Weekend Snapshots 8.18

Happy Monday! I hope you’re all having a great start to your week. This was a weekend I didn’t want to end. It was so nice having Josh back home and getting to spend time with him. Our weekend was jam packed and full of fun. Here are some of the highlights:

Yelp Elite event at Black Oak Grill

I am loving being a part of Yelp. The Omaha food community is incredible and I’ve gotten to meet some wonderful people and eat some delicious food through this organization. I was invited to a five course dinner at Black Oak Grill as an Elite member. They are debuting a new menu and wanted to get some feedback on the food.

I’d eaten here before the menu change and enjoyed my experience. I remember the food being good and the staff being friendly. Being back, the staff was as friendly as ever and the food was even better than I remembered. Their eggplant parmesan was really good. It’s the perfect place to go and get a beer and enjoy some food with friends on a Friday night.

Girls Night at Modern Love

Modern Love is officially open in Omaha! Isa Chandra has made a huge impact on the food community with her vegan cooking. Her restaurant brings her work to life and serves dishes that are absolutely delicious. This is the restaurant I want to take people to to show them how good vegan dishes can be.

It was super fun hanging out with Jordan, Hannah, and Joanna. We were having the most random but super fascinating medical discussions over our meal. Hopefully we didn’t cause any nearby tables to lose their appetite. We were chowing down!

Can all hummus plates be like this? Seriously, it was perfection.

Fried zucchini blossoms. There was a delay on these causing them to be brought out after we finished our meals. I took one for the team and had one (delicious!) and brought the other one home for Josh. It’s a hard job, but someone had to do it. 😉

I ordered a polenta dish that was delicious. And check out all the brussels sprouts! I have no idea what the sauce was but it was so good.  My only recommendation to improve this dish would be to turn down the heat when making the brussels sprouts. They caramelized on the outside while still being hard on the inside. I’m a brussels sprout fanatic though, so I think I’m pickier than most.

Omg this pie. I ordered a piece of raspberry and peach pie to-go for Josh and ended up eating it while we talked at the table. Whoops! I saved him a bite and he said we have to go back. I’m definitely not arguing!

Random eats

Lunchtime takeout from Block 16. I’ve somehow not been there before this and have been hearing people rave for months and months. It’s farm to table food with some serious flavor. I got the special of the day which was fried chicken sliders. I opted for a side salad instead of the fries and loved that it was actually a salad instead of some iceberg with a tomato thrown on top. The food was incredible. I can’t wait to go back!

My homemade dinner. I know this doesn’t look as awesome as all the fancy restaurant foods but it tastes so good. I love Hilary’s veggie burgers, on Whole Foods fresh-baked wheat bread with their 365 al pastor pineapple salsa and some yummy guacamole slathered on top. It’s seriously such a good combo that I eat it for dinner Monday-Friday. What can I say? I’m a creature of habit.

Another protein acai bowl happened! So good. <3

Josh and I hit up the farmers market this weekend and picked up some local produce, on top of our weekly shopping haul. While we love the place we picked up organic tomatoes from (seriously, how pretty are those!), we were disappointed with our cucumber vendor. The cucumbers had hollow hearts! Oh well, I bought them for the sole purpose of making cucumber water, so no big deal.

Workouts

With all the eating I have been doing lately, I’ve been trying to give my all to my workouts to hopefully minimize some of the damage. This weekend was a doozy for food. While I definitely cannot eat like this all the time, I’ve been enjoying the food and have been rocking my workouts. Saturday Josh and I celebrated our first anniversary with a stay-cation at Hotel Deco. (It was one of his gifts to me.) I’m recapping that tomorrow because I love reading about different hotels and this one was awesome. I did a killer 20 minute HIIT workout in their fitness center that left my sweat sweating.

A night on the town

Josh and I celebrated our stay-cation with a dinner at Le Bouillon. They’re another restaurant that sources local ingredients. Their food is French inspired and while the menu may look very meat-heavy at first, there are tons of veggie options. We had been there for drinks with friends before and absolutely loved it, but never for a meal. I am SO glad we chose to celebrate here. We had a fabulous waitress who helped make the night extra special. And the food was incredible. Like seriously. I feel like I say this about every restaurant, but Omaha has such good food! And this place is one of the best.

We started off with their tomato-bean toast. I would eat this every day if bread came out of the toaster like this. It was so good.

We split cucumber gazpacho and fried eggplant next. I wasn’t a fan of the fried eggplant, so I let Josh go to town on that. It felt heavy and wasn’t crispy enough for my liking. Take this with a grain of salt though, because Josh was a huge fan. The cucumber gazpacho was a show stopper. I wish he didn’t like it so I could have eaten the whole thing myself, but he loved it too. We weren’t even sure of half the ingredients but we loved every bite. There was just so much flavor!

A veggie-fied arroz a la plancha. Josh and I split this, but I could have eaten the whole thing by myself. It was flavor-filled, mushroom-y goodness. I didn’t think a dish could be better than this…

…and then this happened. Veggies en papillote. It’s their chef’s specialty and is off-menu but always available upon request. (I’m sure they’d appreciate a phone call ahead of time to ensure they have enough ingredients on hand.) I literally gasped when I opened up the paper it was cooked in and saw all the delicious foods and colors. There was a whole garden in there! And each part of the dish was cooked with a different sauce so no two bites tasted the same. Josh and I loved every bite. We already can’t wait to go back and get this dish in the fall when squash and pumpkins are in season. If they make this with kabocha they will never be able to get me to leave the restaurant.

After dinner Josh and I walked around for a few hours before hitting up M’s Pub for dessert.

He got carrot cake with butterscotch pecan ice cream. I stole more than a few bites. 😉

And I got the blueberry crumble! It was delicious!

Afterwards we went for fancy drinks at The Berry & Rye. I didn’t take pictures because it was very dark and I didn’t want to ruin the atmosphere with a camera flash.

After chatting over our drinks for a while we (read: me) started craving some cheap bar food. Most of the restaurant kitchens were closed by this point, but a very friendly waitress recommended Eat the Worm. It was loud, it was crowded, and it was fun. We felt like we were in college again. This was the perfect end of the night stop.

Omaha Bloggers turns 1!

Omaha Bloggers Network got together to celebrate the group turning one! I never could have imagined the life this group would take when I started emailing bloggers last year to ask if they wanted to get together. It’s amazing to see how much the group has done in a year. Omaha definitely has some rockstar bloggers.

The birthday event was hosted by Hiro 88, a popular sushi place in downtown Omaha. I don’t know how I had never been there before. It has such a cool atmosphere with really yummy food. Hiro 88 spoiled us with delicious rolls and appetizers. I went to town on the avocado cucumber, veggie, and kanpyo rolls. I want to come back here with Josh to try their noodle dishes!

The Omaha blogger event ended with a sweet treat from Cupcake Omaha. They opened not too long ago in the Old Market. I had never tried these cupcakes before, but I am so glad I did! I got a Boston Creme cupcake and think it gives other famous Omaha cupcake shops a run for their money. The cake was super flavorful and had a delicious creme filling inside! I brought an oreo one home for Josh that he said he loved. (Although he was a little grumbly because I licked most of the frosting off on the ride home. Whoops!)

Questions of the Day: What was the highlight of your weekend? Does your city have tons of delicious restaurants? Have you ever seen hollow cucumbers?