A Birthday and Dinner!!

Cookie Dough ice cream cake from Cold Stone

What a great birthday it was!! Since it fell on a working day,we decided to postpone the dinner for a weekend. I was pleasantly surprised when a friend dropped by in the evening with a card(he,he,he) and a little gift to boot!! Then,arrived the hubby with a Cookie dough ice cream cake from Cold Stone.

Pastini, Corvallis

For the weekend dinner,I picked Pastini Pastarias (oh yes,my love for Italian food won hands-down)a local Oregon chain of restaurants. It's a nice little place with a very comforting ambiance.
For starters we ordered the Scampi Pastini which is Shrimp sauteed in garlic, butter,sherry and lemon served with ciabatta bread.

Starters:Scampi Pastini

Hubby decided to order the Five cheese lasagna with meat sauce which was quite nice(though I'm sure he would have liked a bigger portion).

Five Cheese Lasagna With Meat Sauce

I simply could not resist ordering what was called the Nonna's Sunday Supper which was described as comfort food in the menu. It consisted of creamy Maccheroni and Cheese topped with meaty bolognese sauce. No wonder it's under the category of "comfort food"-I loved it and the portions size was so large (even though jr nibbled it with me)that we had to parcel it and take it home.

Nonna's Sunday Supper

By the end of it I was too stuffed to try out their tempting dessert menu (we also had half the sinful cake sitting in the freezer,and I just cannot run the extra mile to burn out any extra calories).

Like these weren't enough to make a memorable birthday,I got a big box of goodies from my brother(he's been doing this for almost 9 years now,even when I was back in India).

The goodie basket from my bro

Snow capped mountains to Painted Hills-all in a day!

The first glimpse of Mt.Bachelor

The weather report said that it was going to be a sunny Saturday,so we decided to spend the day doing some local sighseeing. We experienced both extremes in the weather-that too all in one day. We had decided to go skiing at Mt Bachelor -where we had fun in the snow. Then we drove to the Painted Hills which was exactly the opposite-extremely hot!!

Skiing on Mt.Bachelor

Painted Hills

As you can see,both the places were breathtakingly beautiful!! The only disappointment was that I could not check out the New York City Sub Shop in Bend(which is on the way) that was highly recommended by Kim in her blog The Ungourmet. We left home by 6am,and by the time we reached the sub shop it was 9am and they had a sign board which said they open only at 10!! Thoroughly disappointed, we decided to have breakfast up in the mountains.So,we ended up eating some unhealthy stuff up at Mt.Bachelor,which I'd rather not talk about. On our way back we had to pass through Bend again,but this time the rest of the gang didn't want to try out subs for dinner. We chose to eat at Carino's (as they don't have a branch here in Corvallis).

Bread with olive oil

Penne Alfredo(vegetarian)

Stuffed Vegetable RigatoniMeatball fettuccine in Alfredo sauceChicken Marsala

I had heard so much about 'Chicken Marsala" that I had to try it. The hubby decided to make his own pasta-so ordered the meat balls in Alfredo sauce!! Our friends were vegetarians and they ordered for the Penne Alfredo and the Stuffed Vegetable Rigatoni.
The Stuffed Vegetable Rigatoni was the best among the lot. Since it was the first time I tried "Chicken Marsala" I can't compare it, all I can say was either I was expecting something else or that I've eaten better Italian dishes. On the whole a very filling dinner-we had to pack some of the "chicken marsala" and had it for lunch on Sunday.
Question: What is your favorite weekend getaway place?

Broken Yolk (Corvallis,OR)

Yee-Haa (South of the border) Skillet

Spanish Omelette

Pancakes with strawberries and blueberries

Purple Cow

We first went to this restaurant about a year ago and instantly fell in love with it-who wouldn't!We went there again this saturday and this is what we had:
The Hubby-(the usual)Spanish Omelet
The Brat- Pancakes with strawberries,blueberries and fresh cream.
Me-I decided to try the Yee-Haa (the name sounded so interesting).
To drink we decided to share the Purple Cow between the three of us-no,we aren't cheap.It's just that we can never finish our orders whenever we order something to drink individually. The Purple Cow is grape juice(that's why 'purple') and had two scoops of ice cream,and was quite nice.
The brunch on the whole was great-we managed to finish almost everything. The brat picked and ate only the fruits,so we had to pack the pancakes and take it home.They have a homemade strawberry jam which was really awesome.
Broken Yolk: http://www.broken-yolk.com/index.html