Now that was an adventure. We set out for Frederick at 4PM yesterday, and didn’t get in town until almost 7:30! The roads were horrendous last night . My friends and I had booked a hotel room anyway since Frederick is kind of our of the way and we wanted  to avoid any drinking and driving - given our travel time, thank GOD we did!

By the time we did get into town, we were more than ready to get the fun underway and drank a few bottles of champagne before heading out to dinner. We were in much better spirits after that!

I looked into a bunch of places to eat while we were in town, but as soon as I saw  the menu for Acacia I knew that’s where I wanted to go. Luckily my friends are agreeable .

We started dinner with a lovely glass of malbec and ”a gift from the kitchen” – tuna with heart of palm and black truffle salt.  Black truffle salt, I love you.

And then some lavash.

For our first course, my friend Abby and I shared the Lobster Monte Cristo - butter poached maine lobster on cardamom scented french toast topped with fontina cream and dorsey’s crispy country ham.

I loved this because it was so different – I’ve never had anything like it before. The lobster was deliciously tender and the ham was really light and crispy which made for an awesome balance of textures.

And then came the main:

Kung Pao, which is not on the online menu but basically a traditional chicken/peanut kung pao with tempura lobster and broccolini. The lobster was amazing and I loved the tempura preparation especially. The rest was good, but nothing out of the ordinary which was kind of a shame.

 All in all, a very good meal. And the service was so sweet. The heavy snow plus our late arrival meant we were among very few other diners and they really gave us VIP treatment!

And then we headed across the street to meet up with everyone for Anna’s birthday celebration. It was such a shame it snowed so much because it meant a lot of people couldn’t make it. But our little group managed to have plenty of fun anyway!

So! I need to get my act together this upcoming week. I think my newly very busy schedule is going to take some getting used to and my time management hasn’t been the best this week. I think I’ll go write myself out a little look-ahead agenda now .

See you for Productive Monday!

- Beth