Vacation: Day 4 (A.K.A. All Meals Have Pork)

In addition the friend I was staying with I have another friend who lives in Charlotte. In fact I lived with her for nearly three years just after college. Although she also has a BFA she immediately began working as a chef after graduation. She has moved her way around the country and now runs and is pastry chef for a restaurant in Charlotte (300 East, go there if you are in the area). I wanted to catch up with her as well as check out her restaurant, so, Sunday morning we went to 300 East for brunch with my friend and her husband.

We had a great time and a great meal. I got the brioche French toast stuffed with pumpkin cheesecake, with caramel syrup and just a touch of vanilla ice cream and it came with bacon.

After brunch we headed outside of Charlotte to a “pig pick’n”. A friend of my friends has this every year, they live on a lake so it is a great setting and they start the night before by roasting two pigs, one in a pit and one in some kind of giant roaster thing that some call the “tanning bed”. In addition to the two pigs there is a mess of ribs, fish, tons of sides and homemade ice cream. Over the course of about five hours I had three different trips to the ribs and pork and two to the ice cream. It was so good I barely noticed that I had now probably eaten a whole pig by myself in three short days.

There were about a hundred people there, about twenty-five dogs and probably twenty kids and yet there were still left-overs, amazing. FYI-last years left-overs went to a shelter, I'm sure this years did too.

We went back home and just sat around for several hours watching movies (The Croupier and Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit), until, believe it or not, we were hungry again. However, we were exhausted and didn’t want to cook anything. So we headed to the grocery store at about 10.00 pm and picked up a frozen lasagna and Texas toast. Just so you know, there was pork sausage in the lasagna, so yes; I did have pork for every meal that day.

So, to sum it up, all I did on Sunday was talk and eat. So close to heaven, yet little did I know it would get better before I left Charlotte.