The Urban Garden Cook

I am on a short road trip with my friend and my husband driving from El Paso to Austin Texas.  As always on our trips, high on the priority list are good places to stay, eat and shop, though not always in that order.  We used El Paso as an overnight place before hitting the road relatively early ……going straight onto the I-10 we drove for about 2 hours before hitting a small town called Van Horn.  Other than being a good two hour driving stop, it is also home to Chuy’s which according to lore and a heck of a lot of posters in the restaurant is a favourite of John Madden’s.  Now I had no idea who he is, but according to the husband he is big deal in American Football and has a whole computer game designed around him.  Well there you go…….. The food was good and was what I can only suppose (as I haven’t tried enough of it yet) genuine Mexican fare.  We all had burritos that were encased in soft floury tortillas and filled with tasty refried beans and ground meat.  It was very welcome after the 2 hour drive, but was really just a good stopping off place and not much more than this, unless of course you are a big fan of US team sports or John Madden and then I can see why you might want to make the pilgrimage.   Next en route was the truly bizarre Prada Marfa.  I know this has been Instagram to death but it is still such a surreal sight to see.  You are literally driving through the desert and there it is.  The guys who originally designed apparently wanted to comment on consumerism in the 21st century.  That part was lost on me as I just thought how bonkers but also how delightful.   Next stop Marfa …..

Myosotis Arvensis is the Greek name of the lovely blue flower ‘forget me not’, an appropriate name for a wine we won’t forget for a while! As you can see from my previous post, we are big fans of Claire’s wine.  I like her natural style of wine making, which is all about the terroir and grape.  One again the fruit is to the fore here and you get a real sense of cherries and slightly smoked vanilla flavours. The relatively low alcohol percentage of 12.5%, means that you can enjoy drinking the wine with food, rather than becoming so drunk that you forget what you are drinking really quickly!  We tried it with a lovely apricot and pork pate on walnut bread and it complemented the flavours really well.

Hautes Cotes de Nuits isn’t the sexiest part of Burgundy and is often overlooked as it contains no premier crus.  But you overlook this AOC at your peril as the wines can offer an easy drinking taste of the Côte d’Or at a decent price. Magny-Les-Villers (where Naudin is based) is a pretty village and a good place from which to explore the appellation.

Just a few practical things – W e purchased this wine from http://www.mesbourgognes-beaune.com/

It cost us around 25 euros.

It was a bank holiday Monday and the weather was ok.  So we set off to East London for a short foodie walk.  Taking the overground to Haggerston we walked down to the Regents Canal  and started with breakfast at The Proud Archivist.  A delicious selection of pastries or inventive breakfast eggs are available.  Then followed the canal down towards London Fields.  We came off the canal at Broadway Market and walked up this lovely foodie street towards London Fields.  We stopped at Coffee and Wine and enjoyed the street view whilst sipping coffee.  The cake selection looked good too but we wanted to keep room for lunch.  Walking across London Fields, the weather wasn’t quite good enough for hoards to be out in the park but even so there was a nice buzz about the place.  From leaving  London a Fields we followed the signs towards Victoria Park and finished off with lunch at the People’s Park Tavern.  A BBQ was going full pelt and with lots of good wine by the glass and delicious meat veggie options from the barbie not sure what more you could want from a bank holiday Monday!