Eating Cleveland

Edited to add: My mom emailed me…”I hate the photos of me!!!!” sorry mom-Had to do it!!

My mom is probably going to kill me for posting a pic of her on the internet with no makeup on, but who cares!! It’s a good one. Love you mom!

I had a lovely and relaxing trip home. Cleveland is a fun little town and I am a homebody at heart. Out of me and my sisters, I’ll probably be the one to move back to C-town eventually. Does anyone watch 30 Rock? Cause that “Cleveland” episode last year rocked my world. I don’t, however, think I walk down the street thinking “what smells so good? Cleveland.” (watch me here)

Any who…before I get lost on a ridiculous tangent that I tend to do, moving on! Not a lot of cooking going on this time, but I did have some tasty meals in restaurants! Friday for lunch my mom and I went to a new (well, new location) Turkish restaurant in Cleveland Heights called Anatolia Cafe. I had been once at the old location with an old boss, but this new one was airier, bright and quite busy. I enjoyed a delicious falafel and snagged some A-MAZING baklava for dessert. Soooo good, honey-y and in perfect little 2 bite pieces. During lunch my mom kept asking me if I was going to post this on my blog…one of 20 times she asked me this during the weekend. This is for you mom!! You better appreciate it!! As we ate, we scanned the menu to see if my mom could take my dad here. He is a picky eater and doesn’t really do ethnic food, so we went through almost everything on the menu to find something he would eat, cause it sure looks like my mom is coming back…and my dad will have to be dragged too. Dad-I know you’ll like it. Please go!

Friday night, before the orchestra, our little trio (very rare-we are normally a group of 5, 6 now that I have a brother-in-law.) went to a local fav, and I think my mom’s fav restaurant-Sarava. It’s in Shaker Square and is Brazilian and really yummy. Their menu is really fun and not safe which I like, and they have delish Mojitos, which I had to pass on this time, although I’m not sure why. I’ve had several Sarava mojitos before and they are STRONG. I think I wanted to focus on the music at the orchestra, not how the room was spinning and the height of our seats was making me waay too nauseous. Well, I had a kinda plate of vegetarian stuff, including black beans and rice, veggies, fried spinich, onions and some other stuff. It was sooooo good, my mom had to hold me back from licking the plate. Well, not really, but I was about to do it (but they took the plate away. boo). We finished with dessert, including some chocolate cake thing and the MOST AMAZING creme caramel (mom-was that it???) EVER!! Normally I don’t like things like that cause I think they taste eggy but this was probably the best thing about the entire dinner. So, if you’re in Cleveland, go to Sarava and order the creme caramel. Oooo-just looked it up-it’s Brazilian Caramel Custard. Your taste buds will thank you FOREVER.

Our next and final restaurant adventure (this is very very rare for us-we NEVER go out to restaurants.) was Fire, also at Shaker Square for Easter Brunch. My mom even asked me before I went where I wanted to go after church for brunch. As one of three, and especially as the middle child, I NEVER get asked where I want to go. It’s all about where we would all be happiest. But this time it was all me me me!! Haha. So, per my mom’s suggestion, we went to Fire a cute and yummy restaurant that is about 7 years old. And man oh man did they have good brunch. I had lemon soufflé pancakes with blueberry sauce and basically an entire bag of powdered sugar on top. They were amazing. So delicious and perfect for a snowy Easter. Oh, Cleveland. Always snow on Easter. Last year I went home for Easter as well (early April?) for a wedding shower for my sister and we got 2 feet of snow. Yup. Don’t you want to move to Cleveland?

The only cooking I did while I was there was not healthy by any means but it was delish. We went to a little Easter party for dinner on Sunday at my parents’ friends house and were assigned to bring dessert. My mom’s glorious idea was to make 3 kinds of cupcakes with 3 different kinds of frosting. That’s a lot of cooking. But, we were up to the task, and I must say we had a good ‘ol time doing it. Coconut (the Barefoot Contessa’s recipe), Orange (Magnolia basic cupcake recipe with orange zest) and Chocolate (no clue where this recipe came from).

My mom came home from the grocery store with a coconut instead of a bag of already shredded coconut. Silly Mom. I was a little nervous how that was going to be…I’ve never broken open a coconut before, and I don’t think my mom had either. It was an adventure nonetheless. Obviously that’s her above cracking it open. She did good!

she had to move to the floor eventually…

Overall, they were an ab fab success. We did dump an entire tray of chocolate cupcakes on the floor but were able to salvage enough. And it was a very busy Saturday and Sunday measuring and mixing and scraping and licking bowls. It’s a good thing I did a long run Saturday cause I sure did my fair share of batter eating. My ultimate weakness. And they were delish. Don’t they just look delish??

The best were the coconut, but the others were amazing too. It was a fun little cooking activity to do with my mom. And yes Mom-I did put it on my blog.

Dalton and I wish you goodnight!!