I've been hungry for fresh raspberries for weeks, but have been too frugal to actually put them in my cart. So imagine my surprise when I found a 9 ounce container of organic raspberries for $5.99 while shopping today! I haven't bought organic raspberries before, but there must have been a late-season crop or I stumbled on a really good sale, so I quickly snapped them up. I was even more surprised an hour later to find the same size carton of conventional (not organic) raspberries for sale at another store for a mere $3.99, and at this very moment, I have over 1-1/2 pounds of raspberries in my refrigerator. Given the short life of a raspberry, it's a good thing that my daughter and I are both crazy for them - but the bounty also presented the opportunity for a taste-test. When we ate them side-by-side, we found that the organic was sweeter, more tender and had a much more intense and complex flavor although of course both were very good. Note that organic raspberries, like many organics, have a shorter shelf-life than their conventional counterparts - usually only a day or two. Raspberries are best served without much preparation; two of my favorite ways to have them are with greek yogurt, homemade granola and jam (granola recipe here) or with my simple-to-prepare chocolate mousse (recipe here). My third favorite way to eat them is from the box on the way home from the farmstand or grocery store. 

About 5 years ago, a friend had a terrible accident (from which she has now thankfully recovered), and I took dinner over one night during her recovery. I knew that the family typically ate organic chicken, so I bought some and prepared the organic and conventional chicken with the same recipe and taste-tested both. I found that while the organic costs about twice as much, it is at least twice as flavorful and tender. Bell and Evans is a nationally-distributed brand of organic chicken and it comes tightly sealed with a shelf life of at least three weeks so you don't have to freeze it (which degrades the flavor). I love grilled chicken with peanut sauce both as an appetizer and for a family meal served over pasta. My recipe for grilled chicken is here, and the recipe for the peanut sauce - which is a little more involved than the typical You Can Cook recipe, but extremely delicious - is here.

Life is short and we are busy..but if you do find yourself near a farmstand or in the organic section of your local grocery, pick up some special raspberries, squash or chicken. No matter how you prepare them, you will not regret your purchase!

Every year, my college friends and I go away for a weekend, and this year, we decided to visit Vermont. Besides some great hiking, fabulous fall foliage and wonderful time together, we found some truly amazing food.

Farm to table restaurants...fall festivals...a distillery...cooking classes...who knew that second least-populated state in the US was such a tasty place?

Our first restaurant meal was at the Worthy Kitchen in Woodstock, VT. The food and drink is fresh, local, creative and worth the trip. My "caprese" salad above was definitely a re-interpretation (the orange pieces are butternut squash), but what flavor! The poutine, with chunks of crispy pork and shreds of Vermont cheddar, was hoovered down by our group. I've love to give you a recipe from the Worthy Kitchen, but a big part of what they do is create dishes based on locally available ingredients, so even if I did have recipes, I don't think they would taste the same. For those travelling near Woodstock, the Worthy Kitchen website is here.

Girls' weekends always require a little alcohol, so we stopped at the Vermont Spirits Distillery for some taste-testing. They offer a number of vodkas, although I've never understood how a grain neutral spirit like vodka can vary much in taste, these certainly do. My favorites however were the fruit liqueurs, blueberry and strawberry. Both smelled like a bowl of crushed ripe fruit in the summer sunshine, and made great cosmopolitans. For the Vermont Spirits Distillery website, click here, and for my cosmopolitan recipe, click here.

At the Woodstock Artisan Fair, there were several stalls with amazing food offerings. The Chubby Chicks had an array of jams and jellies which they make from produce that they often pick themselves. I tasted a few jams including blueberry and raspberry chocolate and bought a jar of strawberry-jalapeno called Blood Sweat and Tears. If you can get your hands on some good pepper jam (Chubby Chicks website here), you can make a simple throwback appetizer with it (recipe here) that your friends will love.

I also met Tom, who spent a year perfecting his tomatillo salsa. The brilliant thing about Tom's salsa is that the flavors hit you in waves as you eat it - sweet, smokey, spicy and then the afterburn. There are three heat levels including a truly mild "mild" and a semi-blistering "hot". Instead of opening a jar of Tostitos salsa for a party, why not an upgrade? Tom's website is here, and he has a couple of good-looking recipes as well. If you grill some fresh swordfish, a bit of salsa verde on the side is fabulous.

At my last stop, I ran into a laconic grandpa selling pure maple butter. He offered popsicle sticks for generous tastes, and after clearing my stick of every sugary drop, I asked him what you could do with it besides eating it from the jar. His five word reply conveyed that you could put it on ice cream, but really why dilute the experience? Grandpa doesn't have a website, but it you've like to beg him to sell you some maple butter, his phone number is 802-457-2762.

For our final day, we headed to the King Arthur Flour Cooking school in Norwich, Vermont to take a empanada class. I've been making pie crust AND eating empanadas for years, and never noticed that empanadas are basically tiny little pies. The King Arthur Flour campus is a destination, with cooking classes, a cafe and a really good kitchen store. For their piecrust recipe, click here (fyi, you don't need the buttermilk powder). I'm going to play around with empanada fillings and will do a future post - the possibilities are literally endless. If you want to take a cooking class, they do fill up so plan ahead; the class list is here.