While we were on our trip, we generally ate at fast food joints on the road for convenience and speed, but we relied on Google for suggestions on local places to try after we had stopped for the day. It never steered us wrong.

In Mansfield, Ohio, we had supper at Athena Greek Restaurant.

SO GOOD! We got a two-person appetizer platter, a spanakopita, and a tyropita. We stuffed ourselves, and still had lettuce, feta, and I don’t know what left over. We asked for a go box and scraped all the leftovers into it and had the leftovers the next day as a HUGE salad. Oh, we also each got a baklava diamond, and had that for breakfast the next day. Best Mediterranean food either of us had ever had.

In Corning, New York, we hit Carey’s Brew House twice. They have about a billion beers on tap.

If we hadn’t had a dinner date with a college friend of Sara’s, we would have eaten there. The food smelled AMAZING.

We went to Elmira, New York, and were disappointed in the sight we went to see, but we ate at Boricana, a Puerto Rican/Dominican fusion restaurant. We split a chicken stew and each got a couple of appetizers. The stew was mind-blowingly delicious, although it wasn’t what Americans would call stew; it was stewed bone-in chicken in a clear broth but WICKEDLY good. Our favorite thing, though, was the relleno de papa, stuffed with cheese. OMG. I am definitely going to try making these.

Back in Corning, we ate at Nine Elephants Thai food.

Ten out of ten.

Home, and Sara took me to Louisville to eat at one of her favorite local restaurants, Dragon King’s Daughter, another fusion restaurant, this one of Asian and Tex-Mex.

It’s mid-October, so it’s time to break out the Halloween manis.

Everything this week was from Maniology. The yellow/orange base color is Papaya; the sparkly black is Black Majick. The black stamping polish is Straight Up Black, and the white stamping polish is Bam! White. The plates are M245 and M071.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: A favorite local restaurant.

MA