Moosewood!

Are there any places you have dreamed about? Perhaps they're from books you've read, movies you've watched, stories you've heard? They can gain a sort of mythic status, these places, growing larger than life in your imagination.

Well, ever since I've been introduced to many of the Moosewood cookbooks, Moosewood, the famous vegetarian restaurant in downtown Ithaca, has been such a place. We have cooked our way through Sundays at Moosewood, Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home, and Moosewood Celebrates, falling in love with their creative, healthy, delicious meals. Modified recipes from these pages have made it into our family cookbook, this blog, our thanksgiving table, to mention a few. Even now that we are not a vegetarian family, we still regularly cook from these books.

And now, Moosewood is programmed into our gps, because we actually got to visit! Can you believe it? And it was just as I had imagined: simple, tasty, fresh. It was just like eating supper at a good friend's house, complete with a breezy patio with white Christmas lights. The only thing more heavenly than the Chocolate Ricotta Mousse was the drive back to our cabin through miles of farmland with Ben and jazz music.