Living Our Dream: Eating Out

April 24, 2013

Eating Out - Again

Summerdale, AL - Events of Friday, April 19 to Monday, April 23, 2013

We love to go Panini Pete's in Fairhope for lunch, but we seldom get going early enough in the morning to have their beignets (pronounced ben-YAY) for breakfast. Since we had a few other errands to run anyway, we made up our minds to get up a little earlier on Friday and head to Panini Pete's for beignets before making our other stops.

Beinets are French-style, fried doughnuts made famous by the Café Du Monde in New Orleans. They are served smothered in powdered sugar. Panini Pete's takes the beignets a step further by also serving them with a wedge of lemon. When lemon juice is squeezed onto the beignets, it combines with the powdered sugar to create a hint of lemonade flavor. Panini Pete's beignets are also a little different from the ones at Café Du Monde in that they are more like an eclair without the filling than fried dough.

Beignets served with a wedge of lemon

Margery about to take a bite of her beignet

When eating beignets, it is advisable to wear light-colored clothing because you will inevitably spill powdered sugar on yourself and it will not be as noticeable if you are wearing a light color. Unfortunately, it was cool on Friday morning, and we both ended up wearing dark-colored blue jeans. The server give us extra napkins, so we managed to cover our laps well enough to avoid major embarrassment.

We did our cleaning chores around the rig on Saturday morning, and we relaxed the rest of the day. After church on Sunday, we watched the NASCAR race and relaxed some more.

Monday was Margery's birthday. We couldn't have the birthday girl slaving over a hot stove all day, so we made plans to go to Big Daddy's for lupper. We haven't had a chance to get together with Darrell and Judy this stop, so we sent them a quick e-mail and were pleased to find out they were free to join us.

Big Daddy's Grill is located on the Fish River only a few minutes from Rainbow Plantation.

Big Daddy's Grill

Big Daddy's has good sandwiches, burgers and seafood. Before 4:00 p.m., they have lunch specials that include several sandwiches for $6 and several types of seafood baskets for $9, which is a couple of dollars off the regular price. We all had the Philly beef and cheese, which is one of the $6 lunch specials. Darrell and Margery had onion rings for their side, and Judy and Paul had sweet potato fries.

Philly beef and cheese with sweet potato fries

Everything was delish! The beef is tender and full of flavor, and the sandwiches have just the right amount of onions and peppers. The sweet potato fries are extra-sweet, and they're tender on the inside and crispy on the outside. The onion rings were gigantic, and they had a nice crunch that didn't fade away even at the end of the meal.

It wasn't very sunny, but it was fairly warm and not too windy, so we chose a table out on the deck.

Darrell, Judy, Margery and Paul at Big Daddy's

The deck overlooks the Fish River. Paul liked the carving of a pelican that they had sitting on the railing.

Pelican carving overlooking the Fish River

Since it was the middle of the afternoon and the restaurant wasn't very crowded, we hung around a while chatting after we finished eating. Darrell and Judy used to live in Maine, and since we're headed to New England this summer, we picked their brains about places to stay and things to see.

We eventually headed back to Rainbow Plantation where we settled in for an evening of TV. We had picked up a piece of chocolate turtle cake from the bakery at Walmart the day before, and we shared the cake for dessert later in the evening to top off Margery's birthday celebration. The cake was chocolate and the chocolate icing was drizzled with caramel swirls and was topped with pecans and chocolate chips. It was yummy!

Chocolate turtle cake for dessert