Jamaicaway's coconut delight with green beans and sweet potatoes
Megan Seling: There's a reason why Jamaicaway was chosen as Best Place to be a Vegetarian Dining With Meat Eaters in this year's Best of Nashville issue: IT IS DELICIOUS AF. The small restaurant in the corner of the Nashville Farmers' Market is a rare gem of a place where both carnivores and herbivores can coincide, happily, peacefully. While several diners in line were drooling over the ox tail, lamb and jerk chicken, I giddily ordered my usual, the coconut delight. It's got hunks of fake meat and pieces of red and green bell peppers and onions smothered in a creamy and thick coconut gravy — it's the kind of meal that warms you up from the inside out and leaves you satiated for the rest of the day. It's never easy to choose the two sides that are included with the meal — they have a trough of mashed potatoes topped with melted cheese, rice and peas and some of the best collard greens you'll ever eat — but this time I went with a side of green beans and sweet potatoes (which were so sweet they should've been dessert). And of course a johnnycake — never forget your johnnycake.
Stephen Trageser: I went to visit my parents, who had smoked a turkey (not in my honor, it was their anniversary). It will come as no surprise to anyone who's had a smoked turkey that it was delicious — crisp on the outside, succulent and savory on the inside. They sent a bunch of it home with me, and I am very pleased. Now, what I wanna know is this: Have you ever put smoked turkey on a pizza? What sauce and cheese did you use? Is it too stoner-tastic to follow my instincts and use cranberry sauce?
Amanda Haggard: This weekend I had the pleasure of eating a cupcake made by my co-worker and Cupcake Queen Megan Seling, who makes the most insanely delicious baked treats in all the land. The best part of Megan's cupcakes is that they're kind of like unwrapping a gift. The outside is beautiful (duh, it's cake with beautiful frosting on top) but there's always something special inside. This one was a vanilla cupcake with (surprise!) a mint Oreo baked inside. And as if that wasn't enough sugar to send me into a coma for a few days, it was topped with a light and fluffy chocolate frosting and a piece of Dove dark chocolate swirled with mint. (P.S. My birthday is in February, Megan. I will be 30, and I'll need an extra surprise inside.)
Stephen Elliott: I just spent two years in a particular corner of Colorado with a disturbing dearth of Waffle Houses. So this weekend, I had the pleasure of clogging my arteries once again at the location in Gordonsville, along I-40 toward Knoxville. We all ate hashbrowns (mine: smothered, covered, chunked) and other breakfast-for-dinner delights. But the real joy came in the comfort of knowing that — after a day on the Caney Fork River when various food cravings came and went and a consensus ultimately formed around the need for WaHo — we would have no trouble finding a location of the ubiquitous diner, just a couple interstate exits from anywhere.
What did you have this weekend?
