn't you take it? So we will probably open up a store at our apartment and give away the stuff we don't want...or trade it for bottles of wine, chocolate, etc....

How much did all this add up to?

$64.80

How much did I spend?

$.13

yes, that's 13 cents....

Couponing Part Two

We basically just owned Publix & Kroger...The cute little girl at the checkout watched as the total kept plummeting with every coupon she swiped...all she could say was "wow, you uh sure have some good coupons".

Kroger we walked out without paying for anything. That's where the random deodorant and Yakisoba meal came from. It's next door to Publix and we knew they were free so, why not? Yeah that was kind of weird...going to the register, it ringing up as them owing us $. 25 cents (Kroger doesn't pay you if you save in the negatives apparently)...and we walked out with free stuff.

On to Publix...see the 4 4-packs of YoPlus? We didn't pay for those (normally $2 each)...
- Chobani $1.33: we paid $.40
- Triscuits $3: we paid $.50
- Idahoan Potatoes $1.25: we paid $.37
- Kraft Singles $3.49: we paid $1
- Kraft Shredded Cheese $3.79: we paid $.66

Total: $40.58 (including the Kroger stuff)
We Paid: $7.48

This was AWESOME.

Our First Extreme Couponing Adventure

I'm sorry, but have you seen this show?!? Ok, so we got sucked in because one of our cousins is featured on it...but when we saw it, we were hooked. We aren't quite sure why we watch things on reality tv and then always decide that these ridiculous shows are awesome and we must participate in whatever activity is being thrown at our faces that very moment. As is the case with Extreme Couponing.

The first week's episode featured a quite fashionable and young mom participating in the above activity with her son and best friend. Now, you may not know much about couponing, but when you find out what it is you basically feel idiotic that you have spent your whole life paying for items in stores. These people get everything for free, or even get paid to take things out of stores...it doesn't sound possible, but it is. So we are obviously young and have so many things we could be spending our hard earned cash on besides groceries and toiletries and toilet paper (hey now, you know that charmin is expensive!) So what did we decide to do? Yep, try the couponing thing out for ourselves. We're too young to get the Sunday paper, so we settled on four dives into newspaper recycling bins by our house and printing coupons offline. (We didnt actually get in the dumpster, we just pulled out the top 50 newspapers or so) We clipped the coupons, waited for this weeks circulars to appear online, and made a plan.

We decided to hit up Publix, because it had the best weekly deal offerings. Now the way that it works best is actually to use stores like Publix. Publix offers about 20 items Buy One, Get One (BOGO) every week. They also accept coupons from any competitor store and they will double your coupons (swipe each one twice) if they are $.50 or under. So for example, if Crest Toothpaste was $2.00 and BOGO, Target released a Crest $.50 off one tube coupon, and in Sunday's paper there was also a $.50 off one tube coupon you would get 2 tubes of Crest toothpaste for free...2 tubes of toothpaste $2.00 (BOGO) minus Target's coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) minus Sunday's paper coupon swiped twice (-$1.00) = $2.00 - 1.00 - $1.00 = FREE!!!!

Extreme Couponing shows you people going into stores, racking up $1600 grocery bills, and walking out paying about $7.00 total...we aren't exaggerating. One of our cousins does it all the time. So naturally, we had to try this. We wanted to do it on a small scale, so we devised a plan and set out. Now right before we left for the store, we had a malfunction with our computer and couldn't print out our coupons...so we ended up only being able to use the ones we already had. We'll show you what we got, how much it cost, and how much it would have cost if we had gotten our coupons from online.

Here's our treasure pile...minus one bag of Dove chocolates because SOMEONE couldn't wait until we got home to start eating them ::cough, cough::

