Hello from the road on the way to North Carolina! Matt and I are headed down to Chapel Hill for the weekend because one of my grad school friends is getting married tomorrow in Raleigh. I can’t wait to be back in our old stomping grounds and to see my grad school BFFs!
I started my Friday with another morning swim – loving swimming lately as cross training/recovery from all the running I’ve been doing! I swam for 40 minutes, alternating freestyle, breast stroke, and backstroke as per usual. I spent the rest of the morning catching up on emails and AnneTheRD client work before making a quick lunch prior to hitting the road.
We had a good amount of produce that I wanted to use up before leaving, so I made us some big salads. We also enjoyed some crackers and hummus on the side!
For the salads, I started with some baby spinach, then added cherry tomatoes, string beans, mushrooms, avocado, goat cheese, and some chopped fresh herbs from our apartment railing garden boxes!
Our basil, parsley, and dill are kicking butt. I’m so proud. 😉 I’ve loved having them on hand to throw into things – we can hardly use them fast enough they’re growing so quickly! Fresh chopped herbs are really good in salads, so if you’ve never tried it, do it! I put some of all three in today!
As for dressing, I added some salt and pepper and then a drizzle each of lemon olive oil and garlic cilantro balsamic vinegar (as awesome as it sounds).
I picked those gems up at a cool local store I discovered earlier this week: Ah love Oil & Vinegar in the Mosaic District in Fairfax/Merrifield, VA.
A few weeks ago, the PR team from the company that owns both the Mosaic District in VA and Union Market in DC (super awesome if you’ve never been) reached out to me about checking out Mosaic, so when I found myself nearby the area earlier this week running errands, I stopped in to explore.
My first impression was very positive because there was free parking, and all the shops were in a nice walkable area. Win! I love walkable shopping areas. Especially when they feature a ton of my favorite stores!
My first stop was the olive oil & vinegar shop, which looked too cool to pass by! I couldn’t believe how many flavors of oil & vinegar they had. And you could taste them all if you wanted. 🙂
Next time I need to pick up that bacon olive oil…
I ended up buying the lemon olive oil and garlic cilantro vinegar you see above, plus a green apple white balsamic that sounded fun. Yum!
From there, I wandered around checking out the other stores & restaurants. I was happy to see a BUNCH of old favorites: Sweetgreen, Anthropologie, Le Pain Quotidien, CAVA Mezze Grill (we frequent the one in Clarendon, VA), New Balance, Dolcezza (their gelato & coffee rock), Matchbox (love their pizza), and FreshBikes, to name a few. Plus some cool places that were new to me – Red Apron Butcher (awesome sounding sandwiches and fresh meat) and a cute boutique named Lou Lou.
I was also REALLY pumped to see that a True Food Kitchen is coming soon! I went to this place out in Santa Monica, CA and it’s AMAZING – as of now it’s only on the west coast and I had no idea they would be building one in VA! Cool!
While exploring, I ended up popping into South Moon Under, another old fave (I picked up a dress for the wedding this weekend as well as the blue skirt I shared a picture of on my Instagram – super on sale!), and Langford Market, which is a really cute and reasonably priced boutique. They had a buy 2 get 2 free thing going on for the whole store, so I picked up two belts and two long necklaces for less than $40 total – win!
My last stop on the adventure was Mom’s Organic Market, which I LOVED – I’d never been to one before! It reminded me of my old favorite Weaver Street Market Coop in Chapel Hill. 🙂
Per the advice of an Instagram follower, I got one of their fresh pressed juices to go. Loved that you could pick your own ingredients! I got carrot, beet, spinach, kale, and parsley. It was deeeelicious. The carrot makes it sweet! 🙂
In addition to the great shop and restaurant line up, the Mosaic District also has a movie theater and all sorts of cool free events – like outdoor yoga, films in the park, and more. I will most certainly be back – excited to have discovered this cool area!
And now – for an awesome giveaway for those of you in the DC area!
My friends at Mosaic gave me a VISA gift card to use towards exploring their area, and they want to give one to a couple of you guys, too! Two lucky fANNEtastic food greater D.C. metropolitan area readers will be selected to each win a $50 VISA gift card to help fund their adventures in the Mosaic District.
To enter, leave a comment saying what you would use your $50 gift card for in the Mosaic District!
Other additional optional entries:
Follow fANNEtastic food on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. Then come back and leave one overall comment saying you did so.Follow the Mosaic District on Facebook and Twitter, then leave one overall comment saying you did so.
I’ll randomly select the winners on Monday. Good luck!
This giveaway is now closed. Thank you to all who entered!
