When I (Finally) Return to Vancouver

I have a laundry list of places I'd like to go eat!  Now Southern food is great, don't get me wrong, but it's almost too great!  I love greasy food (carbs!) but I have the world's most sensitive stomach so a lot of foods tend to make me feel very sick down here.  This means that I've been cooking a lot at home and can afford to eat out a lot when we make it back home to Vancouver!  These are the restaurants I dream of:

1) Earl's: Chicken, Brie, and Apple sandwich...with half fries (love) and half salad (to avoid feeling overly guilty).  And swap out garlic mayo for regular mayo and no fig jam.  

2) Romer's x2: first time would be for a quinoa burger with no tomato and no goat cheese.  Add an order of fries with the bacon mayo (to prove I'm not a vegetarian...not that there's anything wrong with that but BACON!).  The second time would be for a Man's Man burger with no tomato - I can comfortably finish about 2/3 of this but it is so good that it's worth it.  And, of course, fries with bacon mayo.

3) Rain or Shine: the best salted caramel ice cream.  And homemade waffle cones.  I could eat this everyday.

4) Novo: Burrata pizza - pizza with no garlicky tomato sauce is a dream come true.  Add fresh basil and fresh mozzarella and I am so there!  This also was where our wedding rehearsal dinner was so it holds as a special place in my heart!

5) Secret Garden x2: I need (okay, would really like to) to go for high tea here because it's one of my favourite experiences.  And they also have pretty good egg salad croissant sandwiches so you can bet I'll be doing a take out of that at some point!

6) Lee's Donuts: best donut in the city is the honey glazed.  When I used to go for early morning runs, they would be warm and would be just the best!

7) Campagnolo: the fried chickpeas to start. They have an amazing simple spaghetti with tomato sauce but I would get the gnocchi with beef shank.  The menu here changes a lot so we hadn't been for awhile.  I hope they don't change anything before we get home!  They also do a family style dinner with bigger parties and that was super fun when we did it in the past!  You get to try everything that you wouldn't normally order (if you're like me!).

8) Cartem's Donuts:  the bee sting donut.  It's honey dipped with Parmesan and pepper on top.  I thought I would hate it but I love it.  PJ thinks I'm weird.  Their original donut is still very good!

9) De Dutch: for some reason (probably my over-sensitive tummy), I don't enjoy going out breakfast.  It feels too greasy to me.  I eat porridge every morning at home but going out for brunch is never one of my favourites.  I also enjoy the heavy things (pancakes!) so that contributes to feeling sick.  Except.  I LOVE Dutch pannekoekens.  And they never make me feel sick.  So now, what I want the experience of brunch, I like to go here!  And man do I miss it! 

10) Hy's: does it really matter what I get as long as cheese bread accompanies it?  😊. Okay, this probably shouldn't be on this list but I do really love their cheese bread.

 

A (Literal) Light at the End of the Tunnel

This may not come as a surprise to everyone but I haven't exactly been thrilled about our move to South Carolina.  It felt rushed and I wasn't ready to leave home.  

PJ traveled a lot during our first few weeks here and I was pretty lonely.  I haven't made any friends - but don't feel bad for me because I'm not very social in general - let alone when you take me out of my comfort.  I'm a pretty solidary person in general.  I have my small group of good girlfriends that I love and I am so happy with living my life like that (something about I'd rather have 4 quarters than 100 pennies would fit in right about here).  And it's a different down here - the people are so kind but it's a totally different culture.  Mostly in the subtleties.  So I haven't made a lot (any?) of friends and I am okay with that.  This could also be a self preservation thing where I know we're leaving here pretty soon and I hate goodbyes!  Nonetheless, it was tough being alone here with PJ traveling so much.  I loved living on my own in my single girl days.  I relished coming home to an empty apartment and doing exactly as I pleased.  But since meeting PJ, I hate him being gone.  Even when it's me and him at home, it feels like I am alone (in a really good way!!!) - as though I'm so comfortable with him that he feels kind of like an extension of me and therefore I'm kind of alone in my solitude.  Does that make sense?  I hope so!  But when you remove him from my new notion of solitude, it feels like I am missing something.  Whenever he has to go on a trip, I romanticize it and think that I'll do a deep clean of the apartment, go to yoga, cook, take a nice long bath, read, catch up on TV, etc.  This never happens.  I normally do about three of those things (and a deep clean of the apartment is never what I end up doing...whoops...road to hell, good intentions, you know what I mean).  The bottom line is that I hate having him gone.  And the three things I get done from my list of things to do?  Same stuff I do when he's here.  I know he hates to leave me.  And I appreciate all hard work and sacrifices that he's making for our little two-person family.  But it was still hard having him gone.

And the weather.  I was sold a 'warm weather' deal on this move.  I love warm weather (especially because our apartment has air conditioning so my sleep wouldn't have been hindered from outside being too warm)!  I love sitting outside in the heat and reading.  It has not been warm!  In fact, it has been freezing!!!  A couple of days in February were -10 degrees (-17 when you factor in the wind chill).  And my beloved rainy Vancouver?  It has been beautiful.  Uncharacteristically warm.  Seriously, if one more person tells me about the cherry blossoms 'already' blooming, I might scream (okay, probably cry!).

