Vermont: A Semi-Foodie Annivesary Adventure

This weekend was a very special weekend.  It seems hard to believe that it was already a year ago that all the wedding events were happening!  But Saturday was our first wedding anniversary!

NES did a great job planning a trip for us!  He completely surprised me.  It was also our summer vacation, since we were in Florida in March.  We had a great weekend-long adventure!  And we ate lots of tasty, tasty food!

We stayed at the Bromley View Inn, and it was wonderful.  There were certainly wonderful mountain views! 

They also had three very friendly Labradors and eleven lovely alpacas!  Two of them were babies -- they were so adorable!

The brown one literally grew overnight: it was shorter than the white one on Friday, then just as tall on Sunday.  Crazy.  

They were so cute.  

NES felt the need to do his best impression of one of the llamas.

I think he did pretty well.

And that was all just at the inn!  

On the first evening, we were looking for somewhere to get a small dinner to save room for ice cream.  We looked first at what we thought was Friendly's.  NES was very attached to said Friendly's (having been there many times over many years)  and was devastated when it appeared to be gone.  It ended up that it was just closed for renovations and re-branding, but it was still disappointing.  

We tried a couple other places (to no avail) and settled on a little restaurant that looked pretty busy.  Apparently the locals flock there for wing night!  We got poutine and thai chicken.  There is a story behind the poutine:  Poutine is a Canadian dish that we discovered this past winter.  It is French fries covered in beef gravy and cheese.  Yes, ridiculous.  Yes, also, tasty.  We decided that it would be an every once in a while treat, and it sounded perfect this weekend.  The chicken was really well seasoned with some sort of soy marinade.  It came with a peanut dipping sauce. Mmmmmm.  

Then ice cream.  Also mmmmmm.

Our breakfasts at the inn were also lovely.  They were perfect for me, because I am one of those people who can never decide between egg-based breakfasts or pancakes/waffles/French toast.  There was one option for each, and there was a "little of both" option.  Perfect.  

We had pumpkin pie pancakes, asparagus and cheddar scramble, French toast with amazing caramel sauce, and the fluffiest lemon ricotta pancakes I have ever had.  It was all so tasty.  So amazing.   

And all with this view.  I can't think of a much better view for breakfast.

Lunches tended to be a slightly smaller meal.  One day I got a maple apple stuffed pretzel, and NES got a pulled bbq chicken pocket.  Pocket meaning a pita so full that it splits in half anyway.

The next day, I got mushroom, bacon, cheddar quiche and NES got a Reuben.  Yum.

Dinners were a little more formal.

On Friday night, after a day of running from Weston to Chester and Chester to Bellows Falls and Bellows Falls to Grafton and Grafton to Newfane and Newfane to Townshend and Townshend back to the inn, NES wanted Chinese food.  It's his favorite.  And it isn't my favorite.  But sometimes, I decide that it is a good option.  That night was one of those times.  We happened to find a super-fancy Chinese and Japanese restaurant right near by.  

Not only was the food not super greasy (one of my complaints about most Chinese food), but it came with this amazing carrot garnish flower.  Woah.

And even the fortune cookies were garnished with orange slices!  Crazy!

Then came our actual anniversary dinner.  We found a perfect restaurant that was just fancy enough to feel special, and just casual enough that we didn't feel out of place.  

It was also perfect because they had blue bottles with yellow flowers, just like our wedding!

We had pea and marscapone raviolis to start.  They were very interesting, but very tasty.  

NES got a peppercorn encrusted steak.  It was very good.  I had some.  And I'm not even a huge fan of black pepper.

I, on the other hand, got scallops over a lemon-ginger risotto.  It was amazing.  The risotto was sooooo tasty.  Yum.

Then came the cake.  The frozen wedding cake.  That had been taking up my freezer space for a year.  NES was pretty skeptical about it.  He thought we should have cheated and eaten it earlier and gotten a new cake.  But I was determined to wait the full year.

And, well, it was pretty good.  Amazingly good for a year old cake, actually.  It was even moister than it was at our wedding.  How does that happen?  

It might not have looked so pretty (and it looked even less so after the trip home . . .), but it was so worth it.

Somewhere in there, we even fit in a farmer's market trip!  

This farmer's market even had a wood fired brick oven for pizza making.  That's pretty cool, if you ask me.  

We got some tasty (and gluten free, I've been told!) triple chocolate espresso cookies.  They didn't survive long enough for pictures.  

NES also found a bacon chocolate bar . . . we didn't get one.  Sometimes there really is a line.  

So yeah.  That was our first anniversary!  And a great trip's worth of food!  Now, wedding cake for dinner!