For young, professional foodies on a budget, a wine shop is part nonsensical indulgence, part necessity.  Many times, the New Hampshire liquor store will have as good a wine selection as your local wine shop (if not better) and competitive prices.  Thanks to smartphones, you can note whether your purchase is available elsewhere at a discount.

And, let’s face it, sometimes we just want a cheap and dirty bottle of Cab on a Thursday night and there’s no sense in paying extra at a fancy wine shop.

On the other hand, there are benefits to shooting the breeze with a friendly oenophile.  The first, probably obvious, reason is learning from people who are passionate and knowledgeable about wine and have spent a lot of years drinking it.  Supermarket clerks and liquor store workers may be passionate and knowledgeable about a lot of things, but wine is not necessarily one of them.

So the Anti-Rat and I tried a few wine stores in New Hampshire with these principles in mind.  If we want extremely pleasurable wine, we will seek it from our favored wine purveyor.  Otherwise, we pick up a few bottles from the liquor store or supermarket.

Portsmouth has a high number of wine shops for a relatively little town.  We’ve stopped in to Attrettzi, which has free tastings and an uncomplicated wine selection.  We’ve enjoyed some moderately priced ($20) port and some toe-curlingly delicious Brachetto D’Aqui.  Yum.  But, frankly, the tasting manager drives me absolutely NUTS.  When I ask for a description of a Lambrusco, adopting a Soprano’s accent and asking “how you doin’?” tells me absolutely nothing.

And rhapsodizing about bonfires, your girlfriend, the beach and a bottle of port sets my teeth on edge.  Musky leather, first editions, pipe tobacco, a library in an English country house, yes.  A pre-party for a Jimmy Buffet concert, NO.  I understand de-snobbifying wine and making it accessible to everyone, but a patina of culture and refinement can remain, yes?

I’ll post Part 2 of my wine shop recommendations tomorrow.  Any suggestions? Leave them in the comments!

Anyway!  I love health food stores that offer more than just the promise of a healthier life, I love health food stores that actually make it fun to be healthy.  Liiiikkkeee…. say…. by baking vegan, all natural, whole grain chocolate chip cookies?  That are seriously kick ass cookies, none of these health cookies that smack of damp sawdust? That’s fun health.  In my opinion.

Or how about a health food store that has multiple vegan soup selections on a daily basis?  AND bakes their own bread?   And carries new flavors of Lara bars before ANYONE ELSE in New Hampshire did (and even beat out some of the Whole Foods in Winchester and Cambridge Mass… and no I absolutely did not drive to Massachusetts to try the Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Lara bar and so what if I did anyway? You wanna make something of it???)

Oh, right.  Zen.

So this health food heaven of which is speak is Dover Natural in Dover, New Hampshire.  It’s family owned and operated.  They have more selection of coconut milk ice cream than any other store I’ve been to in New Hampshire.  Most stores have… four.  Dover Natural has more than four BRANDS.

If you’re gluten-free or vegan in New Hampshire, you owe it to yourself to visit Dover Natural and try their homemade treats and ogle their selection of gluten-free, vegan foods.  Try one of their enormous organic apples and browse their homeopathic section.  They also have an enormous selection of natural and organic beauty products.  I haven’t bought any of those, I’d rather buy cookies.

My favorite thing to get there (besides soup and cookies… and Dolphin Natural chocolates, which I’d never heard of before going to Dover Natural) is the Ultimate Green Smoothie.  It’s absolutely delicious… it has Kale, mangos, banana and a few scoops of powdered greens.  You drink one of those puppies for lunch and you’ll feel like you can leap tall buildings in a single bound.

Go check them out and try their vegan chocolate chip cookie and report back.

Dover Natural

7 Chestnut St
Dover, NH 03820

603-749-9999
Fax 603-742-2980

Mon-Sat 9-6
Sunday 11-5

Okay, I actually got the GoWearFit, which is made by the same company as BB.  The BB is just distributed in partnership with 24 hour Fitness, so I suspect that’s why the name change.  I will call my little buddy a BodyBugg cuz it’s catchier than GoWearFit.

Peace!

E.

In any case, last Saturday, the number of cookies wasn’t pretty.  Or vegan.

