Delicious Meals

This morning we had something glorious to look forward to. Heather, who also likes to cook/bake, invited us over to enjoy a traditional American breakfast with her!! Laura's favorite meal is breakfast and I just love food, so we were more than happy to oblige. Seriously, what a happy way to wake up - with the first thing on your agenda to go eat delicious home cooked breakfast food with somebody from your home country :)

My mouth I think started salivating walking up the stairs to Heather's flat. It definitely started salivating when I saw the huge plate of fresh blueberry muffins, the huge plate of fresh baked biscuits, and the growing stack of pancakes next to Heather who was still working at the stove. She was also making us fresh gravy. There was fruit and fruit juice, butter, syrup, and honey...it was AMAZING! A little embarrassing is that we had told Heather about how much we eat and so she had cooked and baked an especially large amount to try at satiate our appetites. How embarrassing! There was so much food there! Nonetheless, we tried to live up to our reputation. Laura did eat at least twice as much as me though - pretty impressive. Everything was delicious though and we spent a leisurely 3 hours chatting and munching on Heather's incredible breakfast!

Hegan was also there running around which was lots of fun to see :) He is such a cute little boy. Finally, when it got to be 1:30 PM Laura and I figured we should get on with our other errands. As we were making our way to the door, Hegan came up to me with his arms outstretched and holding a disc-like yellow toy. I picked him up and he threw it to the ground and kicked and whimpered to get put down. So I put him down, thinking he had dropped it on accident (silly me). He picked it up and raised his arms to be picked up again. Of course I obliged and he happily threw his toy on the floor again. This happened one or two more times before I said to him, "Nein" regarding picking him up again. But then he just started making his beautiful blue eyes water and started to whine and I caved and picked him up again. Only to have him throw his toy on the ground AGAIN. I was being made a fool of by this cute little kid but I finally stopped! Oh kids.... :) They are so silly.

Laura and I went back to the Nachmarkt, and got our fresh raviolis for dinner which included basil raviolis, prosciutto raviolis, quattro formaggi raviolis, ricotta and spinach raviolis, and one other kind that I can't remember. We also got up-sold and bought some amazing looking/smelling fresh pesto sauce!! I LOVE markets!!!! I need to live close to one. Then Laura found a shot glass and I was feeling much more productive than yesterday. We had one errand left to do - which was to go find patches for our sad pairs of jeans that are taking out their angst at us for being worn so often by ripping holes in themselves...rude of our jeans, I think. We found a wool store that Veronika told us would probably have patches, and they did. So many things crossed off of our little to-do list!

Veronika got home soon after we did, and the three of us headed out to a grocery store. We owed her a grocery trip to restock her kitchen after feeding us that feast a couple of days ago, and we needed some supplements to our dinner - ravioli and pesto was not a complete meal. It was great fun to go grocery shopping with Veronika! She has a large basket-type thing on wheels with a dog on it, and this device is named Michelle and it's what Veronika uses to carry groceries home. Very clever - finding ways to not use a car and walk every where! I love it.

At the grocery store, we got items for an anti-pasto plate designed by Veronika. She got half of a cantaloupe, freshly sliced prosciutto, freshly sliced ham, olives, sheep cheese, some extra raviolis, some rosemary bread sticks, some olive oil, and some other stuff too I think.

At home, she refused to let us help and once again whipped up a delightful 2 course meal. She decided to start us off with just the antipasto plate so that we would eat slower and have a longer, nice meal (told you! I love her!). Her antipasto plates were a beauty. The only drawback was that the store bought olives were not as good as the Naschmarkt olives I got a couple of days ago...so perhaps olives as well as beer, fries, waffles, chocolate, and cheese has also been ruined for me?! What a scary thought. But it was a delicious and rather filling appetizer course. Then she made our raviolis, as well as two other types of noodles, and was modifying some left over bolognaise sauce. So she had all four burners going while we sat watching in awe...Soon all of our noodles were ready and we had one type of noodles with her delicious bolognaise and the other types of raviolis and tortellini noodles with our fresh pesto sauce. The pesto was also a little too salty, but good and fresh nonetheless. She brought out a bottle of red wine and we stuffed ourselves on noodles. It was beautiful. I am going to miss eating with her!! It is so much fun.

After dinner, Veronika gave us directions to an Heuriger, which means "this year's wine." Heurigers are usually located on the outskirts of the city because they are connected to vineyards. They serve really cheap, really good wine and have lots of outside seating. They are usually frequented more in the warmer months but one of the Heurigers that Veronika really likes was already open. Veronika didn't feel like coming out with us though, so Laura and I set off to find it ourselves. It wasn't too difficult to find...but the address was 222-224, and we found 227, and 225, and then we found 221 a little farther down. In between 221 and 225 was a huge empty lot filled with dirt. Pretty funny - we were like, did we do something terribly wrong?! Could it really just be a dirt pile all of a sudden...? But then we saw it down the street a little farther.

It was still very pleasant weather to sit outside. They had a well lit, mostly empty courtyard where I enjoyed a glass of red wine while Laura sipped on white wine. We sat there for probably an hour and a half or two and had a really great conversation about all kinds of things. It was a wonderful evening.

Back at Veronika's flat we ironed on our patches so that we will be able to wear real pants again tomorrow! How exciting!


Quotes:
Hilary: "What are you doing to your bolognaise sauce?"
Veronika: "Putting garlic in it, then maybe some salt...It's like a pimped bolognaise."
Hahahaha

"Two-two-two, to two-two-FOUR!" - Our chant that we made up while looking for the Heuriger.

Accomplishments:
Had a real American breakfast!
Found patches for our pants.

Travel Tip:
Bringing patches just in case you get rips and holes is probably easier than trying to find wool shops in foreign countries.


And that was about the extent of today...we officially have done everything on our Vienna list except for go to that D1 Pakistani restaurant and get ice cream at one of the places Veronika recommended to us. Looks like that's our plan for tomorrow! Food food food. That is all we do. Really.