All Things Foodie

Following a wonderful week of vacation in Bar Harbor, ME , I brought home a couple quarts of wild Maine blueberries. Here's the result of the first batch of blueberry muffins. Wild Maine Blueberry Whole Wheat Muffins 4 Tbsp. melted butter 2 c. whole wheat flour 1 tbsp. baking powder 3/4 tsp. salt 1/4 c. sugar 1 c. organic unsweetened soy milk 2 eggs, well beaten 1 1/2 c. wild Maine Blueberries (coated with 1/4 c. of whole wheat flour) Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray muffin tins with vegetable spray. Sift the dry ingredients in a bowl. Mix the soy milk with the beaten eggs and stir in the melted butter. Combine the two mixtures and mix in blueberries. Fill muffin tins about 3/4 full. Bake 15-20 min. and remove from tins immediately.

We celebrated Father's Day at the Water's Edge Resort and Spa in Westbrook, CT. We love Sunday Brunch and we especially love the ones that have plenty of wonderful food to choose from. Besides having an elegant and food filled Sunday Brunch every week, they kicked it up a notch for the special day with a special ice carving. The shrimp was plentiful, perfectly chilled, and clean and fresh tasting. There were all assortments of salads, and fresh fruits and vegetables, so that the vegetarian in our group was able to enjoy it. We even tried the fun foods like taco dip with nachos. A platter of lox with all the pickings was also available. Plenty of breakfast items were available prepared to order such as a fully stocked Omelet station, and a Belgium Waffle and French Crepe station that included chocolate chips, blueberries, coconut, and almonds to name a few. Follow that up with a splash of Grand Marnier? More please! Six hot entrees, a carving station with roast beef

We have to tell everyone about the best Sunday Brunch we have ever had. It's not as some may think, that just because you are on vacation in a special place it makes everything so much better, although it did make our hearts sing knowing that we were in Aruba. The Sunday Brunch at the Hyatt in Aruba would be awesome whether it was in Aruba or at a Hyatt in your nearest city. It was all about the variety of choices on the menu and the freshness of all the food. And the waiters and waitresses were always right there to clean up your plate as soon as you finished and before your glass of champagne or mimosa was empty to refill it again. Get ready for the line up of the menu - in no particular order: Omelets to order Sushi bar Home made donuts hot and fresh from the machine (that's why Bob is smiling so much below) Carving station with Angus beef and turkey Fresh pasta station Waffles Lox (fresh as could be) and everything to go with it including caviar Assortment of breakfast

Scoozzi Trattoria and Wine Bar in New Haven, CT held their Six Annual "Sagra Del Pesce," Spring Seafood Festival this past week. Not wanting to pass up a chance to try out some Italian wines and some of Scoozzi's delectable Italian food we made our reservations and attended the event. Chef Jeff Caputo prepared the following items: We started out with a nice chilled glass of 2006 Cantele Chardonnay, from the Puglia region of Italy. Since chardonnay is probably my favorite white wine I was happy with the smooth velvety feeling of this nicely balanced wine. Alone and paired with the appetizers the chardonnay was a pleasant beginning . The appetizers were a delicately seasoned Atlantic Tuna tartare on ciabatta croustades, Peekytoe Bay, Maine Lump Crab tartletts and Pan fried Italian Bronzino bites. The crab tarts were simple and light, while the Bronzino bits had a nice very light fried coating that did not overpower th

Another night another wine! Today's tasting is a 2003 Merlot, Echelon Central Coast from the Echelon Vineyards in CA. Our favorite wine store owner wanted to know what we thought of this one. We liked it! It is a thousand times better than the white wine we had last night. Well maybe not a thousand times, but maybe 900 times better... The Echelon Merlot was a nice deep cherry color with a pleasant, very cherry taste. Nice balance with medium tannin, and lingered on my tongue nicely with a long finish. I give it a 10 plus tongue roll because the flavor was still there after that many clicks to the roof of my mouth. On the bottle it states that it has a cocoa flavor but I had a hard time picking that out. I did try a piece of 70% dark chocolate from Guylian to see how it held up with it and bingo! It went well with chocolate and that's one of my favorite things to note especially if I'm going to be ordering a wine out at dinner. I really like my red wines to have the

I really needed to get going on this wine and foodie blog. Tonight is the night. I'm going to start right at the bottom with a really, and I mean really, inexpensive wine I picked up at a local wine store recently. For $3.99 (I wasn't kidding about the el cheapo price) in the end cap isle, was a bottle of Goat Door, 2005 Chardonnay from South Africa. Now I have to tell you, I was eating a bowl of cauliflower covered in a dried Indian curry mixed spice mix when I took the first sip. The familiar oakiness of a Chardonnay jumped out at me, made me smile, and I thought I had a winner at $3.99 a bottle. Nevertheless, that feeling didn't last long. The curry actually helped the taste along but when I was sipping the wine alone the flavors took on their own character when not in competition with the curry. I continued to taste the oakey flavor which I do indeed like. I also got a silky, buttery, feeling from the wine which I also like. There just seemed to be a sour

Sunday Brunch is one of our favorite meals to have at a nice restaurant. The Clarke Cook House in Newport, RI is one of those places. At a recent weekend getaway, we not only had lunch there, when we saw the menu for their brunch we had to come back and try it. This restaurant is a classic Newport tradition. It's a place where the locals hang out. People who grew up there and moved away are drawn back by memories of their childhood dinners and the restaurant's Snowball from Hell dessert. What child wouldn't remember an ice cream sunday type dessert, a chocolate roulade topped with vanilla ice cream in a chocolate coated goblet covered with Callebault chocolate and sprinkled with coconut? One of the reasons I like brunch so much is because of Mimosa's, champagne and orange juice. I gave up my sugar-free diet for one day just to be able to indulge in this little bit of Heaven. And Heaven it felt like as we enjoyed the crisp, clean, blue sky and calm water outsid