Vermont 2012 - Burger Night

Dinner my second night in Vermont was very special.  We went to Bread & Butter Farm for their Burger Night.  The line was huge!  Burger Night is incredibly popular even when the weather was rainy, cold, and grey.

I don't have words for this experience.  It is extremely difficult for me to articulate how important it was for me to be at this farm at this point in my life.  Even thinking about it is making me cry on my keyboard.  I cried on the farm, too.  At the end of our night I spent some time alone in Corie's hoop-house and the beauty of their land, their family, their community just came spilling out of me.

The front half of the line to order

Right: Hoop-house, Left: Pavilion for dining and music

Farmer Corie bringing new lettuce to the burger bar

Their beautiful landscape!

Cucumbers in the hoop-house

The length of the hoop-house

Bread & Butter Farm is located on Cheese Factory Rd.

Corie took a minute out of the chaos of running a farm and pop-up restaurant to talk to us and tell us that the kind of jobs we (those of us in the program) are looking for don't exist.  That we need to create them.  We aren't going to find them in a graduate program or on a job listing site - we need to carve our own paths.

She spoke to us again at the TED-esque conference when she told her story and brought the hundred person audience to tears.  She ended with a slideshow of her family and her farm while her husband performed an acoustic rendition his song "Family Farm" (a 2009 live version below).

Finally, I was lucky enough to speak with Corie one on one later in the week over dinner.  I had been wanting to talk to her personally, many of us did, but I was anxious; she's kind of a rock star.  We talked about farm stuff - Corie studied farming at the Santa Cruz program, then she worked to create the MSU program and once that was up and running she had huge input on the creation of the Vermont Farmer's Training program.  I was able to pick her brain and she gave me a lot of really great advice.  And no kidding about the rock star thing...I was the envy of many other women in the group who wished they'd been able to have her ear that night.

Vermont 2012 - Intervale Center

View from my first dinner in Vermont - we watched the storm come in over the Lake Champlain

The first stop on our Food Revolution tour was the Intervale.  We had a makeshift breakfast from the local co-op followed by a few hours of lecture on mental models, balancing vs. reinforcing cycles, environmental ecology, and social/natural capital.  We explored the farm and learned about its history and future; the Intervale Center serves as an incubator for beginning farmers and has a community owned CSA.  We ended the afternoon with a exercise where we had to design our own restaurants.

Intervale Logo

Panoramic of the Intervale Center

Our lecture hall, lab, and cafeteria

Presenting our restaurant business plans & menus

Posted just inside the barn door

Next stop: Dinner - Burger Night at Bread & Butter Farm....

Orlando, FL - March 2012

Sammit and I returned to our Honeymoon location for my spring break this year.

How we got there & where we stayed:
We stayed at the Starwood Vistana Vista Villages again.  Instead of flying down this time we decided to road trip it.  We stayed with Sammit's aunt and uncle on the way down in Pikeville, KY and with my aunt and uncle on the way home in Gainesville, FL.  We also visited my dear friend John and had another amazing dinner in Tampa.

The Fun Details:
We tried to keep a low profile this trip.  On the way down we stopped at the Franklin Conservatory for their Orchid Event.

We split our days between lounging around the pool and walking through Universal Studios.  Once again, because of our off season timing it only took us 2 half days to go through both Universal Parks.  We went to Harry Potter World where we rode the ride in Hogwarts (once of the best we've done).

Chocolate Frogs

Quidditch Set

Mandrake Roots

Inside Hogwarts

The Sorting Hat

The Food Details:
We were trying to keep our costs and calorie intake low so we packed a big cooler with healthy foods made at home.  We ate sandwiches at the Franklin Conservatory and had a family dinner with Sammit's aunt and uncle on our first day of travel.

On day two we stopped at a place called Cafe 24 in Knoxville, TN.  While we didn't have a lot of time to explore, the city was very friendly!  And the lunch at Cafe 4 was amazing.  Sammit had a fried stuffed french toast and I had a spare rib and red onion chutney grilled cheese sandwich with parmesan truffle fries; we consumed most of our daily calories in that one meal but it was absolutely worth it.  I literally groaned with gastronomic pleasure.

We made a mandatory stop back at Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa when we visited my friend John.  We took him to dinner and split a wonderful steak!  Once again, I forgot to take pictures, even after telling everyone at the table that I would be taking photos of all their plates.  We managed to save just enough room to go upstairs in the Henry Waugh Dessert Room.  If you're ever going to find yourself in Tampa, save up and treat yourself.  It is an experience worth having (and take the kitchen and wine cellar tour).

Finally, we had lunch at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade.  While it was still park food, it was decent park food.  I had fish and chips (obviously) and Sammit had roasted chicken.  We partook in the butter beer and tried both the regular and frozen.  Frozen.  Only do the frozen.  The regular butter beer tasted like horrible chemicals; we couldn't finish it.  But the frozen, while still made with gross chemicals, was a delicious blend of artificial butterscotch and shortbread cookie flavors.

Salt Lake City, Utah - August 2011

I don't have many pictures from Salt Lake City because I simply could not capture the beauty of the mountains with my camera (though I'll show you anyway).

How we got there & where we stayed:
We stayed at the Snowbird Inn - a time share we booked through a friend (for just under $400 for the week).  We had a kitchen and a bed but not much else.  Our view was terrible, but it didn't matter because we spent most of our time outside.  We booked our flight on Travelocity and flew into Phoenix, which has some of the best airport art I've ever seen, and then to Salt Lake City.

Obligatory arms-length couple shot

The Fun Details: We bought a "Connect Pass" which allowed us into 13 different attractions - we made it to 9: The Lion House, Clark Planetarium, Tracy Aviary, Hogle Zoo, Thanksgiving Point, Snowbird Resort Rides, Red Butte Gardens, and the Discovery Gateway.

At Thanksgiving Point we explored the gardens on a golf cart, had a scientifically good time at the science museum, and ate a fabulous dinner.

The view from the top of the hill

There were sculptures and installations everywhere

...and a secret garden

Thanksgiving Point is home of the world's largest man-made waterfall

We saw k.d. lang in concert at the Red Butte Gardens, but before the concert we explored the botanical gardens.

k.d. lang concert 

k.d. lang concert in the rain

Seemed appropriate 

The sky after the storm

We made sure to take some time to explore the resort before we left.  We took a tram ride into the mountains and talked to a few ground squirrels (called "Potguts").  These pictures are nothing compared to the real thing.

A storm rolling in while we shopped for groceries

Our potgut friend walked with us all morning 

My first panoramic shot

The view from our tram

Top of the mountain

Panoramic version

There aren't really food details from this trip.  Our Sunday brunch at the resort was amazing (no real pictures).  The food was sublime and we sat out in the sun, surrounded by mountains, listening to a great musician playing acoustic Beatles ballads.  I would also highly recommend dinner at the Thanksgiving Pointe restaurant.  The rest of our meals were cooked in our room.

Our flight home

All in all we had a great time.  I will definitely be back - while we saw the Great Salt Lake we didn't spend nearly enough time in the national forests.