First lunch time Dairy Queen trip. Blizzards are one of the best summer treats while working at the office in Bath. I tried a mini blizzard for the first time, a cookie dough one to be specific. They are the perfect size. Last summer my coworker and I would share a small blizzard, but now that they have these mini blizzards I don't have to defer to whatever she wants. I would much rather go to other ice cream places, but there is something novel about going to the Dairy Queen. It reminds me of being young and trying to talk my mom into stopping on the way home for a Nerd's blizzard. I would rank the Dairy Queen up there with the nostalgic value of McDonalds. That might seem odd, since I really don't eat that much fast food anymore, but there will always be a warm fuzzy spot in my heart for the Happy Meals that I enjoyed there as a child. Just like there will always be that same warm spot in my heart for all those Nerd blizzards that gave me so many upset stomachs...

My mom is amazing

She made these adorable bunny cream puffs for our family Easter brunch today. My niece loved them, but I think I loved them a little bit more, since I ate the entirety of my puff while she only ate her marshmallow ears and jelly bean nose. I think the morning of candy overload did her in. They were as delicious as they are adorable.

A fuzzy photo of my lunch at the Starlight Cafe in Bath. It is one of my favorite lunch spots, but not as frequented as some of the others, purely based on its cash only nature. I never have cash. I did however make the effort to stop at the bank on my way back to the office from a dentist appointment so that I could take my parents out to lunch at the Starlight Cafe today.

My pick for best lunch there is the veggie home fries with anadama bread. Breakfast for lunch! AWESOME! Oh so good and includes two eggs anyway you want them. I also bought one of the biggest whoopie pies I have seen in a very long time to share with my father later in the afternoon. It's apparent that the Starlight Cafe got the memo that the whoopie pie is Maine's official state treat.

Maine Mead Works

This evening I went to a networking event that was put on by Propel. I had high expectations for this event; expectations that included finding my future husband. Unfortunately, that did not happen, but thankfully to soften the blow there was Maine Mead Works there to let me sample a few of their flavors that I had yet to try. I am a little wary of buying an entire bottle of something new, just in case I don't actually like it. I am the same way with six packs of beer or even trying a new beer at a bar. I'm pretty set in my ways and once I know I like something it is quite hard for me to try something new. As I talked to the owner about the differences between each kind, he let me sample two flavors I had as of yet to try: the dry mead and the blueberry mead. I am fairly certain that I have tried the rest of the flavors, with the Lavender and the Dry Hops being my favorites. I liked the blueberry mead much more than the dry, since the dry mead reminded me too much of what a regular wine would taste like and I am not that fond of wine. This fact could be surprising since I love the Maine Mead Works mead so much, but I am really much more of a beer girl, specifically PBR or Allagash. It was really nice to be able to express to the man who makes the mead how much I enjoy his product. Maine Mead Works mead is one of the few things that helped me make it through this past tax season. I say that as I sip some of the cranberry mead that I have left over from the craziness of last week.

I recently learned that they have a location on 51 Washington Avenue that offers tours! I can't wait to go see them actually making the mead that I have come to love so much. Also, it turns out you can now buy their mead at a few select Hannaford locations in Maine, including the one on Forest Avenue. This makes me extremely excited as I don't always like to have to go into Whole Foods to buy one specific thing (Lavender Mead) and then having to buy ten million other things just because I saw them (I am obviously an impulse buyer and have no control). I regularly shop at Hannaford and was always perturbed by the fact that they had as of yet to carry Maine Mead Works. Another recent addition for locations to buy it at is the Mobil on Forest Ave. If I am too lazy to make it to Hannaford or Whole Foods I could just walk down the street to the Mobil. Life is turning out to be pretty good (and tipsy!) this summer.

http://mainemeadworks.com/

BTW, the owner is super nice and will answer any mead related questions that you can possibly ask him. When owners of companies are easy to talk to and obviously have a love of what they are doing, it makes it that much better for me to enjoy their product and tell others about how amazing it is. Even if it has nothing to do with cupcakes...however I think cupcakes and mead would make the perfect pairing!

