George’s Brasserie and a Snow Day

It’s been such a fun weekend – dinner with friends, a nice long run, a great ashtanga practice, dinner with my in law’s at one of our favorite Charlotte restaurants and a day trip to the mountains with lots of snow!

Catch up on part one of the weekend with this post and here we go with part two, starting with last night’s dinner. My in law’s kindly invited us to dinner and we ended up going to one of our favorite Charlotte restaurants, George’s Brasserie. George’s opened late last spring and it’s been a favorite of ours ever since.  The atmosphere, food and service are outstanding. We usually go for the mussels but we decided to branch out last night and order entrees.

We started out with carafes of house wine (syrah last night – the selection changes) and some crusty bread with salted butter. We ordered the salad special to kick things off.

Sugared pecans, fried brie, lardons, homemade raspberry vinaigrette – need I say more?

My entree was beautiful.

And extremely delicious. Salmon over crushed English peas with beet vinaigrette, creme fraiche and rosti potato. I couldn’t get over the presentation of this dish – lovely!

Brandon went with the cassoulet which was the perfect thing for a cold night.

Duck and pork confit, Toulouse sausage and white beans. I snagged a few bites – this dish was hearty and so flavorful. I loved that it was served in a cast iron skillet.

We were very indecisive over whether we wanted dessert so our great (and very patient!) server, Jeremiah, surprised us with this.

Just a few bites of chocolate was just what we all needed to finish our meal.

I admired this gingerbread village that was on display as we left the restaurant.

The pastry chef spent over 35 hours on this masterpiece! So impressed.

I was up bright and early this morning in anticipation of our day trip to the mountains. We saw that they had received a decent amount of snow Saturday so we were very excited to see our first snow of the season. I had a bowl of oatmeal while I waited for Brandon to wake up.

Banana oats with a holiday twist – I used Silknog instead of almond milk. Topped with pumpkin butter and almond butter.

We hit the road for the mountains around 10 a.m. and just 90 minutes later we arrived in Blowing Rock to find a winter wonderland.

Lots of snow! Brandon and I got engaged in Blowing Rock almost four years ago and this is the first time that we’ve been back. We stopped for a photo in front of the restaurant where we had our celebration dinner.

Four years ago… 😀

We had so much fun walking around in the snow, reminiscing and holiday shopping. We stopped in for lunch at Blowing Rock Grille.

Quiche, a strawberry bran muffin and a small salad.

Brandon modeled silly hats while we were shopping.

And of course we had to take a break for fudge.

We went with chocolate peanut butter (best flavor combination ever!) and it was tasty. I have such a sweet tooth. 😉

The snow really started picking up later in the afternoon and we were freezing. It was 20 degrees with 20 mph winds. Brr!!!

We left Blowing Rock and headed a few miles down the road to Boone…where it was also snowing and freezing.

We stopped in a few stores and then decided to head home. We were planning on staying for dinner but all of the stores closed at five and we were not ready to eat yet. Also, the snow was really coming down and we were not sure of the road conditions.

Brandon and I talked about how lucky we are that we can hop in the car and be in the mountains in just an hour and a half. We are feeling so in the holiday spirit now that we played in the snow and Christmas shopped.

Hope you all had a great weekend. Are you guys feeling in the holiday spirit yet!?