A New Yoga Studio and Amazing Dinner!

I love weekends that are super fun without being hectic. That is a perfect description of this past one for me. There is a yoga studio near my house that I've been wanting to get in for awhile. They run a Vinyasa yoga class a couple of days a week from 7-8 PM and then on Saturdays at noon. That is absolutely perfect for my schedule, and the studio is within walking distance. I decided to check it out, so after sleeping in on Saturday morning I strolled that direction. It was a small class - myself, the instructor, and a gay couple, Michael and George. We walked through a little over an hour of poses, including crow and a headstand. I've never been able to successfully hold a crow position before, and as it turns out, my gaze was the only thing stopping me. I'd been looking down at the floor every time rather than looking ahead. I thought I was lacking the strength, but I was just throwing off my balance. The headstand I did against a wall. I haven't really done any regular inversions since high school, so that's going to take awhile to master. Every time I did something well, Michael and George would get super excited for me, and it made me want to carry them around with me for the day. I feel like they would be excellent life cheerleaders.

Saturday night Dan and I decided to check out a restaurant in downtown Minneapolis called Brasserie Zentral. It's a European restaurant, and y'all. Y'ALL. It was SO good.

*I feel like I shouldn't use the words European and y'all in the same sentence.

**Also, we looked really cute. My new black dress rocked, and Dan had on a linen shirt and slacks. This is irrelevant to this story. But seriously. 

***Those curls of his make me happy.

I started off with a creamed asparagus soup topped with hazelnuts, and a glass of delicious white wine. Dan started off with gnocchi with lamb and braised red cabbage, and an Old Fashioned. While everything that we ate was absolutely amazing, his gnocchi was my favorite. It was just melt-in-your-mouth. Super thankful he's a fan of sharing or it would have gotten nasty with me demanding that he give me a bite or seven. For our main course, I got the quark spaetzel, and Dan got the speck wrapped rabbit loin. (I have a confession. I totally had to Google my dish. I didn't know what either of those things were. Chili's in my small town didn't serve either. Moving right along.) My baby pasta had rabbit in it, which was wonderful. I've had rabbit before, but not any that tasted this yummy. We decided to split a dessert, and got the chocolate torte, which was filled with apricot preserves, and topped with chocolate ganache, hazelnut brittle, and chocolate ice cream. Dan got a cappuccino that was perfectly foamy, and I finished off a second glass of wine. When the waiter brought our check, he let us know he comped dessert, and the receipt said "Hooray for dessert!" with a $0 charge. It was such a fun little surprise! It got me super excited about my upcoming trip to Europe for my birthday. 

Sunday, we met up again, and decided to make a salad since we'd eaten so heavy the night before. We grabbed a ton of random things and made one of the best salads ever, because we are awesome in the kitchen, ha! I also made cookies. I'm going to a lake house with Dan's family in a few weeks, and I may bring them, because who doesn't love cookies?! I haven't made many since I've been here, so I figured it was time to bust some out. Such a yummy and fun weekend!