This Year’s Day of No Cooking

Posted on by Laura & Brett

Brett and I will mark our 44th anniversary at the end of this month and we’ll once again celebrate with our traditional Day of No Cooking.

Our anniversary falls on a Thursday this year, but we will be dining out two days later, on Saturday, so that our daughter-in-law and grandkids can watch Kaipo for the day.

Choosing where to eat around here was an interesting exercise because we live in an area I call “Restaurant Overload.” Seriously, there are more restaurants per square inch here than I’ve ever encountered, anywhere. Many of them are national chain or franchise eateries, which we mostly tend to avoid, so it took us a little more time than usual to come up with our choices for this year.

We’ve been told we have to order the Bonuts at Biscuit Love, deep fried biscuit dough topped with lemon marscapone and sitting on a bed of blueberry compote.

Breakfast will be at Biscuit Love because . . . we love biscuits (and we’ve been told over and over that we should go)! Biscuit Love is a local, family-owned chain with three locations in the Nashville area and they’re now expanding into Alabama. We love, love, love fresh biscuits with sausage gravy and can’t wait to try them at this place.

No one does lettuce wraps like P.F. Chang’s.

We sort of surprised ourselves with our choice for lunch: P.F. Chang’s. We were planning to avoid chains but drove by a P.F. Chang’s the other day and agreed some of their tasty chicken lettuce wraps and noodles would make a great mid-day meal!

Persia’s mixed tandoori grill looks fantastic! It reminds us of meals in India, especially with the addition of some samosas and an order of naan.

Dinner will be at an Indian restaurant: Persis Biryani Indian Grill. We had a chance to look at their extensive menu a little while ago and decided then and there that’s where we wanted to have dinner on our anniversary.

We are going to budget $120 for the day and see how we do as we’ve enjoyed having a spending challenge in the past. We plan to share dishes this year to help keep costs down, and think if we’re careful and refrain from ordering alcohol and desserts we’ll make it. We’ll have our cocktails and dessert at home which will help us save.

It should be a fun day once again, and as before, the perfect way to celebrate our special day. Happy anniversary to us!

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Published by Laura & Brett

Slow traveling the world with a sense of adventure!

26 thoughts on “This Year’s Day of No Cooking”

  1. It sounds like a wonderful day. We have Biscuit Love on our radar for a future trip to Nashville. It sounds like a great way to celebrate!

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  2. Hi and Happy Upcoming Anniversary! I’ve really enjoyed your prior posts on this, from the various places you’ve been in when it occurred. So fun to be exposed to a variety of foods vicariously in this way!

    I’m also super curious how your visit to PF Changs goes, given our recent visit, thanks to someone giving us a gift card to go there. I have to say we were both shocked at how generic and blah we found the food to be, including the lettuce wraps, which we’d previously loved. Which then begs the questions – have we changed over the years due to the preponderance of truly awesome food that now exists (vs. back in the day, when nice dining meant PF Changs, Olive Garden, Claim Jumpers, etc.), or has the establishment downgraded its product quality to remain affordable and appealing to the masses?

    Either way, I very much look forward to your post-Anniversary dining post as it’s always such fun to read!

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    1. Now you’ve gotten me curious about what we’ll find at P.F. Changs! It’s been ages since the last time we were there. Hopefully we won’t be disappointed. In the past, they always seemed to be above chains but that may be different now (I’ve never eaten at Olive Garden or Claim Jumper, but we did try The Cheesecake Factory once and found it disappointing).

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  3. You can buy PF Changs discounted at a lot of places (check Costco, as well), so might be an option to drive the price down. Our 17 year old adores PF Changs, so we sometimes indulge him. I find it to be very pricey, but we go the gift card route, which helps a bit.

    Happy anniversary!

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    1. Good idea about checking for a P.F. Chang’s discount. We’re stopping at Costco tomorrow so I’ll look there. I don’t know whether we’ll get one or two dishes there – restaurant portions are typically huge for us so we share.

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    1. Thank you, Carol! We’re looking forward to our day out (actual anniversary is tomorrow). It’s turned into a very fun way to celebrate our special day.

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  10. We are celebrating our anniversary with a trip to Nashville and we are going to have to try Biscuit Love, plus it’s within walking distance of our hotel. We also love hot chicken so I’d love any recommendations of places you’ve heard are good. Persis Biryani Indian Grill also looks delicious. So much good food, so little time! We’re seeing Nickel Creek at the Ryman and I am so excited!

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    1. I wish we had time to meet up! Your trip sounds absolutely wonderful though. I din’t know about hot chicken – tried it just once (hot on the lower end of the scale) but don’t know where it came from as one of our daughters had bought it when they were here for Christmas. I’d have it again though – it was good!

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      1. I know, I was thinking it would be super fun to meet up but, unfortunately, it’ll be a quick trip. Our son is staying here so it’ll be a quick trip in for the concert and not much else. But I hope that we can plan another trip this summer. Nashville is such a cool area and there’s lots to explore. I also love seeing the different places you’ve visited. I know Mammoth Cave was booked over spring break but I highly recommend it. We went during the off-season and it was so cool to explore.

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  11. I want to try Biscuit Love when I get towards that way again. Sounds great and last fall when I was in Boston with all the restaurants to chose I ended up at PF as I was too tired to walk another step (near my hotel) and it was delish! Hadn’t been to one in years. But I’m probably getting old and staid as I also was then near China town and went at other times twice to two places there, one I think was Dumpling Cafe (which had great reviews and was great but I think my taste has become too Americanized ha!)

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    1. We’ve got our fingers crossed that P.F. Chang’s tastes as good as it did in the past (at least the lettuce wraps). We’re still exploring ethnic option here and hear about and see lots of Indian restaurants but most of the Asian and Mexican places are chains (so they cook for American tastes). We think we’ll do best sticking to places that do southern cooking, and there are lots of those).

      There will be a review of Biscuit Love!

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    1. We think it will be fun! We’ll have a cocktail at home before heading out to dinner, and have dessert at home at the end of the evening. Haven’t figured out what that will be yet but something I can make myself.

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