This week has been an effort to largely get back on track with my eating habits, but I have been HUNGRY.  I’m not sure if it’s the workouts or what.  So I’ve upped the food a bit.  But it was time for me to take a little break from the PB Loco.  I’ve been putting it on the side of bananas and apples.  I’ve been putting it on toast.  I’ve been depositing it directly into ma mouf via spoon.  I’ve been doing this multiple times a day.  I strongly suspect the combo of sugar, salt and oils (all of which are additives in PB Loco) are just too much for my taste buds to resist.

So these bad boys are going to have to be hidden away in my freezer:

In the freezer, sorry guys

I think I’ll try and make some of Tina’s Peanut Buttery Bars with the White Chocolate Peanut Butter just to get it out of the house.  I’ve had enough of it .  I wish I was the type of person who could eat one cookie or one teaspoon of PB and be satisfied.

As soon as I’m done with these, I’ll be switching back to my regular TJ’s raw almond butter and peanut butter — I still eat it quite enthusiastically, but it’s not quite such a compulsion.  I think because it doesn’t have the added sugar/salt/fat.  Has anyone read The End of Overeating?  He makes the point that companies know the proper balance of sweet/salty/fatty that triggers our brain’s reward center and they engineer their junk food so that it is virtually irresistible to mere mortals.  That certainly has been my experience, so I think avoiding engineered foods sounds like a good idea for me.

Moving on to some yummy drinks:

Hemp-a-licious

That’s cooled coffee shaken with some hemp milk, a few drops of Vanilla Stevia, and ice.  I also made some coffee ice cream using coffee, maple syrup, coconut milk, dates and a bit of carageenan.  It was delicious.  Unfortunately, I meant to take a picture but it was gone before I knew it.  My one trouble with making homemade ice cream is that it freezes too hard in the freezer.  Directly out of the ice cream maker it’s wonderful.  But any leftovers turn out rock-y.  I added carageenan hoping that would keep it slippery, but no luck.

Oh well, it’s probably a good idea to learn patience and let it defrost.  :-)

I made this GM (I think it was this one, it’s the only pic I have left on my camera of a GM) with a frozen banana.  All other things were equal (strawberries, almond milk, etc).  The frozen banana really made it extra delicious — creamier and sweeter.  I recommend freezing your bananas before blending them.  Oh, and you have to peel them first.  I learned this the hard way.  Same goes for avocados.  Peel them and take the pits out.  That may be obvious to everyone, but it wasn’t to me.

Have a great weekend!  Happy Independence Day to my US readers.  And I hope my non-US readers enjoy their July 4th.

Peace!

E.

Leaving my Monster behind. In the freezer.  Which did me absolutely no good at work. I really, really missed the GM today.  I defrosted it and drank it tonight, but I was kinda full from dinner and am now a bit sloshy and poochy feeling.  I also ended up quite hungry at my evening Zumba class but soldiered through and shook-it, shook-it vigorously.  I managed to bruise one of my finger joints during a too-enthusiastic grapevine.

Sigh.

Eats:

Banana, apple, cinnamon and raw and wriggling almond butter

That was supposed to be my pre-Zumba fuel since the class starts at 5:30, which is right around when I likes to eat.  Instead, it replaced my Green Monster at the 10:30 am feeding.

Hey!  I found these random snacks on my camera, I think I forgot to post them yesterday:

'Zeke tortilla with banana and cinnamon

Almost empty Sun Dried Tomato Sabra (not as good as the pine nut flavor, in my opinion, but evidently I had no trouble eating it)

My "chip" to dip into the hummus

Chip & Hummus: Come to mama

Dinner tonight has become a favorite of mine:

Broco, yaller squash, zucchini, red bell peps stir fried.

With the star of the show:

Baked tofu

I had no idea that you didn’t need to fry tofu to get that nice crust on the top.  You can bake it after lightly brushing on some oil with a high smoke point.  Righteous!  I love this.  It has such a nice firm texture when you bake it this way.  I broiled this one a bit to get that nice brown-ness.

For dessert, I broke into this bad boy:

Sweet lusciousness!

I was so pleasantly surprised by this.  It was like… dessert.  I could eat it like a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.  I tried a little spoonful of it and promptly dove in while doing my best Homer Simpson impression.

Stop the presses! This was INCREDIBLE!

Yeah, I couldn’t even take the paper off all the way before diving in.  You wanna start something!?!  Actually, that stupid paper seal is a big complaint about these Peanut Butters.  It’s hard to peel off all the way, and this jar was sitting upside down in my cabinet and some of the oil leaked out before I even peeled the paper off.  That doesn’t seem too tightly sealed.

