first up, sugarbush farm. on the menu, cheese and maple syrup tasting.
after a short drive (including crossing a one-way covered bridge), we followed the yellow signs to the farm. the morning fog had just lifted to reveal an almost ideallic place looking every bit like it just came off the cover of atom heart mother.
this is "farm" in the wizard of oz sense. friendly (huge) dogs come out to greet you. everything is in various states of use and decay. everything feels homey, big and well-used.
we trundle around until we walk into what feels like a farmhouse kitchen. the docent/cheese cutter quickly welcomes us and explains straight out that the cheese itself isn't made there on the farm, but rather comes from a nearby co-op. while she was telling us about the cheese process, four other women in the kitchen are busily cutting, wrapping, waxing and crating the cheese.
blocks of cheese are cut smaller
the blocks are wrapped in foil, then double-dipped in clear wax, followed by a coat of red
(the white blocks you see in the bottom of the trough are the blocks yet-to-be-melted)
different colors of wax indicate different cheeses
(green is sage cheddar)
the finished product
lots of finished product
the docent cut several different samples for us. we tried five of the 14 we could have conceivably tested: a mild cheddar, a medium cheddar, an extremely sharp cheddar, a blue cheese and a horseradish cheddar. all of them were stand-out good, but the horseradish cheddar was one of the best cheeses i'd ever tried.
{interesting trivium: sugar bush claim to be the people who invented (discovered?) making square blocks that when cut conform to the shape of a cracker.}
they also tap and refine maple syrup on the farm property ... we were given tastes of four types, ranging from first-tap fancy (just hinting at both maple and sweetness) to grade B (hit-you-over-the-head powerful). all of them tasty.
we wandered around the farm and watched their (great) syrup propaganda film. nearby was a table with pure maple syrup, side-by-side with the crappy swill that's normally forced on you in a restaurant (along with their artificial ingredient listings).
we hit the gift shop with a vengeance -- spending about $150 between us (my bill was $6 for a block of horseradish cheddar).
a cool side point, evaporation of sap to syrup is about a 40-to-1 boil-down. karpov bought a bottle of maple tree sap (which looks every bit like water), cut only with carbonation ... the taste was almost exactly like you'd imagine from a maple flavored calistoga.
pushing on, we had (good) burgers at a biker bar and hit the funspot in laconia, NH.
for those not in the know (and i certainly hope this does not include you, dear reader), this is the classic video arcade where world records are made and broken. it's the very home of the hope, heartbreak, evil and triumph seen in king of kong.
i played alpine ski, break out, some pinball machine had a credit left on it and qix (setting the high score of the day on every machine i played. go me). but mostly i took pictures.
(these machines are hard to photograph between the diabolical cross of low-backlighting and red cellophane over the fluorescent ambients ... please excuse the grossness associated with some of 'em.)
sit-down roadblasters -- super rare
glass detail on robot bowl
glass detail on break out
field detail on the first video pinball machine
screen detail on cat and mouse
you know your arcade is hardcore when they tell you what processor is in your machine
we made it back in time for karpov's kid's football game ... they lost ... but hey, any defeat goes down better when followed by a lobster dinner, right?
$16 for 2 lobsters -- including my favorite vegetable (i.e. macaroni and cheese)
... and here's some pix of the day i wanted to pass along, "just because:"
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