I hope you've been having a great summer so far and that you've been able to make time for the summer activities you waited all winter for! I know for myself, summer weekends fill up so quickly and the time just flies.
Last week I was in Southold on the North Fork of Long Island with Jeff's family for a weeklong vacation we'd been looking forward to for months. We spent the week eating, hanging out at the beach, eating, vineyard hopping, eating, cooking, playing scrabble, and eating. It was great!
Obviously my personal favorite parts of the trip centered around the table. It's impossible to choose my favorite thing that I ate or did all week but if I had to choose, my top three would be...
1. Wine Tasting! I don't even remember how many we visited. At least five? Six? We discovered that Long Island makes a pretty good Sauvignon Blanc and brought back a few bottles from Bedell, which we visited more than once...
2. Making Brownie Extravaganza for Jeff's family! What the heck is Brownie Extravaganza, you ask? It's basically a brownie trifle with cool whip and pudding and it's been my mom's go-to dessert for as long as I can remember. I had never made it for Jeff's family before and I loved being able to share one of my nostalgic family recipes with them.
3. Backyard lobster fest! My childhood was spent land-locked in Atlanta so seafood boils and get-your-hands-dirty lobster dinners weren't part of my typical summer growing up. Seeing as Jeff's family is from Rhode Island, they're kind of lobster pros. This was my favorite meal of the whole trip, despite the mosquitoes that attacked the table toward the end of dinner. There's just something so fun about cracking the shells and dunking a hunk of fresh lobster in butter. I'm drooling just thinking about it!
All in all it was an awesome trip. I got to make some new memories around the table with Jeff's family, I got to share one of my favorite family recipes with them, and I got to drink a lot of wine. If that doesn't sound like a successful summer then I don't know what does!
Have you made new family memories around the table this summer? Or eaten anything that blew you away?
P.S. I'm always channeling my food memories into new artwork. Click here to shop available prints!
P.P.S. I'd love to capture your most treasured food memories. Click here to learn about my commission packages!