Best hot cocoa ever

The hot cocoa I found on vacation deserves it's own post. It was the best EVER. Sapore is restaurant in Westfield, New York and is part coffee shop, part bistro, part wine bar. Very groovy decor I might add. Their hot cocoa was a mayan blend - chocoate with cinammon and ancho chili powder. Perfect. I've had mexican hot cocoa before but this was incredible. Must figure out how to replicate.

Will bike for wine

We biked for wine. Yup, we did. Our vacation took us to New York wine country for a few days. Before I mention wine, I will say that countryside was the lake and grape vines. That's pretty much it. We were a little early for the smell of grapes, but biking on roads that took us down through vineyard after vineyard was pretty incredible.

As for the wines, well, pretty darn tasty. This is problem when you are one a bike - limited capacity. Somehow we managed to bike all day and still come home with a good supply of wine. We've done quite a bit of wine tasting, and have come to expect certain things from these experiences. New York did not disapoint. Great conversations were had while tasting - in several cases, with the winemaker. Did I mention that we came home with some great wines? Several suprises - I actually found a concord wine that I like (they can be dry) and a sweet catawba that was refreshing. I love surprises.

We also discovered that this region of New York is concord grape capitol of the world. Found some concord grape pie filling from the grape co-op at the farmers market. This will be fun to try.

Spinach

I planted spinach this year. No worries, I'm not going Popeye on all of you, but I have this recipe for strawberry spinach salad that is incredible. The whole reason for planting spinach was to eat this salad, but oddly enough I haven't made it yet.

When the home garden calamity of good grief I will never eat all of this produce set in with the spinach, I actually suggested that we make spinach pasta. Turned out to be a great use of extra foliage.

More garden adventures to come...

catching up

Ok - so the blog hasn't been the first thing I think about when I hop on the computer. Stupid facebook and webmail. Time to catch up.

We've been eating lettuce from the garden. I made a realization the other day about garden lettuce. It's really green. Yes, I know, all lettuce is green but when the stuff goes from dirt to salad spinner to my plate in under 5 minutes, it's this vibrant pile of green on my plate. Definitely more appetizing. Understand this is coming from the girl who 5 years ago wouldn't touch a salad that wasn't equal parts iceburg lettuce, ranch dressing and croutons. A carrot could look at the salad if it wanted to.

And speaking of salad, a friend of mine has me hooked on yogurt dressing. Finally, ranch dressing that I can feel good about eating. I do love David's vinegrettes, but deep down, I'm a creamy, garlicky ranch kinda girl.