After our final market day in Central Florida we headed south to Coral Springs, a bit north of Fort Lauderdale, to stay with Xavier and Joy for a few days.  We couldn’t afford for this stop to be pure leisure: we needed to get some things done in preparation for our upcoming month long stop in Sanibel and the markets in the region.  This meant hitting the craft stores to refill supplies, stocking up on groceries since things are noticeably more expensive on the island, and an afternoon at our storage facility to retrieve some things, put away some things, and reorganize it a bit. 

While in Corals Springs Joy helped me turn this batch of Jackson’s peppers from this…

For most of the last 15 years we have hosted or co-hosted Thanksgiving dinner with Xavier and Joy.  I do the turkey (brined and spatchcocked) with the rest of the immediate family providing other courses and side dishes.  We have hosted up to 17 people, but in recent years it was just the four of us and felt a lot less special.  So this year we changed things up and skipped making the meal all together in favor of a dining out at a great restaurant.

…into this

Yes, most places are closed for the day, but if you are in a reasonably large metropolitan area you can find plenty of options; establishments that stay open to cater to just the sort of folks like us that are not up for the hassle of making a big sit down meal.   We did some online research, but it really takes phone calls to sort things out as most of the restaurant websites did not explicitly address their holiday hours.   We narrowed it down to a few ethnic options before selecting La Vie Lebanese in nearby Pompano.

PKM being taunted by this guy.  He’s real tough when there is glass in between them.

What a great choice, everything was fantastic!  The decor, service, and especially the food exceeded our high expectations.  We started with an appetizer sampler platter of hot mezza dishes to share, and followed up with most of us selecting one of the lamb offerings.  The portions were large enough that we ended up taking a good amount home, and it was still delicious warmed up for lunch the next day.  I think we may have a new Thanksgiving tradition on our hands. 

The food was too delicious for us to even remember to get a picture of it once it came.