Pickle Dog Tasting at The Joe!

As a birthday present—Good Lord, I’m still celebrating?—Charleston Pickle Company set up a very exciting pickle tasting event for my pickle crew and me. The Charleston RiverDogs baseball park is the only place in Charleston whose menu features a pickle dog. What’s a pickle dog?

A hot dog inside of a pickle.

Yup.

Amanda, Jess, and I (the original frickle tasters), along with my friend Nancy, went to The Joseph P. Riley park for some food fun. Honestly, we went in thinking that we were just there to try the pickle dogs and watch the game. It actually turned into a food extravaganza. Josh Gilkey, Director of Food & Beverage at The Joe, led us around the park to show us the many food options.

We started here:

Josh showed us that the park serves typical game food, but also healthier options like black bean burgers, pretzels & hummus, and veggie trays. He told us to sit tight while he went to gather some food. Look at the amazing view from the back of the park!

A few minutes later, a ridiculous amount of food was presented in front of us. We tried The Charleston Dog with coleslaw and okra.

The Dixie: a hot dog with coleslaw and pimiento cheese.

The Yankee: a hot dog with chow chow and spicy mustard.

The Elvis: a bun filled with a banana, peanut butter, and honey.

And the Pickle Dogs!!!

Ohhhhhhhhhh my gosh, we were in heaven. People walking by must have thought we were insane for standing around with all this food. We ended up sharing with some tourists from California – they loved The Elvis as much as we did. We also tried the black bean burger and everyone was very impressed with it. We’d all order this the next time we come back for a game.

Here’s Jess with The Dixie:

And Nancy with The Yankee:

Our second stop was The Nacho House where we tried two different types of nachos. The Vegetarian Nachos are topped with a Southwest bean mix, queso, sweet chili sauce, and pico de gallo.

The Chipotle Chicken Nachos are topped with chicken, a Southwest bean mix, queso, pico de gallo, and sweet chili sauce. I might be obsessed with these.

The last thing we tried was the Pig On A Stick. This is a foot long bacon-wrapped corn dog, or maybe we should call it a heart attack. Whatever the damage we did to our arteries was worth it.

After gorging ourselves with food, we played with the baseball cut out signs.

The amount of food we sampled was painful, but delicious. On the way home, Amanda texted me, “I feel like I need to throw up and die, but I would do it again in a second!!!”

And yes, we will be doing it all again. Stay tuned for Part II of The Charleston RiverDogs menu tasting…Burgers and DESSERT!!!

If there’s a pickle anywhere near ice cream, I’m going to lose it.

In a good way!

Humongous thanks to the Charleston Pickle Company for setting this up!!

Major thanks to Josh for showing us around and killing our diets!!

I <3 pickles too much.

The Weekend Is Only Half Over!!

Okay, it’s more than half over, but I’m in denial.

Friday: Matt and I, along with a few others, went to a Riverdogs game.

I stared at this guy’s butt for half the game.

While there, I had my first pickle dog! Eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhh! And a giant Coor’s Light. What a special moment this was.Stay tuned for later this week when I show you exactly what a pickle dog is. Trust me, this is going to be such a good post.

We also stayed for the fireworks! I like them now. They are kind of romantic when you are with the man who asks you to get married if, at 35 we are both still single. Hahahha yes, that’s Matt, my future ex husband.

After the game we went to Closed for Business for a beer. This is not one of my favorite bars, just fyi. Thankfully I was entertained by a Fashion Friday DON’T: tall socks with sneakers. Bad, bad, bad.Saturday: I spent the entire day with Amanda and we had soooo much fun! We met a bunch of our other girlfriends at the beach, and although it was almost 100*, we had a really nice, relaxing time. The ocean feels like bath water right now. Oh, July in the South.

After we left the beach, we wanted nothing else but frozen yogurt!! We decided to check out Lil Yo Yogurt, a part of Square Onion Too on Coleman Blvd. Inside a small house, Lil Yo Yogurt has four flavors of froyo:

I got strawberry & vanilla and Amanda got chocolate & vanilla. I guess we took the phrase “guilt-free vanilla” seriously, because we both got 8-ounce servings! Mmmm.

I was really proud of Amanda’s bowl – you couldn’t even see her yogurt under all the chocolately goodness! We both topped our froyo with these amazing homemade peanut butter chocolate bars…sooo good.

That evening,  we decided to continue our date with a wine tasting, a movie, and dinner. The wine tasting was at Winestyles in Town Center. For $5, we got to sample 5 different wines, shown here.

The “samples” were pretty generous. We both felt a bit tipsy walking into the movie. And that movie…we ended up seeing Midnight in Paris, a romantic comedy about an American couple in Paris. Amanda and I are both fans of Rachel McAdams and had read that the movie got a good rating, but it was just odd. I still don’t know if I understand what was going on. Has anyone else seen this? What did you think?

Our late dinner was at Mustard Seed, surprise surprise. Jonathan surprised us with an appetizer of cornmeal crusted green tomatoes with shrimp and a fresh pepper salsa. Ahhhh it was so good. So summery!

We decided to share two entrees. We started with the roasted chicken, blue cheese, & caramelized pear salad with raspberry port wine dressing. Drool. This is definitely their best salad.

Then we had the Pad Thai with shrimp and chicken. This has always been one of my favorite entrees.

Now I am at home reading this book I found in the Blackbaud “library.” Have y’all heard of this?

Just kidding.

But I really am reading it and will read the next three. All my friends read them while I was reading cookbooks I guess.

Happy Sunday!!

Weekend Recap: Baseball, Berries, Blogger Meet Up!

Friday: Courtesy of Blackbaud, I got box tickets to the Riverdogs baseball game. I invited some fabulous lady friends to go with me and we had a great time! Here we are with the mascot and a fellow Blackbaud employee.

Friday night games at the Joe Riley stadium have fireworks! Lucy and I both admitted to being afraid of them. Fireworks: love ‘em or hate ‘em?

After the game, Mariah and I went to Chai’s (bleh, this place sucks now), Midtown to scope out boys (there were none) and Trio to dance. It was our 2nd weekend in a row at Trio and our calves and feet were killing us this morning! At least I didn’t sprain my foot again.

Saturday: Mariah and I woke up starving – dancing revs your metabolism, no? We grabbed some lunch at Village Bakery and then went strawberry picking. Yep, I’m addicted to local strawberries. This time I only got 4 lbs. – the crops are definitely at the end of their season. Blackberries and blueberries are next! After picking, we spent a couple hours lounging by the pool in the awesome 87 degree weather. Such a perfect day!

Sunday: This morning I met up with Sarah from Charm of Charleston. Sarah hails from New York and I love reading her posts about adjusting to the South. One of my favorite things about her blog is the “Southern Thesaurus” where she writes about different Southern words that she hears. (Example: shopping cart vs. buggy) She has only lived here less than a year, but is adjusting quite well. I was super excited to meet her after talking about a meet up for a couple of months!

I had a great time chatting with her and hope we’ll meet up again soon! You should definitely check out her blog to learn more about her adventures in Charleston…I guarantee she’ll make you want to visit! And then you can come hang out with both of us. :)

How was your weekend? Hope everyone is having a wonderful Sunday! I am off to do some shopping, and this evening I’m going to dinner at High Cotton for the first time – yay!