- 6 boxes of Special K cereal: regularly $3.95 each, we paid: $1.30 each
- 2 cans Pam cooking spray: regularly $3.19 each, we paid: $.89 each
- 1 Airwick double pack refill oils: regularly $5.50, we paid: $2.99
- 2 boxes of Triscuits: regularly $2.99 each, we paid: $1.50 each
- 2 bags Dove chocolates: regularly $4.24 each, we paid: $1.62 each
- 2 Tropicana orange juices: regularly $4.00 each, we paid: $2.00 each
- 2 50 count Mentos gum: regularly $3.29 each, we paid: $1.14 each
- 10 Chobani yogurts: regularly $1.33 each, we paid: $1.00 each
- 2 bags Alexia buttermilk biscuits: regularly $3.39 each, we paid: $1.42 each
- 2 boxes Duncan Hines cake mix: regularly $1.83, we paid: $.64 each
- 2 boxes Quaker chewy granola bars: regularly $2.99, we paid: $.75 each
- 2 boxes NutriGrain bars: regularly $3.49 each, we paid: $1.25 each
- 2 Dial hand soaps: regularly $1.59 each, we paid: $.30 each
- 9 Bird's Eye frozen vegetables: regularly between $1.79-$2.39 each, we paid: $.21 each

Grand total before coupons and discounts: $125.33 ($62.67 each)
What we paid: $51.29 ($25.65 each)

Now, three things did not get the coupon usage of our online coupons. Those were:
- Chobani: an additional $.60 off each yogurt (-$6.00)
- Triscuit: an additional $1.00 off each box (-$2.00)
- Alexia biscuits: an additional $1.00 off each bag (-$2.00)

That would have made the Chobani $.40 each, the Triscuits $.50 each and the Alexia biscuits $.42 each...and our grand total only $41.29 ($20.65 each).

We don't know about you guys, but usually we are the ones paying the full $125 grocery bills. On this trip alone we had the opportunity to save about 68% (had our printer worked). Why wouldn't you want extra money??? We sure as heck do!

Fellini's

2809 peachtree road ne - atlanta, ga 30305

Today was beautiful out...pretty windy, but still a gorgeous day to be outdoors. We decided to go to lunch at a little place called Fellini's. There are a few locations in Atlanta, but we decided to go to the one on Peachtree right near us. They have patio seating and supposedly delicious pizza so it was a no brainer.

You walk in and it's completely casual. There was a counter with a girl and a cash register and an obnoxiously large sign with their menu posted above her. As you can see, the prices are great and they offer everything in single sized portions. This is awesome because we hate when you go to pizza places and they only offer medium and large pizzas. You then get forced to settle on ingredients that everyone likes so you can all split the same pizza. Not here. You have the choice to order one of their created pizzas or you can basically build your own.

We took the liberty of trying their "created" pizzas so we could judge whether you should stick to those or making your own. We ordered the vegetarian, the white, the hawaiian, and the special. (we figured the spinach and mushroom would kind of be like the veggie...with less veggies)

After you pay, you get your drinks and then either sit inside or head out to the patio. We obviously went for the patio. They have a beautiful fountain and over 20 tables outside. The tables aren't on top of each other so you don't feel like your neighbor is eavesdropping on every word you say. Our pizzas probably came out in about 5-10 minutes. We ordered a total of 4 slices to split between the two of us, making it two slices each.

Here is the veggie. We were really happy to see the green olives on the pizza. A lot of places don't carry green olives. All of the veggies were crisp and fresh. Good flavor for a veggie, especially after we added some red pepper flakes.

Now here's the pizza they are famous for: the white pizza. Although it's called white, it still comes with red sauce when you order it as a slice. Chunks of fresh garlic, multiple kinds of white cheeses and italian spices sprinkled on top. This pizza is phenomenal and you should probably try it...even if you're normally a meat pizza kind of person.

This here is the hawaiin. Fresh ham and pineapple and just the right amount of sauce and cheese. This was definitely tasty.

Last but not least, the special. This slice is loaded with pepperoni, mushrooms, italian sausage, onions, meatballs, green peppers, black olives, green olives and extra cheese. It was a lot of toppings for the crust, so we ate it with a knife and fork. The meats were all delicious and distinguishable and the pizza just had an overall perfect taste of agreement between the toppings. An excellent "everything" kind of pizza. The crust was also seasoned really well for all of them, the kind of crust you can eat on it's own with no dipping sauce.

Here's one of our little sample platters. We were each able to finish about 2 and a 1/2 of our mini slices, equating to about 1 and 1/2 normal slices. A guy could easily put down 2-3 we're sure, but 1 slice and maybe one of their side salads would probably be good for us next time.

Don't worry, we took our extras home and a few hours later they made excellent cold pizza leftovers. yum.