went to Cask and Larder Sunday on our way out of town for the Christmas holidays to treat ourselves to their luscious pastries and yummy bites for breakfast. I started with the crazy spiciest bloody Mary – garnished with an olive, sausage chunk, pickle and a lime wedge. Crazy I tell you. I think I kind of don’t love that vinegar spice thing in my morning beverage choice but it was fun to try it. I had little black pepper biscuits and gravy for my main primarily because I wanted to try that gravy. Ok, but the pastry board was all kinds of deliciousness. A bananas foster profiterole with serious crisp thin shell and filled with rummy banana cream. A savory cheddar scone with HAM (!?) butter. A tiny preserved pear and cranberry muffin with orange butter. But the very best bite of the day by far was a tiny bite sized apple fritter with apple cider glaze. CRAZY amazing. Who even knows how they do that. I want one now.
Category: orlando
aunty’s – written in may – never posted
there isn’t a great deal of variety in our local supermarket shopping scene. Within 20 minutes of our house I think there are only two and both are Publix. Publix is a local market that promotes from within and the service is excellent. I always feel funny about being able bodied and the bagger loading my groceries in the car and often decline. The problem is that there is nothing else near so everyone goes there. If you stretch the driving time and dollars there are others but this is it so EVERYONE goes there. We live in a strange part of town that encompasses both the Lake Nona Country Club as well as a decidedly more down home Osceola county line with it’s country roads and citrus groves so the mix of people is astounding and they all converge on one store. The thing about it is that Publix feels behind the times, like they are too busy to update. They wrap produce in plastic and styrofoam which kills me and the environment. I can’t choose my own items and have twice as much trash. They are behind trend on prepared foods offering mostly Southern staples of macaroni and at many varieties of mayonaise based salad pre-packs. You can forget about whatever new item being flogged on tv or the internet – they will not have it. I drove 40 minutes with a cooler in the trunk to buy Johnsonville Chicken Sausage. One thing they do have? British food. I have no idea why but the selection of British chocolates is divine and there is no shortage of cans of beans for toast and bottles of HP brown sauce. Recently I saw that they had added steamed puddings in flavors of Golden Syrup, Spotted Dick and Sticky Toffee by Aunty’s to the lineup. I couldn’t pass that up and variously brought home all three. Thirty seconds in the microwave and you will be transported to the cool rainswept byways of the British isles. They are crazy sweet and Golden Syrup and Sticky Toffee are positively oozing with golden syrup. Z calls them puddingses and we have to split one lest we be overwhelmed by caramelly sweetness. The spotted dick is studded with currants and a bit more ginger which lends an exotic note to dessert.
two months
based on the date I took the photo I am exactly two months delayed in noting a Lake Nona milestone-a second grocery store. December 15th marked the day we walked in to the expansively aisled Publix. There is a somewhat wider selection that the Moss Park Publix. While we know it makes us uncool it is really great to shop here on Saturday nights when the aisles look something like . . .
peachy
we haven’t been making it out to as many food truck events – from what I can tell, it’s a hard business. Trucks break down, rain happens, the cost of the unexpected and constantly chasing the herd must take it’s toll as I have seen lots of these trucks just melt away. We did make it out to a Daily City Food Truck Bazaar where I had a luminous roasted peach, blue cheese and arugula on crispy pork belly sandwich by 5Gastronomy. Sweet and salty with the peaches and arugula giving freshness to the pork.
new fantasyland
first full day of vacation and we thought we’d join ten thousand of our closest friends for the first open to the public weekend at Disney’s *new* Fantasyland. 
A friend had said, ‘it’s really REALLY good.” ….
right. So, I started this blog in, I’m not gonna lie to you, December. Two vacations ago. We’ve since cruised to Grand Cayman/Mexico, jetted to Denver, celebrated Christmas in Sarasota and New Years belated Christmas brunch at home, had out of town guests and walked the Color Run. But, the lingering memories of ‘New Fantasyland’ are these…. The castle is remarkable. Beautiful in it’s somewhat medieval Frenchness of grey stones and far off turrets. They outdid themselves in the humor of the statues and their homely winning faces. We waited in line for lunch and ate in the ballroom where Belle danced with her Beast and with snow falling outside (or is it inside?) the windows and toured the West Wing with a cloched rose dripping petals. We had a Le Fou’s brew (frozen apple juice-don’t bother) in her village at Gaston’s tavern and rode clamshells through Ariel’s home turf. Lunch in the castle had a bit of Disney tax – we had tasty pot roast with French green beans and croque monsieur. It was fun to be served lunch from glass enclosed trolley’s rolling by. All in all, it was really really good.
My Urban Pantry 