Beer/Wine

Visiting Saratoga Springs

2 Comments

After our visit to the Woodstock Farm Animal Sanctuary we were feeling great but hungry so we snacked on our leftovers

and a few of these:

and one of these for our drive to Saratoga Springs:

After about an hour of driving we made it to our hotel for night which was a HUGE improvement over our Friday night hotel.  I used Hotwire my go to resource for great inexpensive rooms and we got the Hyatt Place in Malta NY just outside of Saratoga Springs.  Unfortunately my camera battery died during our visit to the animal sanctuary so I didn’t get a good shot of the room, however, the picture on the website is exactly what our room looked like so take a look:

After relaxing for a bit on the couch we finally headed out to see the town and get some dinner.  Our first stop was the Olde Saratoga Brewery which has a tasting room and the best part you can taste what you want and the only cost to you is what you want to tip- great right? Well we stopped in and tried 2 brews each before heading to dinner.

After brews we headed to downtown Saratoga Springs for dinner at Karavalli an Indian restaurant that I read about online and was drawn to their vegan menu options.  We started off with the Bhel Poori which was really interesting; it was like a savory rice crispy treat.  We then shared the CHETTINADU VEGETABLE: A Tamilnadu Specialty:Vegetables in authentic spicy black pepper and roasted coconut sauce and the KUNDAPUR VEGETABLES: A Karnataka Specialty:Vegetables cooked with coconut milk and dry red chilies, tempered with curry leaves and mustard seeds.

The food was amazing and there was so much of it that we had to take some with us for lunch on Sunday.  Although our meal was huge and we were pretty full we had a little room left (after a long walk around downtown) for one of these bad boys:

An Amazing vegan chocolate chip pumpkin seed macaroon.

99 Bottles of Beer…

4 Comments

The Hubz and I are “beer aficionados” or at least we like to think we are (more the Hubz than me) ….if you aren’t laughing you should be.  Anyways we really do love beer especially really good craft beer; we are lucky to live in Vermont where there are tons of craft breweries. Anyways so as many of you may have seen me tweeting the Hubz and I had a mini beer tasting on Monday night. So we rated the beers based on what we liked the best (5 being best and 1 being worst), however below is the order we drank them in:

Victory Storm King Stout- 3.5- great flavor and hoppyness which I love

Long Trail Harvest-2 this was just okay.

Dogfish Head Punkin Ale-4-loved this! it was not too sweet like some pumpkin beers are; it had great spice and overall flavor we will be purchasing this again!

Sierra Nevada Tumbler-3-this was alright but not my favorite, not my least favorite either.

We enjoyed the Sierra Nevada Tumbler with Squash and White Bean Soup & Sour Dough Bread - p.s. if you are interested in being a tester for my soup e-book e-mail me! More details soon!

Southern Tier Harvest (my favorite)- 5! This beer was delicious! A great fall beer with lots of hops!

Victory Festbier-1.5-this beer was pretty much a fail. Very boring and little flavor.

While we ate, drank and were merry the fur baby did this:

warning drinking too much beer may result in this

Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Leave a Comment

The day that we have been waiting for all summer finally came our first trip to Yankee Stadium to see the Yankees play the Jays.

Making Our Way to The Bronx

Ma and Pa

The Hubz and I

We got to the stadium early to get the most out of our day- we got to see the Jays batting practice but unfortunately got in too late to see the Yankees.  After we checked out the field and a few stores we headed to the Memorial Park.

Hubz with his favorite players number

Me with my childhood favorite players number

Watching the Ball Game

We didn’t really eat much at the game as we had a sandwich earlier in the morning and were saving our appetites for Candle Cafe after the game.  I did see however veggie burgers, veggie sushi, guacamole and chips and veggie noodle bowls along with your normal ballpark food like french fries, popcorn and pretzels.

Garlic Fries- debatably vegan- my sources say yes and others say no- oh well they were good

We also ran around the stadium trying to locate the Brooklyn Brewery beer because what is a ball game without a beer and I was not spending $9 on Bud or Miller-yuck.  So we finally located the Brooklyn Lager after going to almost the top level of the ball field but it was worth it even if they were $9.

Brooklyn Lager

We sat back in our comfy seats and enjoyed the game.

To Be continued…..

From Farm to Table

5 Comments

Yesterday was busy with meetings, appointments, CSA pickups and lots of organizing before our first guests visit our new home. Since it was going to be a busy day the Hubz stopped and picked up iced coffees for us after his trip to the gym.