Anyway, this stuff rocks.  I love it so.  That’s all I can say.  I was afraid there would be a raspberry syrup or something in there.  I honestly couldn’t taste any raspberries, which is hunky dory by me because I find adding raspberry to desserts significantly decreases my enjoyment of said dessert.

Then I realized that white chocolate tends not to be vegan, read the label and confirmed that yep, for the second time* today I am a doofus and, as a result, broke my vegan vow.

The end.

*If you count bruising my own finger in Zumba while performing a grapevine as my second doofus act of the day**, cheerfully devouring white chocolate peanut butter while thinking it is vegan but not actually reading the label is actually the third doofus act of the day.  Depends on how you’re counting.  But I think grapevine injuries occur all the time, so I didn’t count that.

**  Obviously, forgetting another part of my lunch is the first doofus act of the day.  I feel like I did in the third grade when my mom decided I was old enough to get my own breakfast, collect my school stuff and get out the door without her help. I was a complete mess for a week. But that was, like, sometime in the mid 80s and I’m like 30 now.

Whatever, my footnotes are getting out of control.

Peace.

-E.

Nalgene of green monster, Cranberry Lime Polar Seltzer water, Split Pea soup from TJ's, and a slice of zeke bread with PB Loco Sumatra Cinnamon and Raisin Peanut Butter

Notice anything missing?  Like… a canopener?  I was so proud of myself for planning ahead and saving myself spending NINE DOLLARS on, like, a cup of vegetables over in Burlington.  I assumed there would be a can opener in the office kitchen, but it is evidently true what they say about assuming things.  Except I didn’t make an ass out of you or me, I just was hungry and couldn’t eat all my lunch.  So I googled around for about 45 minutes (yeah, I know, I’m productive) trying to find a vegetarian joint nearby.  I gave up, waded through traffic to Whole Foods (seriously, can we put some left turn lights on Cambridge Street through Burlington into Woburn?  That area is a mess) and bought THEIR vegan split pea soup from their hot bar.  When I wants the peas, I wants the peas.  It was a little over $5, which would have bought my 2.5 cans of my stuff from Trader’s.  Oh well.

About PB Loco’s Raisin and Cinnamon PB:

Hello Peanut Butter Addiction!

When I opened this jar, I grabbed myself a spoon and sampled a nice big gob.  Immediately, I was disappointed because there was a weird, chemical-y aftertaste.  Almost like a pesticide.  I couldn’t quite place the aftertaste, but Husband tried it and agreed that he could taste something.  He wondered if it was the alcohol-free vanilla they use.  Maybe.  I was super bummed because I had high hopes for this PB — cinnamon and raisins are things I add in anyway, so all in one jar saved me a lot of steps!

I thought this would just languish in my fridge, but I find myself drawn to it more and more and the pesticide taste is less and less noticeable to me.  Maybe I’m used to it?  Maybe I needed to stir it better?  It did arrive on a hot day and was liquid, so maybe one of the flavors was just very concentrated at the top?

Anyway, I still can’t say I LOVE this PB and will buy it always.  The highest review I can give it is “It grows on you,” and honestly?  For $7 PB (not including shipping)?  It darn well better rock my socks off.

Peace (and peanut butter!)

-E.

Notice how I slyly took the pic so the address wouldn't show -- don't want no stalkers now.

That, my friends, contains $40+ dollars worth of peanut butter (including shipping).  Now I know what you’re thinking.. you’re thinking, “Elizabeth!  You have lost your dang mind!  What kind of fool pays that much for peanut butter?”

In my defense, it’s FANCY  peanut butter.  And a lot of it.  Lookie:

I am so stoked to try these!!!  I plan to lovingly place smears on apples and toast and sample away.  I don’t like PB on veggies, so I won’t be trying that.  Fruit, bread, or straight out of the jar.  Nom nom nom.

Unfortunately, taste testing will have to wait, because I’m also stoked about this purchase:

A bargain for an Anthropologie dress! Even with expedited shipping.

It took me long enough to find a dress I liked, I should probably not eat 15,000 calories of peanut butter in the next 3 days and eliminate any possibility of actually wearing the dress.  Another time, P.B. Loco.  Another time.

Peace!

E.