I miss home a lot.  I miss my family (my new McNugget family and my old family too!), I miss road trips to Seattle to see my cute aunty Marilyn, I miss my friends, I hate not being there to help Alli plan her wedding, I miss my running friends (so much.  So, so, so much.), I miss the good healthy Vancouver food, I miss Maggie, I miss people talking in Celsius and kilometres (and putting -re on the end of words instead of -er), I miss being in the same time zone as mostly everyone.

That's not to say I haven't had some good experiences down here!  I never would've gone to Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Charlotte, Charleston, or New Orleans if we weren't here.  It's just the first two months were difficult.  More so than I anticipated.  I was sad and the weather matched.  

At the beginning of March, I thought something must be changing.  It went from freezing to beautiful.  It was a weekday so I was working.  But it gave me hope!  And it made me look longingly at the hammocks at our communal pool. There was a sign that I might get to use those hammocks!!  Today, I did!  It was wonderful, I hung out for three hours in 26 degree weather in March!  I went to yoga!  And I got to come home to a nice cool apartment where my PJ was diligently working (with a hockey game in the background).  So things are looking up!  Myrtle Beach is finally delivering on her warm weather promise.  And I couldn't be more happy!

PJ also got me (us) an Adirondack chair this morning and helped me put it together.  It is now sitting on our little deck.  And after I got home from yoga, I contiued reading my book out there on it.  And this was my view:

Not too bad!

PJ's Valentine's Day Present

PJ's Gamecocks shirt didn't fit him and they were sold out when we went to exchange it at Target.  So it looked like his Valentine's Day gift would be a Target gift card (just what he wanted!). 

But today we found this:

Wait for it...

I know you're proud Judy!  

Sea Captain

One of my favourite restaurants to go to in Myrtle Beach is the Sea Captain's House.   Mostly for the hushpuppies.  But it's pretty good even without those.

PJ and I went a few weeks ago for dinner.  It's in an older building that feels like a house - there are couches and fireplaces everywhere.  It really does feel like you're intruding in someone's home!  If I were retired, I could hang out there for hours in the afternoon after eating lunch (Bryan - you might consider doing that when you visit!).  The decor is charming and comfortable.  And it's right on the water. 

A woman that works at Canfor used to work at the Sea Captain's House so I ask her all my questions (PJ did not know she used to work there so he thought I was just asking her random questions about the restaurant!).  It turns out that you can get an order of hushpuppies to go!  I was feeling particularly homesick one day (it comes and goes) and was saying to PJ that I had a craving for the steakhouse we went to in Charleston.  He offered to drive there for dinner.  On a Monday.  I am such a lucky girl but I wasn't actually wanting to go (it's a two hour drive...each way!).  I suggested that we get an order of hushpuppies from Sea Captain's to go instead.  That seemed like a much more reasonable request.  I hadn't had them since we were last here in November.  It was $3 for 12 hushpuppies.  And boy, were they delicious!

So I asked PJ if we could go back for a meal on Friday and he was game.  I even called it a date night and he didn't protest!  They give you hushpuppies for free when you eat there instead of bread.  We gobbled them up.  Then the waitress asked if we wanted more and I quickly agreed.  By the time we were done, I felt a little sick.  I think I had about nine hushpuppies - deep fried corn bread is good! 

 

(Photo is from last November but you get the gist of what hushpuppies are - this time they didn't last long enough for a photo!)

We ordered dinner and I got the chicken - it had a lemon butter sauce.  Because of my hushpuppy indulgence, I only got veggies on the side.  Of course, because of where we're living, it came with two chicken breasts!  I ate one and took the other home with me.  

I had the worst belly ache for the rest of the weekend!  That's what nine hushpuppies will do to you.  But it was worth it!  I have had hushpuppies elsewhere (Peckinpah in Vancouver) and they are nowhere near as good.  We have to make the most of our time down here!  So the sore tummy was worth it.

What. The. Heck.

I have shingles.  Again.  On my eye.  Again.  It's rather annoying!  

I felt a tingle around my eye last Tuesday (Tuesday!!!) and went home early to see if taking my normal cold sore medicine would help.  It did a bit but I still went to the doctor down here on Wednesday just to be sure.  I waited for 2.5 hours before seeing the doctor and she prescribed the same shingles medication that I had back home.  We picked up the medicine which would've cost $300 if we did not have insurance.  I don't know how people without insurance get by down here.  I also went to the eye doctor the following day to make sure it wasn't actually in my eye.  It is not.  This time was different than last October when I got it for the first time - I didn't feel as run down or sore as I did then.  So things aren't too bad but I've been trying to rest a lot.  

I would like to say that is totally responsible for my lack of posts but it isn't 100% the reason (although it has contirubtued).  I'll try and get caught up!