If you live in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, or Georgia, then consider yourself lucky. You have access to Annie’s baked goods and I am quite envious out here in Colorado.

I discovered Annie’s Naturally Bakery last summer in an Ingles (this just cracks me up because the Spanish-speaker in me keeps wanting this store to be pronounced- inglés… the Spanish work for English. However, it is like In-Gulz…). Anyway, my sister and I went to buy food for our family reunion in NC and we were pretty amazed to find such high quality baked goods at the local supermarket.

So, I was quite happy this year when my parents picked me up from the Asheville airport with a bag full of Annie’s cookies and a loaf of slices spelt sandwich bread. Way to go mom and dad!

Annie’s cookies are perfectly delicious and border-line health food! Well, they are if you compare the ingredient list to pre-packaged cookies. These are as close to homemade as you can find outside of my very own kitchen!

And their breads are fantastic too!

Annie’s bakes breads, cookies, cakes, etc. the way baking was intended to be done. I’m already looking forward to next year’s trip to NC just for the cookies!

Let’s hear it for the Boulder food scene! We are so lucky to live in a town where people get a good idea and roll with it. The Root Cellars is just one of those great new ideas, and I was able to squeeze a 20 minute shopping trip into my busy Sunday (I do work for a living, you know…).

Here’s a photo of what I took home.

I finally tried some Kale Chips. It seems like they are all the rage lately and everyone is making them except me. When I have Kale in the fridge it usually ends up in one of my versions of a healthy lunch smoothie, not baked and dehydrated into chips. So, I was eager to get some from Sandy Robinson. I must admit, I didn’t enjoy the first bite. But, after a few kale chips, I kept on snacking. Finished them all in just a short while.

There were a lot of different specialty food vendors at Taste of Place, and a healthy gathering of foodie-shoppers who wanted to try something new, homemade, and small-batch produced. What could be better than that?

The most impressive food for me… the one that actually drew me into Taste of Place in the first place, was the homemade tempeh by Crispina Arkin. I sincerely hope that Boulder Tempeh becomes widely available in local stores because I am a tempeh lover!

I also went home with some local raw honey from Ann Mattson of New Moon Farms, and Peach Habañero Sauce from Handcrafted With Altitude. The Peach Habañero Sauce is fantastic, and I absolutely love the raw honey. I expect both of these jars to be empty shortly.

I can’t wait for the next Taste of Place by The Root Sellers. I will allow at least an hour next time to peruse all of the vendors’ tables and taste-test my way through Boulder’s “underground” food scene.

Every time I take my first sip of a glass of Oregon Pinot Noir, I decide then and there that Oregon pinots are the best wines. Period.

That is exactly what happened upon my first sip of Stoller’s 2007 estate grown pinot noir. My taste buds understood exactly what the label said about being “an extremely approachable” wine.

Two thumbs up to 2007 Stoller. I highly recommend it.

You must love the Spanish when it comes to food and wine. Here is a white wine worth trying this summer.