Vermont...In Two Parts

Not this weekend but the weekend before, M and I went to visit the inlaws and extended family. We left on Saturday morning because I needed to make some orange mocha brownies. Here's my issue with the recipe...it calls for Coffee Extract as if this is a real product. I googled it, nothing. McCormick site, nothing. Penzeys? Nope. My mother in law suggested making some triple strength coffee and adding that, I did that and doubled the amount and I couldn't taste the coffee at all. The other issue is that the recipe calls for both Grand Marnier (weighing in at $18 a bottle) and orange zest. I wondered if I could have just used the orange zest because when the heck am I going to use this Grand Marnier? Anyway, they were fine, nothing exceptional.

The extended family came over for a little grill out so it was nice to see everyone since we hadn't seen them since Christmas. On Sunday, we took a walk out into the woods before we left. For your viewing pleasure:



























































































Last weekend, we thought "What could sound more appealing but to drive another 3.5 hours? Let's go to the other side of Vermont!" So off we were again, this time to spend the weekend with our friends in Burlington for M's birthday. On Saturday we attended the Magic Hat Block Party on Church Street and did a little bit of shopping and walked through the farmer's market..

The highlight of the weekend was the general lack of a planned itinerary and this stuff:

What is it, snow? you might ask? Let me remind you we are suffering through a dewpoint of 70 so that's a no. It's cottonish stuff floating down from trees everywhere. It looked like it was snowing without all of the bitter cold and post snow pick up.