Not so local...

Ok, so I am going to preface this by saying I am a huge buy local person. Well, most of the time. Sometimes you find yourself in a not so local location and in need of some sustenance. This is the situation where I found myself this past Sunday. Since tax season dominated my life so entirely, I hadn't been able to go grocery shopping in what seems like forever. I had to quickly eat something before I went to a roller derby bout at Happy Wheels and the only thing I could find were these raviolis in my fridge that I didn't even have time to cook. So I ate them. I'll be honest in saying and it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that they just didn't cut it. When it turned out that we had arrived at the bout around forty five minutes before doors were going to open; I took this opportunity to say to my fellow bout goers "Hey, let's go to Starbucks and get some drinks/food". Starbucks was the closest and quickest food location I could think of. I had been to this Starbucks, the Forest Ave one, a few months ago when a professor suggested it for a meeting location. While there I saw that they had these tiny and adorable cupcakes, however did not manage to snag one before our meeting started. This time, I made it a priority to get one and find out if the cupcakes at Starbucks could possibly match up to the local competition in Portland. The few times that I have been to Starbucks I have had the banana bread and always enjoyed it, so I had slightly high expectations before trying their cupcakes.

They had two options available, one a carrot cake cupcake and the other one was a peanut butter cupcake. I chose the peanut butter one, only because I really wasn't in a carrot cake mood. I feel like carrot cake is one of those things you really need to be in the mood for and I just wasn't feeling it that day. I am always in the mood for a chocolate peanut butter combination, especially if it has tiny piece of a peanut butter cup on top. The cupcake part itself wasn't all that spectacular. It reminded me of a cheap whoopie pie you could buy at a convenience station. It was moist and chocolaty, but nothing special. The peanut butter frosting made up for the cupcake part. It was slightly gritty and not very creamy, but I wouldn't say that this was a spectacular cupcake in any way. It was a nice treat to go with my iced tea, but I wouldn't go out of my way to get another one of these cupcakes, especially with how many amazing other cupcake choices we have in Portland.

I apologize for the hiatus!

I AM BACK. I am thankfully on the correct side of tax season (you know, when it's finally over and done with) and thankfully have days off now. The past two days have been a derby-palooza, with my friend DeAnne and I going down to Boston on Saturday night to watch the Boston Massacre vs The Philly Liberty Belles and then watching our two Portland teams yesterday. I love going to the Boston bouts, because as I have reviewed them before, Kickass Cupcakes are there with their oh so amazing treats.


I mean, look at those cupcakes!!! My favorite is the cookie dough, which is in the lower left corner. It has actual cookie dough in the middle. The two chocolate ones have caramel in the middle and the topping is a mocha flavor, while the frosting is just a mind blowing chocolate. The other cupcake is a lemon with white chocolate frosting. I had the cookie dough cupcake and one of the chocolate ones and DeAnne had the other two. They had ten flavors in total available at the bout, but the lady who was helping us said they had some crazy number available at the store, something like twenty five. I can't even imagine having to make a choice with that many options available. As it was I had couldn't narrow my choice down to just one and had to have two. I just realized by looking through my past entries that I had the exact same two cupcakes the last time I went to a Boston bout. Perhaps I should try something new the next time I make it down there. I'm pretty sure I will still get a cookie dough one (they are really good!) but I will try to change out the second one to something new.

I apologize for the lack in posting. My love of cupcakes has not waned, but my time for appreciating them has. For the next couple of weeks it is crazy tax time and getting a lot of homework done time. After that, it is cupcakes and gluttony and everything else fun time. Well, I guess I will still have to get a little bit of homework done as well. I keep hoping to find time to write up a review of an amazing cupcake I had for the Oscars, but it has yet to materialize. Until then, cupcake kisses for all!