Adventures: 2000ish - Vermont

So Garza loves food. I mean really really really loves food. Garza's 3rd career after Engineering and Teaching will be that of an awesome Chef! So is there any doubt that back in the 2000ish time frame, while working for Compaq and I was sent up to Vermont for a 1 week training course with IBM to learn how to use the software tools we would be using, that the pictures I returned with would pretty much be about food? LOL!!! Guess not! :-D

The trip wasn't all great, in fact it started out horrible! I was running a little late for my flight but not too much, but when I went to check in at Continental, they told me I was flying on Northwest! The ticket was booked "Continental" but with Northwest as their "agent" or some 'crap' like that. So this is Houston International so I had to go to another terminal for Northwest. So I get there and the check-in agent tells me to take my bag to the plane and they'll check it in there, because they are getting ready to close the door on the plane. Sounds reasonable. But when I get to security, do they let me pass with my oversize bag.... Noooooooooo. They say take my bag back to the counter to check it in there and that I can't take it to the gate. Crap.... Long story short, I miss the flight. So the plan was to fly  up to Maine with co-worker Renee, get the car rental, find a friend of hers from college and have dinner then drive to Burlington, VT. Crap crap crap!!! So I take a later flight and get there a couple hours later than her. (As a side note, I was able to get a message to her via an in-flight message that apparently she thought was the coolest thing ever. And if you think about it, how many people ever get an in-flight message? Very very rare!) Cool for her, but as for me, I'm stuck without a rental, but at least I'm flying directly into Burlington,VT. So I missed dinner with Renee and her friend and what I heard was awesome Maine Clam Chowder. But somehow I made it up to myself with a nice deal on dinner called Double Lobster!!!! Yes, Double Lobster with a potato and just $19.99!!!! Awesome deal on lobster up east, I highly recommend it:

Double Lobster lunch for $19.99! Too good to pass up!

So I get to the hotel and being the incredibly nice person I am, I charm up the check-in clerk into upgrading my room to one with a view of Lake Champlain.... gorgeous lake and a gorgeous view!!!!

Looking out at the lake during the day, you see a lake full of sailboats and you just want to skip whatever you have planned and go make friends with whoever you can just to sail on the cool waters of Lake Champlain.... ahhhhhhhhhh..... :-)

So the IBM training went well and after a couple days I got a chance to tour the Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream factory which is based in Burlington, VT! It was a lot smaller than I would have imagined, but it was also way cooler than anything I could have imagined.

They have a conveyor belt that brings the pint cup (upside down) and at the last second turns them over to be filled. Well, a snafu happens and the lids aren't being placed on top. Then there's a rush to pull the pints off the conveyor belt. Pretty funny.... And then there are the tasters, yes, one of the best and most sought after jobs in the nation... Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream taster! These guys were huge, I mean really huge. They had been doing this for a while and it showed. And there wasn't another job they'd do for a million bucks! I learned a lot about Ben & Jerry's that day: All natural, only comes in pints, the most popular flavor at the time: Cherry Garcia, they donate 10% of profits to help the environment, and the goodness just went on and on. Ben & Jerry's: Good Eats!!!!!



Then there was the trip to the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory. Some wonderful bears made in Vermont. Not the softest, not the cutest, but they come with a lifetime guarantee and it's hard to beat the packaging! Should your bear EVER need medical attention, simply mail it to them and they will repair your bear.... for FREE! And your bear is sent back in a medical gown! Yes, so if he gets his eyes gnawed off by fido, not a problem! Great for anniversaries or gifts that are meant to last a long time, if not a lifetime. 














You see me in the photo: I'm at the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory hamming it up with one of the statuaries they have and in the other photo I have the bear I'm buying while trying to answer trivia for a prize during the tour.... :-) ...   I LOVE TEDDY BEARS!!!!!!

We also made it up to Montreal for a quick lunch, pretty much just so we could say we had lunch in Montreal! A mere 2 hr drive for lunch wasn't bad at all! At one point we had to take a ferry across the lake, and this is one of my favorite photos of me:

The lighting on this pic is awesome!

The best restaurant in Burlington, VT

But now for the main event, the best meal of all!!!! Turns out that Burlington is also home to one heck of a culinary school by the name of New England Culinary Institute or NECI for short. It is a 4 year culinary school and they take their cooking seriously! No fooling around here. In addition to the school, they also run a restaurant that is obviously very 

popular.

It's a 2 story school/restaurant with the main dining upstairs and bakery / desserts downstairs. We sat upstairs with a view of some of the students making cakes.

The Dessert Crew... Papa Chef is in the Big Hat!

There was a big plate glass window that made viewing them easy. Some students were having problems frosting their cake. Well.... not good for a culinary school. In walks papa chef, you could tell by the tall hat! And papa wasn't happy with what he saw. He promptly picked up the cake one student was working on and quickly removed the frosting on it with a few flicks of his wrists. He then beings TWIRLING the cake with one hand and quickly frosted it with the other.

I forget where I stole the Chef hat from, but I was happy!!!

Quite an awesome show and no doubt quite the education for the student. The pic on the left below is of the very students and the papa chef with the cake. They were very kind in letting get a picture with them. The one on the right is downstairs, the desserts and pastry students... somehow I managed to steal a CHEF hat from somewhere... :-)!!!

Awesome Food!!!!!

And to finish off the trip to Burlington, Vt there was the small affair of attending the wedding of a co-worker who we had just starting working with down in Houston, TX ... Jeff Brown who was marrying Ginger! Wow, what are the odds that on a trip like this it would match up randomly in the same place and same time as that wedding? I shoulda bought a lottery ticket! LOL!! :-)

An absolutely beautiful wedding in a tiny church, over 200 years old and the weather was perfect ... in September you know! The perfect time to be in Vermont with the Maple trees turning colors and the breeze as perfect as you can imagine ...

And that was Vermont.... stay tuned for more adventures!!!

Garza's Picasa Web Album: Vermont Trip - 2000ish