The Green Mountain state

VERMONT

Where most people think of their beautiful mountains, skiing, lake Champlain and a crazy amount of Subarus on the road. (Hey, they are reliable in those snow conditions, I would probably own one if I lived there, too.) 

Some cool facts about Vermont:

• In 1978, Ben and Jerry opened their first Ben & Jerry’s Homemade ice cream shop in a gas station in Burlington, Vermont. I mean, we all have those nights where we eat our feelings in one of the many delicious flavors of Ben and Jerry's... or maybe thats just me...
• Vermont is the largest producing state of pure maple syrup in our country. There is this amazing restaurant by Smuggler's Notch called 158 main. They make the BEST French toast. It's a full  baguette, deep fried and sprinkled with powder sugar. To make it better, it's topped with 100% pure Vermont maple syrup! Maybe one day, I will be able to recreate it and not just have unsuccessful soggy bread. For now, I think I'll just stick to cookies :).  If you are ever in the area, it should be your number one stop.

• The sixth largest lake in America, Lake Champlain, was announced as the 6th Great Lake but it was only for a brief time. Not only is this place beautiful, lake Champlain chocolate is AMAZING!  It is so smooth and can be found at Whole Foods if you can't drive all the way there. :)
• Vermont is also home to the teddy bear factory. Not only is this a factory that runs tours on how they create teddy bears but it also is like a HUGE "build-a-bear," It is the same concept where you can create and stuff your bear to your liking. The only memory that I have there is when I made my high school boyfriend drive out of our way to go skiing so we could make a bear together. It was an essential to our relationship... or at least I thought so. 
• Vermont does not have any skyscrapers so they make up for it with many ski lifts and gondolas.  This is where my post gets more personal and the embarrassing pictures come out. Vermont is special to me because this is where I learned to snowboard.  And speaking of ski lifts, they were my biggest enemy. I think I still have no feeling in part of my left knee because of learning to get off a chair lift on a snowboard. My family vacations at Smugglers Notch every year and for the first 4 years, my mom sent me to ski school. All vacation, it is was the same routine, I would wake up complain about my injuries and refusing to go, she would give me Advil and say I was fine, drop me and my cousin off at the school and LEAVE! That was repeated all week for YEARS! But I can snowboard pretty well now so thanks mom for always pushing me. :) 

The day I passed ski school.. big moment in my life.

• Last fact, this state is the most rural state in America. With that being said, it took years for us to get cell phone service on our vacations. So we all were assigned nicknames and walkie talkies so we could communicate with each other on the mountain. We even had matching sweatshirts with our nicknames on them. My nickname was big red...  This name meant one of two things.. I was hot and sassy like the big red gum or I was a little beef cake with red hair...  I'm pretty confident it was the first one. 

Ridge rider, pineapple man, big red, poison dart frog, black sheep, and sweet ninja robot

And on to the whole reason you read the blog.. the cookie.

This is the
"TEDDY" 

Maple S'more Chocolate Chip
​made with pure Vermont maple syrup, lake Champlain chocolate, and teddy grahams. :)