i would never run a restaurant...

...but i sure like to eat at them :D

we went to the downtown grocery on monday night for their prix fix dinner to celebrate karen's bday and her last week at GM. man, this stuff will burn a hole in your wallet but leave your stomach so happy. it was $25 for a starter, entree and chef's dessert (i didn't get a solo shot of the dessert...) but i got the tomato soup (delish!) and salmon w/ fingerling potatoes and wild mushrooms. dessert was a trio of pineapple and basil sorbet, chocolate souffle w/ i think a caramel kind of sauce (or knowing vt, maybe maple), and a mini donut w/ a raspberry sauce. 

i also got a rum and ginger beer (they make their own) w/ mount gay rum (which was very tasty). eum eum. a wonderful night to celebrate one of the nicest ladies i've met here. the clientele at the restaurant is definitely averaging around 65+ but that might have to do w/ the price of the place, but for the prix fix days it's definitely worth a trip (plus the people there are soooo nice!)

but onto intern stuff- first real day in the kitchen (9-2 w/ an hour break for lunch). i got to use the flour mill and grind brown rice into brown rice flour (quick but also overloaded the poor machine and the poor thing went crazy). with the brown rice flour i made gluten free cheddar cheese sesame crackers (which also had tapioca flour and sorghum flour). it was all sorts of complicated ingredients and i really just wanted butter and flour and cheddar cheese. plus, i have no idea the point of having three different flours so i was feeling a bit lost on how to cook w/o really measuring (i love the ginormous mixing bowl machines). the last 10 minutes before lunch time were sort of frantic (thus the not wanting to ever run a restaurant) and i felt like i needed to be meryl streep playing julia child in that movie where she practices dicing onions to be really fast.

after that it was a bit smoother (sort of). i made the chocolate zucchini cake (which was actually squash b/c there was no zucchini) and keeping track of quantities and baking/cooking to those proportions for a certain number of people is very awkward (case in point, using MasterCook program it said to use 2 and 5/8 of an egg...). plus, i got the wrong number scooped out so i had to do lots of fiddling to spread the batter out (which made for small looking cakes) but they tasted pretty good. keeping track of what people do and do not eat and allergies is also a whole 'nother fun game so there are charts all over the kitchen w/ the menus and layouts of everyone's diet.

tmrw's hump day! it's supposed to be killer hot so the walk tmrw should be uber fun. ack, i can't believe i missed taking a pic of my first attempts at cooking in large batches!

water, water, everywhere

from last night's shenanigans at the downtown grocery to today's exploring, this was probably one of my favorite weekends here so far. lisa and i went to the downtown grocery which is in ludlow- it's a very cute, tasty, but pricey place. it has a great fresh foods menu (they have a garden in the basement and on the roof) and everyone there is super nice. the plan had been to get 1 drink, but we ended up talking to everyone at the bar and the owner until past midnight. haha, which means drunken food search which is very difficult when everything in town closes early evening...but we ate their homemade potato chips and sampled some of their signature mixed cocktails so i'm excited to try out their dinner food tmrw night! 


but anyway, got about 3 hours of sleep but was ready for getting out of green mountain and going for a hike (it helped that i probably ate 3 extra dinners in a "please soak up this alcohol" late last night. we got lost getting to manchester for this hike, so 2 hours later we made it to the lye brook falls trail. it's a pretty straight forward trail to the waterfall- about 3 hours round trip at a leisurely to steady pace. the incline wasn't bad at all and a stop to enjoy the view.

lye brook falls is one of the tallest in the state of vt. it's a gorgeous waterfall and the water runs over all the shale-like rocks.

there was a small path up to a higher point on the falls, you can kind of see me in the middle of the picture.

after the hike we got some gelato at a really cute diner in downtown manchester (i'll remember the name eventually). and then headed to dorset which was about 10 minutes from manchester to look for the quarry that the locals use for swimming and cliff diving. 

the quarry was pretty big and there was a good number of cars parked outside. one section w/ the lower rocks had families w/ lawn chairs parked and smoozing, but once you walked around the quarry to the other side, were the teenagers and teenagers who looked about 12 smoking and drinking and diving off the cliff (all seemed like bad combinations). there's some shallower jumps at around 6' but also a 30' and 40' jump. after watching this girl stare down at the 30' jump for about ten minutes i figured i would start out at 30 and see how things went...

the water was freezinggggg. i was definitely stalling jumping off and couldn't look down other than to check if there was anyone below i would kill before i just had to jump off. it was tons of fun, not sure if i'll make it to the 40' jump but maybe next time when the weather gets really warm.


happy father's day and happy sunday!