Wine and Spirits Travel

In the fall, I had a great trip to the Inn at Cedar Falls in Hocking Hills, Ohio.  During that trip I met Matthew Barbee of Rockmill Brewery . He came to the inn’s restaurant to have dinner with my friend Lisa and me, and to introduce us to his beer. Lisa loved it, but I didn’t drink any. The fact is, I hadn’t had any beer in about 30 years. I had wiped the beverage from my vocabulary after a bad experience. While Matt understood about the fact that I wouldn’t drink beer, I began to question my position. Honestly, I had never thought much about it before. After all, it’s not like there aren’t thousands of types of wines and spirits  for me to drink. But as I listened to him describe his beer, everything that goes into the small batches and how he pairs it with food and cheese, I thought that maybe I should reconsider. This may seem like a trivial revelation to most, but it wasn’t to me. I had been the only breathing sole at the Great American Beer Festival who ...

One of the major reasons I decided to go to the Inn at Cedar Falls at this time was because it is paw paw season and this Inn has found many ways to take advantage of this tropical fruit grown in Ohio. (Yes, you read that right: tropical fruit in Ohio.)  I learned a bit about the antioxidant properties of the paw paw from Spa Director Randall Wellman before my massage , but I had yet to taste any. I was excited to learn that my friend Lisa and I would get to taste paw paws as well as cook with them during our time with Chef Anthony Schultz. Everything we had to eat at the Inn at Cedar Falls was delicious so I felt confident with Chef Schultz, who had previously worked at Eon in the Hamptons, not far from where I had grown up. As much as I love to cook I decided that I would get better notes and pictures as the observer so Lisa got to do the actual preparation. First, we learned about the paw paw. It really is a tropical fruit, the most northern tropical fruit you will fi...