Festivals and Punkins

Gin and Juice. Clever, no?

Pizza is the perfect food. You’ve got bread in the crust, cheese for dairy, tomato sauce for a vegetable, and any kind of meat you want. It covers all the bases. The meatball was flying in to visit for the weekend, and her plane was supposed to land at 9:10 Thursday night. The airport is 20 minutes away; the pizza place by my house closes at 10, so I figured we’d make it in time to pick up the ziti-and-sausage pizza that had our names on it. A half hour-delay to her flight from Charlotte later, and we were out of luck on the pizza front and had to scramble. What’s the next best thing, you ask? Hit Target and get two packs of Bagel Bites (cheese and pepperoni, obviously) for us and Cheddar Bunnies for her. Don’t worry, the quality of food improved significantly as the weekend went on.

I met Gina and her good friend from home for lunch Friday afternoon; Jen goes to University of Delaware and made the short drive to Baltimore. You wouldn’t be surprised to know we got pizza at a place near my office in Harbor East, and Jen and Gina went off to do such things as shop and watch Vines for hours until I left work. Despite being from the same hometown in Jersey, Jen’s accent is much more pleasing on the ear than Gina’s – that is to say, Jen doesn’t have one. Perfect. The Orioles had just completed a huge comeback win in Game 2 of their series against Detroit, so the streets were packed with fans leaving Camden Yards in their most flattering shades of orange.

After Jen left town, Gina and I walked to dinner at a neighborhood tavern called Annabel Lee. It was packed, so we couldn’t get a table, but our seats at the corner of the bar provided prime opportunities to people-watch, one of our favorite pastimes. There was the guy as short as a jockey but as big as Ronnie from Jersey Shore on a date with a woman who ordered martinis and sauvignon blanc. There was the guy who looked a typical lax bro/hockey player from Canada with his hair slicked back on what had to have been a first date with a lovely blonde. After the customary “I’ll pay half” “No no no, I got it” “Are you sure?” “Yep” byplay, they left to continue their evening. Despite going to school in South Carolina, Gina has never had grits, and I persuaded her to try them with poached egg and duck, and some sort of wine. Safe to say it was a good decision. I got Shiner Oktoberfest with Cajun alfredo with asparagus, which in itself was a big move for me as I’m a child and don’t exactly love vegetables. Also turned out to be an excellent decision. We had plans to check out the Fells Point Festival downtown, but walking back home on what turned into a rainy night discouraged those quickly. Instead, we watched Sherlock on Netflix and fell asleep by 10. We’re wild, I know.

Fredericksburg

Saturday was meet-the-parents day, and it went as well as one could hope. I was born in New Jersey and lived there, in the same town as Gina, until my family moved to Virginia when I was in kindergarten. Bye-bye, Saint Veronica’s (or as I apparently called it, Saint Harmonicas). This gave Gina and my mom plenty of things to talk about as she had spent the majority of her life in Jersey as well. My dad and I performed the manly task of changing the taillight in my car while much of this was going on, and after watching a bit of soccer and some more getting-to-know-you that included tales from my childhood and looking at baby pictures, we headed for downtown Fredericksburg.

Fredericksburg is a small town, with not a ton going on over an average weekend, but it’s still home and I wanted to show it off. I showed Gina my high school (TCB, amIright?) and we walked around the campus of the local university. It was a picturesque fall day, sun shining and in the sixties. When we parked downtown to walk around some more, we heard a cacophony of noise and music. Suffice it to say that that isn’t normal for Fredericksburg. As we headed towards it and began to see streets that were blocked off, it was clear something big was going on. Oktoberfest had arrived, and I’m pretty sure Fredericksburg’s entire population was in attendance. The sights and smells were glorious. The beer was flowing, sausages were grilling, and the sidewalks were packed. Restaurants were filled to the brim. We stumbled upon a bookstore I’d never heard of, and as both of us enjoy reading passionately, we stopped in and browsed contentedly. After a quick lunch and ice cream (because who can resist ice cream, honestly?), it was time for the surprise of the weekend.

I grew up going on field trips to Belvedere Plantation, just outside Fredericksburg, but didn’t

Got a punkin!

remember too much about it other than it had a barn, animals, and a corn maze. Most notably, though, it has a pumpkin patch, and I thought that’d be an entertaining way to spend the afternoon. I was right, even though we were passed repeatedly by little children in the maze and couldn’t, for the life of us, figure out how to get to the end. If you put us in the wilderness, you could probably count on one hand the amount of hours it would take for us to reach our demises. It was embarrassing. We pedaled these push-cart contraptions around a track, watched goats fight each other and defecate, saw a pig bury its head in mulch and finally emerge with the dirtiest face you’ll ever see, which is saying something for a pig, watched other pigs race at Swine Speedway, and competed in an arcade-style game shooting basketballs and throwing footballs and baseballs through a hole on the other side. The meatball turned out to be a meatballer. She was a champ. We found a 13-pound pumpkin after a hayride that seemingly took an eternity. We watched a guy have 7 pumpkins stacked on him because all-you-can-carry pumpkins are $29.99 instead of paying 69 cents per pound for a pumpkin. It was the perfect day, in that gross, couple-y way.

Back to Baltimore

#foodporn

We spent Sunday in Baltimore and began it the only way we know – by eating. Brunch at Langermann’s was undoubtedly one of the best meals either of us have ever had – unlimited bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy, and Caesar salad with corn, followed by the main course of poached eggs in hollandaise sauce on an English muffin. Gina got hers with Chesapeake crab cake, I had mine with smoked salmon. No mimosa for me, thanks. Our waitress brought the check before we got the eggs, and after a panicked text to Gina’s friend Julie, the miscommunication was worked out and all was right with the world. Our food comas resulted in a short nap while watching football, before heading out to walk the harbor before it was time to drive Gina back to the airport. As we strolled, we again saw streets blocked off and heard loud music, so we went to explore. It was the Fells Point Festival we had wanted to go to Friday night. Gina, the doll that she is, bought a snocone for me and I got her lemonade. The couple that feeds together stays together. 

In two weekends, I’ll make my second trip of the fall to Columbia, where I’ll finally get to attend my first-ever college football game when South Carolina hosts Furman. My personal battle with Columbia is ongoing, as it currently leads me 2-0, but with two more trips scheduled in 2014, I’m determined to even the scoreline.