We used our GlassDharma Straws to sip them with

After our whirlwind day we finally sat down to a meal that was filled with delicious items from our CSA. In our CSA this week we received 2 lbs Red Beets; 2 lbs Onions; 1 Bunch Kale; 1 Bunch of Thyme; 1.5 lb Beefsteak or Heirloom Tomatoes; 1 Bag Spicy Brassica Mix; 6 ears of Sweet Corn; 1 Qt Frozen Winter Squash Puree. Last night I used half the kale to make baked kale chips, 2 corn on the cob for baked corn and 1 tomato for our pita pizzas.

The kale was tossed with 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, 1/2 tablespoon nutritional yeast, salt, pepper and a dash of cayenne and baked at 425F for about 7 minutes; just until it began to crisp up.  The corn was removed from it’s husk and rubbed down with a little Earth Balance and then sprinkled with nutritional yeast, salt, and pepper and rolled up in aluminum foil and baked at 425F for 15minutes.  The little pita pizzas had a slice of vegan cheese of half of a pita with a leftover bean&rice burger, tomato and quarter of an avocado.

After dinner I caught up with my BFF for awhile over skype since we hadn’t talked via phone/skype in over a month and then I decided that it would be a great time to try out the Ravi Wine Chiller.  I learned something new last night that red wine is often served too warm! I was unsure about the Ravi Wine Chiller at first thinking that maybe it would make my red wine too cold but it was perfect! It has a great little valve on the side that the more your thumb is over it the slower the wine pours out and the colder it gets; so for red wine you just let it run through the chiller and it brings it to a proper temperature without making it cold.

Q: What is your favorite type of wine to drink? or do you enjoy wine?

P.S. From now until August 16th you can save 25% of your total purchase when you use coupon code EXCITE25; this a one time use only so make sure to check out other items on my OpenSky shop as well as others shops before checking out!

Disclaimer: Ravi provided me with a free sample of this product to review, and I was under no obligation to review it if I so chose.  Nor was I under any obligation to write a positive review or sponsor a product giveaway in return for the free product.

VT Brew Fest 2010

4 Comments

Last night the Hubz and I made our way downtown to the Brew Fest at the Waterfront. Since it’s never good to drink on an empty stomach we headed straight to Alhi Baba’s for Falafel.

Then it was time for beer:

Finally our friends got through the massive line to get in and then we had ….well more beer obviously!

Don't worry he hasn't been double fisting all night he has mine as well

and what would Brew Fest be without friends in lederhosens?

and of course what goes better with beer than Alec’s Spicy Pretzels?

Unfortunately the night ended abruptly after waiting in line for a our last beer, getting up to the front just after our men and being told they couldn’t serve anymore. BOOOOOOOO!

The men showing of their success of getting the last beer of the night

Laura showing sad face with our last tickets of the night

It was a fun night and now that I’ve had my green juice I am ready for the market and iced coffee!

Somethings Brewing…

3 Comments

At Vermont Brewers Festival!

Prior to heading to VT Brew Fest my parents met us at our new place bearing gifts aka mail that arrived at their house.  To our delight Salba Smart had sent me a number of items to sample.  We dove right in with the tortilla chips, the BBQ Crisps and my parents had some of the Cheddar & Sour Cream Crisps.

Some other goodies we have yet to try:

More Brew Fest Posts to come…..

Hike Recap

1 Comment

Hubby and I woke up this morning and headed out for a hike. Hubby has been begging me to go on a hike since the snow disappeared but the weather hasn’t been great so when we woke up to a bright sunny day it seemed perfect. We stopped in at Onion River and picked up some shot blocks and Gu.

We started on our hike and at first it was pretty hard especially since I have been nursing a cold. We hiked for awhile and then decided to share a piece of XoBiotic chocolate which unfortunately was a little stale but we ate it anyway.

One of the fun things about our hike is that the trail we picked was a historical trail with little things to stop at each way.  Below is me pretending to tumble into a 27 foot well from the 1800s.

So our hike started out pretty well and then we decided to go to the top of this summit and went down the otherside.  About 40 minutes later we decided that we were going the wrong direction so we turned around and went the other direction for about an hour and 20 minutes.  Then again we decided that we were probably going to wrong direction.  Finally I spotted a trail that might get us back to where we started.  To my delight we found a headed up the trail and at the end of it were 2 Bud Light cans that we had seen earlier in the day and I yelped with joy.

Neil was pretty excited too. We were no longer lost.

After our 5+ hour hike that should have taken ohhhhh 2.5 hours, if we hadn’t have gotten lost, we headed to The Alchemist for some beers and delicious food.  When we got there they weren’t serving a full menu so we started with Genius Waters, beers and pretzels with spicy mustard.

Then we got a second beer, sweet potato fries to share and each ordered a tempeh sandwich.  Our eyes were bigger than our tummies though so we only ended up eating half of our sandwiches.

Now we are hanging out at home relaxing our bodies and drinking tea.

Q: What did you do today?