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Saturday, July 18, 2009
Sometimes the best things don't require a spoon
Today my dessert is a beautiful summer day, sipping iced coffee, lazily seated on gorgeous Church Street in Downtown Burlington, Vermont. The smell of the street vendors wafting, the sounds of the musicians singing sleepily makes it's way to me and the ladies walk by in their summer clothes while babies, puppies and even the adults play. And life is good.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Free Ice Cream!
Get yourself out on Saturday for Free Flipped Out flavors. Ben & Jerry's - Saturday, May 30, 2009 from 11:00am - 3:00pm at City Hall Park on Main Street in Burlington, VT. The only link to this event I could find is here on Facebook.
New and Exciting
Well, new and exciting things are on the way. Literally - I've ordered some Desserts from bakers and have a few reviews of more basic things - like the difference between the New and Old style packages of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups I found at a store recently, and (of course) Chocolate!
It's all on the way in the next few weeks, and in the next few days I'll be telling you my experience, and some experiments with something that I made in mere minutes. Will it really fit the bill as a dessert you'll want to eat? We'll see!
It's all on the way in the next few weeks, and in the next few days I'll be telling you my experience, and some experiments with something that I made in mere minutes. Will it really fit the bill as a dessert you'll want to eat? We'll see!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Free always tatses best!
Hello friends, as I continue to plan out the next installments of desserts I'm reviewing (ie, I'm waiting on the nice commission check that I've been working on so I can actualy go out and buy all these things) I've started receiving all those nice emails from friends about the free events going on around town. So here goes:
Healthy Living is having a free Wine Tasting tomorrow April 24th from 2-6pm. Just stop in, try some wine and toss around your best sommelier terms with Thomas Houseman - he's a winemaker for Anne Amie Vineyards, located in the rolling hills of Oregon’s verdant Willamette Valley. Healthy Living will be previewing some of thespectacular wines to be featured at NECI's Winemaker Dinner on Saturday, April 25th.
Now for the really good news! Lake Champlain Chocolates is having a tasting this Saturday, April 25, at Lake Champlain Chocolate's 750 Pine Street Store & Cafe in Burlington. As Seven Days tells me - "The tasting will include a discussion of how chocolate is made, the differences between chocolates, desirable qualities of chocolate, and the six steps of tasting chocolate. Yummy!! Click here for a coupon for a free ice cream, good at any LCC retail store."
So who among you can argue with freebies, especially when it's Wine and Chocolate? Anyone?
Healthy Living is having a free Wine Tasting tomorrow April 24th from 2-6pm. Just stop in, try some wine and toss around your best sommelier terms with Thomas Houseman - he's a winemaker for Anne Amie Vineyards, located in the rolling hills of Oregon’s verdant Willamette Valley. Healthy Living will be previewing some of thespectacular wines to be featured at NECI's Winemaker Dinner on Saturday, April 25th.
Now for the really good news! Lake Champlain Chocolates is having a tasting this Saturday, April 25, at Lake Champlain Chocolate's 750 Pine Street Store & Cafe in Burlington. As Seven Days tells me - "The tasting will include a discussion of how chocolate is made, the differences between chocolates, desirable qualities of chocolate, and the six steps of tasting chocolate. Yummy!! Click here for a coupon for a free ice cream, good at any LCC retail store."
So who among you can argue with freebies, especially when it's Wine and Chocolate? Anyone?
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Yay!
Ok Dessert lovers, and Dishing on Desserts followers, I'm back. Yep, troubles with the economy even hit yours truly and my dessert budget went out the window! But good times are back, so let it be heard that I have a shopping list (amazingly there are mostly desserts on it) in hand and am preparing to get those tasty desserts back in my hands and on the blog!
Monday, January 5, 2009
Tiramisu at Sarducci's
Thankfully the holidays are over and so, I hope, my crazy schedule and not enough time in front of my computer. Not that I haven't eaten any desserts, mind you, just that they were in the midst of a meal, were some fruitcake like thing I wouldn't want you to eat, or I simply was so rushed with all the gift swapping and other insanity that goes on, that snapping a photo and finding time to write about it was nearly impossible.
Time to breathe. Time to relax. Time to rediscover a real dessert!
