PICKLED WATERMELON RIND & CLOSET ENVY in WILLIAMSBURG

Another weekend, another road trip.

Target: Williamsburg VA, The White House Inn (see pic to the right --the Roosevelt room rocks!)

I haven't been down this way since I was a little girl. (Yup, forever mistaken for a boy.) I distinctly remember my family piling into my Dad's Volkswagen Rabbit. The price of gas was as high as I could remember and for years afterr this trip down to Virginia Beach, I would hear my folks bragging about how we made it from "north Jersey to Virginia Beach on one tank of gas!" (It was a diesel.)

The other strong memory I have about that trip was trying Peanut Soup. I knew it was in Colonial Williamsburg, but beyond that, I didn't remember the restaurant. So I had a mini-mission to find that Peanut Soup.

(Side note, prior to this trip, Ben had heard me go on about how much I like peanut soup and had actually made some for me from a Colonial Williamsburg cook book that one of our 9am show guests had given to me. It came out SUPURB.)

In the video below, we came across the King's Arms Tavern. It was our shot at my childhood peanut soup...1982 never tasted so close!

What I loved about this restaurant was a few things. First, our server, Drand, was phenomenal. I used to wait tables. Two things would drive me nuts when working at the Park Ridge Diner: people who ordered any kind of ice cream sundae (took way too much time to make for little in tips) and people who shared dinner (I'm trying to make a living for crying out loud!) So when, Drand, learned that Ben and I were not terribly hungry and preferred to share a huge entree and salad, he didn't mind a bit. In fact, it almost seemed like he went out of the way to make us feel uber-comfortable. He was the best waiter to serve us dinner that we have had in a long time. Ben was careful to take "care" of him in the tip.

Secondly, we ate our dinner with other guests as it got dark out. And, in keeping with colonial times, we ate strictly by candle light. LOVE THAT! For the sake of poetic license, I like to re-tell the story as

"We cheerfully coaxed our corn relish onto our knives to the cadence of the fife player in the room."

Doesn't "fife" make it sound so much more colonial? Well, upon further debate with Ben, we decided that the fife player was, rather, a "recorder" player -- just like the same recorder I played in elementary school in the not-so-colonial-1980's. Sigh. Bygones. The video below has the audio of the recorder player and you can see just how dark it was, save for the lone candle on each table.

And here's another favorite: One of the things we got was an assortment of small dishes that were popular during colonial times: Ham Relish, Corn Relish, and

PICKLED WATERMELON RIND

????WHAT????

Yup, that's right. I have never been a melon fan. Period. When I eat cantaloupe, for example, it is usually with a fork full of pineapple (the pineapple drowns out the taste of the melon.) So the thought of eating the melon's RIND (of all things) and then PICKLED on top of that? My thought bubble was nothing shy of

YUCK-A-DOODLE-DO

Those colonial types...always "curing" their stuff because refrigeration wasn't around. (Ben quickly purchased "The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook" the following day.) In that
book it says

"Portuguese traders took watermelons from Africa to
Europe before the first English voyages to the New World. Early settlers carried
watermelon seeds across the Atlantic. The fruit was growing in Virginia gardens
by 1615."

Hello? This pickled watermelon rind was DELISH! "Ben, promise me you'll make this!" Sure enough, he bought the cook book...

How could I possibly top off Pickled Watermelon Rind? Clearly the answer was to revisit the store who's glass enjoyed my nose pressed up against it the day before when I sadly realized it had closed for the day. No doubt, CLOSET ENVY could top off my Williamsburg visit AND my Amex card.

It didn't take long before I spotted this must have MARIA BIANCA NERO number. Cha-ching. How did I justify it? Of course, I positively have nothing to wear to Angie's wedding...not any more!

That's all for now...Next Stop: VIRGINIA BEACH

It looks like rain for Ben's marathon. Let's see if his meteorological girlfriend can intercede on his behalf. I've got Mother Nature's number on speed dial.