I am le tired. That was quite a jam-packed 72 hour trip complete with 12 hours of driving.
But I had a great time; I love Kyle's family, everyone is so nice and welcoming :-)
We left DC around 3:30, sure we were going to hit traffic heading out of the metro area since it was almost rush hour on a Friday. We actually hit no real problem areas other than a few quick bottle necks, whew! As we drove, I snacked on some trail mix mixed with granola:
And later on, I had a banana:
We didn't stop for dinner until almost 8... I was DYING! We hardly ever eat that late. Because of where we were, there were very few options of where to eat to begin with, let alone healthy options. However, I knew all week that for both 6 hour drives we would have to stop for meals, and that most likely the food would not be good for me. Luckily keeping that in mind kept me on my toes this week :-)
We wound up at Wendy's, where I had a spicy chicken sandwich (no mayo) and a side salad with balamic vinegar. I was very happy to see that Wendy's actually has nutrition info posters hanging up by the counter. My meal was not bad, ~500 calories and 13 g of fat, but the sodium... yeah, let's not go there.
I ate the whole sandwich and all the veggies dipped in a bit of dressing (it was creamy balsamic, which I don't like).
We went to Starbucks, too, and I got another grande skim awake tea latte. Sorry, no photo!
Once we got to Tom's house, it was 10pm. But nobody knows how to party like Uncle Tom (self-proclaimed), so we found a wine tasting set up for us! Tom makes a lot of his own wine, some from juices he buys locally and others from juice he makes from picking local fruit. YUM. I tasted 4 varietals before settling on a glass of elderberry wine:
This stuff had been fermenting for JUST FOUR DAYS, but it was great! A little sweeter than I normally like, but the complexity and pop of flavor after only 4 days was unbelievable.
The next morning Tom cooked us a delicious breakfast of scrambled eggs with asparagus in a wrap and Adirondack red potatoes, with OJ and coffee on the side:
Those potatoes were AB FAB. Tom is given seeds to plant from Cornell's Ag school, and always winds up with interesting spuds. One year he gave us all different kinds of potatoes for Christmas! These were dry roasted with no seasoning, and were like a yam, but more flavorful.
I only ate half of my whole breakfast; my body was not hungry and seemed very confused at why I was eating for the first time that day at 10am. It rebelled. Luckily, Kyle took care of it for me.... :-)
The plan for Saturday was to go wine tasting, so we hit up a few places:
Honestly, I didn't really like a ton of them. We had 4-5 tastes per place, and nothing really stuck out. Atwater did have a food pairing of chicken chili with their Vidal Blanc:
The chili was good, and the Vidal Blanc was mostly tempting because if you bought one bottle for $10, you got a second one free. We passed.
The Red Newt was much more interesting; it had a young staff and a large,open and modern tasting room. Their wines were also pretty decently priced, so we wound up with two bottles from there, the Blue Newt White and the Red Newt White. Neither Kyle or I care much for whites, but these had a very subtle yet distinct fruit flavor and was just right.
We then went to Wagner, which has wine and beer tastings. Kyle and I hit up the beer tasting, which was really good!
We got to taste 7 of their 9 beers (two were seasonal), and a special .50 taste of their tripplebock:
I liked everything but he IPA, which I don't think I'll ever enjoy. Too hoppy! My favorite was the Mocha porter:
It was just like a cold espresso shot. Mmmmmm......
All afternoon we had the odd cracker or two while tasting, but I had some honey bunnies packed in my bag just in case:
At 3:30, my stomach was seriously p.o.'ed. It was asking when I was planning on feeding it something other than wine and oyster crackers. I kindly asked the group if we could start heading towards lunch, and we began our descent to the southern tip of Lake Cayuga, stopping at Chateau on the way. Blah winery, blah wine.
Finally, however, at about 4:15 we got to our dinner destination, Jerlando's Pizza in Watkin's Glen!! We have gone here almost every time we've been to Ithaca together, and it is fabulous! I am not a big pizza fan, but I love me some pasta, and meat tortellini with alfredo sauce is my weakness. I could NOT wait!
Sadly, we pulled up to see all the windows boarded up. Nooooooo! Upon further inspection, however, we found that the back part was still open for pick up; the front was only closed for renovations. We all began to breathe easier.
Haha, for dinner we ordered garlic knots, BBQ wings, medium-hot wings, tortellini with alfredo sauce, and a pepperoni pizza to go.
However, it would be about 20 minutes until everything was ready, so Tom thought we should head over to a bar nearby. You know, why not?
So off we went to the Crooked Rooster Brewpub. There we had one of the best beer samplers ever!
The IPA and the Hop Warrior were the very first IPA's that I found drinkable.... every single one of those guys was great! I highly recommend Rooster Fish brews if you ever find them. I had a sip or two of each, letting Kyle and Tom finish the rest.
When we got home, this was our yummy dinner spread:
I had no pizza, 3 wings, and a TON of tortellini. Yuuuuummmmy! I love alfredo sauce, but not if it's oily. This sauce was nice and creamy, delicious!
After dinner we digested for a while before heading to the moe. show. I love moe.; I've only seen them once before and was happy to see them again. If you like jam bands, you'll like moe. If you are new to jam bands, you'd like to start with moe. because they are very easy to listen to and great live.
I have to say I preferred my first experience from 6 years ago, but the State Theater in Ithaca was a fantastic venue. The best part was that it was open admission so you could move around and stand as you wanted to. It was fun, mostly because it was Tom's first time seeing/hearing them :-).
When we got home from the show, I crashed because I was tired after drinking and having little nutritious food all day. Also, I knew we had a long drive Sunday and that we would be on the road by 10am. Sigh.
Luckily, we woke up to yet another great breakfast a la Uncle Tom:
Blueberry waffles and sausage with some OJ on the side. The waffles were from scratch, and good road fuel! I think the blueberries made me want more, so when we stopped for coffee a little into the drive I opted for a smoothie:
I also wanted this because I had ZERO fruit on Saturday, so by drinking 2/3s of this I got about 2 servings of fruit right there (each Naked has two portions in it). This was okay, but a little too sweet. I kind of want to try the green one, now.
For lunch we went to Friendly's. There was no point in trying to be healthy; all of the salad dressings are atrocious and the lettuce is iceberg (no nutritional value there!). So, it was one of the fried or greasy options. I had chicken tenders and a chocolate sundae:
It was bad, but oh so good.
We didn't eat until 2pm, so once again, my stomach was about ready to pack up and leave it was so mad at me. It's so mad, that now, at 7pm it still is refusing food. It has no interest in further nourishment as punishment to my body for my mistreating it all weekend. Oops.
I am happy to be home; I really missed having control over my diet for two whole days. But now I am happy relaxing in my ratty old UConn sweatshirt, admiring my new artwork:
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