Farmers, Food, Falls & Fun

This past Saturday we had such a lovely, impromptu outing to Ithaca, that  I thought I'd share.  After sleeping in a bit on Saturday morning (and most likely taking in an episode or two of Breaking Bad-I'm totally hooked and take in an episode when ever I can!), we decided it was too nice of a day to just hang around the house so we grabbed a few water bottles, a few towels and headed down to Ithaca for the day. 

Our first stop was the Farmers Market. What a great market they have there!  So many vendor's selling locally grown fruits and veggies, meats and cheeses, t-shirts, purses, pottery and all kinds of prepared foods too. 

This is the farm we have our CSA through.  I wish I lived near this market because they have a CSA option to pick out your own share each week. 

Look at how amazing this is!  I will say though, if I was picking out my own veg each week I probably never would have tried the dandelion greens and beet salad that Nelsy made last night.  It was really good.

I believe we'll be getting some of these beautiful peppers in our share today.

And check out these heirloom tomatoes!  We had a few really big ones in our share last week and I made this panzenalla salad for our friends from Food & Wine that was a huge hit.  I recommend you give it a try, delicious! 

Looking at all that food made us very hungry for lunch.  The kids got some homemade Vietnamese and Chinese food, which they could not stop raving about.

Nels and I went Cambodian.  This was a really spicy chicken curry that I cannot recall what its name was.

Luckily we had this fabulous mango salad to cool down with, my mouth was on fire! This lunch was the perfect start to the afternoon.

Next stop, Taughannock Falls.  This is a cool walk to the falls through a stream where some of it is dried up and some parts you walk through the water (there is, of course, a trail but this is more fun!).

Some parts were much easier to manage than others.  The water was running pretty quick in some areas.

But at the end...a nice big water fall.  After that we went back to the park, the kids went for a swim and played on the playground for a while.  Before we knew it, it was going on dinner time.  We decided to check out the Ithaca Beer Co. brew pub for dinner before the hour plus ride home.

Saw this crazy fish painting on a building along the way....

We were impressed right away with this place.  Trellis's of hops around the picnic tables, a bocce court, and this cool wine bottle privacy screen, were just a few of the features that we loved.

They had a big beautiful garden full of herbs, tomatoes, eggplants and a bunch of other fantastic veg to use right there in the kitchen. 

We had a fabulous meal of fresh cut fries, grass fed beef cheese burgers and wood fired pizza with fresh mozzarella and basil.  The Cascazilla is my favorite of their beers and the kids enjoyed their ginger beer quite a bit (notice no artificial colors!).

After dinner we caught this beautiful sunset on Cayuga Lake for the ride home.  So that was it. An impromptu outing filled with good food, good sights , a little exercise and a whole lot of fun.

Enjoy the rest of summer!