Old Town Draught House (Greensboro NC)

For some reason, I really like Old Town. Maybe it’s because I was never a student at UNCG, so it wasn’t the automatic pre- or post-anything meeting spot. Maybe it’s because I had my first Natty Greene’s beer there. Maybe it’s because people tend to put soul and pop on the juke box instead of metal. Maybe it’s because I actually find the chirping of the traffic light soothing. In any case, it is my preferred neighborhood restaurant.

Old Town is located on Spring Garden on the UNCG campus. Old Town is a bar and grill with a decent menu and a decent beer selection. They always have a $2 beer special and I always order the veggie pita.

Gratefulfest Pitas

Before Glenn and I moved to Greensboro, we came down to look for apartments. On our way back to Chicago, we drove through Ohio to see Glenn’s brother’s band play at a festival. It was a disaster. We got lost on the way and missed the band’s set. When we tried to leave the festival, the breaks went out in the van, we wound up spending the night in a motel, having the van towed 50 miles to the only break shop open on a Sunday… It was a disaster. However, we had these pitas stuffed with spinach, shitake mushrooms, craisins, blue cheese, and poppy seed dressing. They were amazing. Now we refer to any sweet and savory salad in a pita as a “Greatfulfest Pita.”

You know what these pictures are? This is me eating a stuffed pita without the pita breaking in half. Drizzle your pita with olive oil, toast in a skillet, then repeat on the other side. This seems to solve the problem of the broken pita. Thanks, Julie, for the suggestion.

Salad #69

If you don’t like tons of garlic or making things from scratch, you probably won’t like Mark Bittman (aka the Minimalist). I love Mark Bittman. So, when Glenn sent me a link to 101 Simple Salads for the Season, I spent the next hour reading every single salad. I wrote the following salads down on a post it: 10, 12, 16, 21, 25, 31, 32, 41, 62, 69, 70, 77, 82, 95, and 96. Last night, we made number 69. It was a perfect eat-in-front-of-the-fan-because-it’s-90-degrees-in-here kind of meal.

We pretty much stuck to the instructions with a few exceptions. We were out of peanut oil, so we sauted the shrimp in olive oil (with tons of ginger, about equal to four shrimp) and it worked out fine. To add a little extra flavor, we drizzled some sesame oil over the salad with the lime juice. Our romaine was a little wimpy, thanks to the exceptional produce department over at Harris Teeter, but I won’t go on and on about that. Also, any time I try to fill a pita, it breaks in half. I switched from the pocket pitas to the mediterranian style, which was an improvement, but still not perfect. If street vendors and chain restaraunts can make it work, why can’t I?