My Stint With the CIA

The Culinary Institute of America, that is.

Turns out that the area in New York I traveled to for work was a teeny tiny ten minute drive away from this famously fancy cooking school.  I about fell out of my chair when I found out that there are four student-run restaurants on site that are open to the public.  How fun!!  The buzzkill was finding out that you have to make reservations in advance for the nice restaurants on campus.  So, instead, I drove up for a quick lunch yesterday.


Which was pretty much a brilliant idea.  Picture perfect blue skies provided me some gorgeous photos (these are straight from my cell phone, no editing trickery), and I got to grab an easy breezy lunch at the Apple Pie Bakery Cafe.

Here's hoping that future work trips take me to equally fun places :)

Back to House Shopping,


       

What's even more gorgeous is that directly behind me is the Hudson River Valley.  This campus is a stunner.

Gor-juss.

Front door to Roth Hall, which houses the student-run restaurants.

The campus "bookstore."  I spent a solid 30 minutes in here, looking at kitchen tools and cookbooks and fancy teas and local chocolates.  My campus bookstore was nothing like this!

(Of course, I went to school for engineering, and there's absolutely nothing exciting about that.)

The Apple Pie Bakery Cafe!

(Note:  I did not see any actual apple pie in there.)

I ordered the Turkey Sandwich for lunch.  It doesn't look terribly impressive, but between the perfect bread, the delicious chipotle mayo, and the crunchy cucumbers, it was the best turkey sandwich I've ever had.

Less impressive?  The treats I sampled.  This "Not An Oreo" cookie was fine.

But not something I devoured or craved more than a few bites of.

Ditto for my very first macaron experience.

The vanilla aftertaste was cloying, and I didn't like the flavor at all.  Bummer!!!