So, there I was on Saturday. I found myself with time enough to spend with a friend in Montpelier, and we were both very hungry. It was a beautiful day - so a walk seemed like a good idea to get to the downtown area just a few blocks away. Sooner than we though we found ourselves walking into Sarducci's Restaurant for some Italian food in lovely Montpelier, VT.
Taking a seat by the window, the first order of business was a nice bottle of wine. As I said, I had some time and it was, all things considered, pretty early in the day. The choice of the day was the fairly inexpensive but flavorful Sangiovese Il Bastardo. When I'm sitting down for a meal that starts with roasted garlic and bread, then I better have a pretty flavorful wine to go along with it. A little air, a little more flavor saturated food and the wine began to develop and lend it's great fruit tones to the meal. So there it was, after a wonderful dinner of Mushroom Ravioli and Steak, it was time for the dessert menu! Which you may have guessed, or may already know, is my favorite part!
Well, since I haven't eaten there much before (only once in fact, and it was year ago) I decided to go my all time favorite dessert - Tiramisu! It's the yardstick of the dessert world, if your Tiramisu is good, then you're OK in my book.
The dessert was nearly divine. The chocolate on top wasn't sprinkled cocoa, in fact it was dark chocolate, giving a nice bitterness of the dark chocolate to the sweet fluffiness of the Marscapone. The only thing that seemed slightly amiss was the rum. It wasn't exactly as I expected, there wasn't much of a lasting flavor, it just seemed to disappear very quickly - which led me to believe it wasn't rum at all. The real stuff has the habit of hanging on a bit longer, and it's exactly what made my first attempts at making my own Tiramisu a miserable failure. Too much rum soaked into lady fingers can be a bad thing. Of course, it was the third time that ended up being the time I trusted myself to just touch the ladyfingers to the rum mixture.
So that one slight fault aside, the Tiramisu was very, very enjoyable. Of course, I certainly understand the reasons for not having actual rum in a dessert, but if I had my druthers, it would have been there. It was an empty hole in an otherwise complete meal. However, it was a tiny hole and I can assure you that next chance I get, I might find myself inside Sarducci's eating another meal and, perhaps, following it up with another taste of their Tiramisu.
Time to breathe. Time to relax. Time to rediscover a real dessert!
So, there I was on Saturday. I found myself with time enough to spend with a friend in Montpelier, and we were both very hungry. It was a beautiful day - so a walk seemed like a good idea to get to the downtown area just a few blocks away. Sooner than we though we found ourselves walking into Sarducci's Restaurant for some Italian food in lovely Montpelier, VT.
Taking a seat by the window, the first order of business was a nice bottle of wine. As I said, I had some time and it was, all things considered, pretty early in the day. The choice of the day was the fairly inexpensive but flavorful Sangiovese Il Bastardo. When I'm sitting down for a meal that starts with roasted garlic and bread, then I better have a pretty flavorful wine to go along with it. A little air, a little more flavor saturated food and the wine began to develop and lend it's great fruit tones to the meal. So there it was, after a wonderful dinner of Mushroom Ravioli and Steak, it was time for the dessert menu! Which you may have guessed, or may already know, is my favorite part!
Well, since I haven't eaten there much before (only once in fact, and it was year ago) I decided to go my all time favorite dessert - Tiramisu! It's the yardstick of the dessert world, if your Tiramisu is good, then you're OK in my book.
The dessert was nearly divine. The chocolate on top wasn't sprinkled cocoa, in fact it was dark chocolate, giving a nice bitterness of the dark chocolate to the sweet fluffiness of the Marscapone. The only thing that seemed slightly amiss was the rum. It wasn't exactly as I expected, there wasn't much of a lasting flavor, it just seemed to disappear very quickly - which led me to believe it wasn't rum at all. The real stuff has the habit of hanging on a bit longer, and it's exactly what made my first attempts at making my own Tiramisu a miserable failure. Too much rum soaked into lady fingers can be a bad thing. Of course, it was the third time that ended up being the time I trusted myself to just touch the ladyfingers to the rum mixture.So that one slight fault aside, the Tiramisu was very, very enjoyable. Of course, I certainly understand the reasons for not having actual rum in a dessert, but if I had my druthers, it would have been there. It was an empty hole in an otherwise complete meal. However, it was a tiny hole and I can assure you that next chance I get, I might find myself inside Sarducci's eating another meal and, perhaps, following it up with another taste of their Tiramisu.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Holiday Madness
Well the Holiday Season descended quite rapidly, didn't it? OK, maybe we saw it coming - but it still just jumps on me a bit last minute, unless I have bucket loads of vacation time to spend an extravagant amount of time lazing about eating Bon Bons and grapes. While it may seem like I do that, I actually keep myself quite busy. Idle hands do the devils work, or in my case they push the devil's food into my mouth. That Devil sure knows how to cook apparently!
