Italian take #2

Yesterday afternoon, we arrived in Charleston.  In an effort to save $$$, I booked us a studio apartment rather than staying in a hotel in the historic district.  This saved us about $400, but we are about 1-2 miles out from most of the restaurants and sightseeing we want to do.  I think the savings offsets the distance, plus with all the eating we’re doing the more walking the better!

We have a full kitchen, washer dryer, and nice dining area too:

While Jarrod was in Belgium he said all he wanted was some decent Italian food, and there was none to be found near his worksite.  So, I grudgingly complied with his request to get Italian for the second night in a row….  😉 Just kidding–Italian is my fav too!

After some googling, we decided to go to Bocci’s in Historic Charleston because their menu had a lot of different dishes we had never tried.

Typically, when I go to the store to buy wine I end up with Cabernet about 90% of the time.  So in an effort to keep trying new things we went with Bocci’s special wine of the night:

This wine was FANTASTIC!  I’m so glad the waitress recommended it.  It was full bodied and had a great spice to it.

For the appetizer, we really REALLY wanted to order the bruschetta….  But we decided to push ourselves outside our tomato-basil-cheesy-bread-goodness comfort zone and instead ordered the Arancini.  The arancini is an arborio rice ball made with sausage, parmesan, ricotta and roasted red peppers, fried to golden brown and served with marinara sauce:

And it was absolutely delicious!

The ambiance of the restaurant was fantastic.  It was low lit, and had a series of small rooms with sporadic tables of all shapes and sizes.  It reminded me of restaurants I visited in Europe back in college, especially with the huge doors that opened up to the outdoors.

For our main entre, we went with the Chicken Conchiglia:  Large pasta shells stuffed with chicken, three cheese mix, and herbs, topped with tomato basil sauce and baked:

These were so tasty — and super filling!  We ended up brining 3 of the 5 shells home with us.  I think we might make them into sandwiches later today 😀

Charleston has so much character (and so much humidity 😉 ). 

Since I’ve been gone, two of my friends from home have decided to try out overnight oats (and send me pictures)!  I think they miss me 🙂

Tim tried oats + almond milk + cinnamon + brown sugar + banana + peanut butter:

In his words they were: “mmmm OMG perfect!”

Jessie decided to try oats + almond milk + peanut butter + cinnamon + brown sugar + strawberries + blueberries:

In her words:  “OMGGGGG.  These rocks my socksssss”

😀 So if you haven’t tried them based on my raving, now you have two additional ravers to back up my love for overnight oats!  I think that’s the first thing I’m going to eat when I get home!

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