Today I don't have a review for you, I have a backlog building. Between the Thanksgiving meal at my house with my family, the Stragglers Thanksgiving celebrated with a mix of friends and family and the holiday rush at the office - I haven't had much time to write anything. Add to that the fact that I was knocked out for about a week and a half with a nice cold and flu cocktail - you begin to see where this all stems from. However, I've not only been eating delectable treats from places such as Butterfly Bakery, Hostess Cakes, work and many places in between - I've continued cooking. Yep, that oven has been on more in the past week or two than in the rest of the entire time I've lived in my apartment, which has been since March 2008. By the way, I highly recommend going to NPR and looking at the recipes they have from Christopher Kimball at Americas Test Kitchen. I used the recipe from the Ultimate Pumpkin-Sweet Potato Pie Recipe to make the pie crust that I actually filled with Wyman's berries. Yummy. I also used nearly half pastry flour - so my crust was absolutely divine! OK, it was also quite a pain to roll it out and keep it together. I didn't win any awards for beauty, (that's why there's no photo) but that crust was light, flaky and delectable.
Also - I have a post I've been holding off on posting as I'm awaiting the recipe. It was made by a co-worker and combines brownies, mint and frosting all in one Tasty Package. Amy - I need that recipe!!! Please? I also hear that another co-worker makes a dessert that could actually kill you if you eat too many - apparently your heart just can't help but skip a beat when you eat them - so be forewarned! Personally I thrive on the deliciously dangerous desserts. Bring it on!
Also - if you're looking for a tasty treat to get someone this holiday season, I'm going to personally recommend you make a purchase from the Vermont Brownie Company. Now of course, there are plenty of people to purchase things from and, in fact, I'm looking forward to having some treats from Sweet Science on Saturday at a Holiday Party (review to come) - but when it comes to getting that treat to send to Mom, Dad or the kids this holiday season, keep Vermont Brownie Company in mind. 'Nuff Said.
Today I don't have a review for you, I have a backlog building. Between the Thanksgiving meal at my house with my family, the Stragglers Thanksgiving celebrated with a mix of friends and family and the holiday rush at the office - I haven't had much time to write anything. Add to that the fact that I was knocked out for about a week and a half with a nice cold and flu cocktail - you begin to see where this all stems from. However, I've not only been eating delectable treats from places such as Butterfly Bakery, Hostess Cakes, work and many places in between - I've continued cooking. Yep, that oven has been on more in the past week or two than in the rest of the entire time I've lived in my apartment, which has been since March 2008. By the way, I highly recommend going to NPR and looking at the recipes they have from Christopher Kimball at Americas Test Kitchen. I used the recipe from the Ultimate Pumpkin-Sweet Potato Pie Recipe to make the pie crust that I actually filled with Wyman's berries. Yummy. I also used nearly half pastry flour - so my crust was absolutely divine! OK, it was also quite a pain to roll it out and keep it together. I didn't win any awards for beauty, (that's why there's no photo) but that crust was light, flaky and delectable.
Also - I have a post I've been holding off on posting as I'm awaiting the recipe. It was made by a co-worker and combines brownies, mint and frosting all in one Tasty Package. Amy - I need that recipe!!! Please? I also hear that another co-worker makes a dessert that could actually kill you if you eat too many - apparently your heart just can't help but skip a beat when you eat them - so be forewarned! Personally I thrive on the deliciously dangerous desserts. Bring it on!
Also - if you're looking for a tasty treat to get someone this holiday season, I'm going to personally recommend you make a purchase from the Vermont Brownie Company. Now of course, there are plenty of people to purchase things from and, in fact, I'm looking forward to having some treats from Sweet Science on Saturday at a Holiday Party (review to come) - but when it comes to getting that treat to send to Mom, Dad or the kids this holiday season, keep Vermont Brownie Company in mind. 'Nuff Said.
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