Hey there!! I can barely even type right now I am so excited. Have you ever tried a food that made you speechless? A food that made you scream "where have you been all my life?" That is about where I am right now. I am so excited about this new discovery. I am already upset that I didn't pick up more than one jar but it is probably for the best. My diet would not like me eating a jar of Trader Joe's Speculoos Cookie Butter everyday! I have been hearing about this stuff all over the place...blogs, Instagram, YouTube...everywhere! I don't live near a Trader Joe's so I had yet to be able to buy any but I knew I needed to get my hands on some. I am a huge gingerbread lover so when I heard it tastes like a gingerbread cookie I was super excited. I looked up Trader Joe's and the closest one to me was in Rochester which is 2 hours away...bummer! The upside is that it is only ten minutes from my best friends house! So clearly when I went to visit yesterday I had to pick some up. I knew after reading about other peoples search for the notorious Cookie Butter, that it would possibly be out of stock. The spot where the creamy should have been was completely empty but luckily they had plenty of the crunchy in stock as well at the cocoa one! I grabbed a jar of each for $3.69 a piece. A bargain in comparison to the $5-8 a jar range that I saw them for on Amazon. Well I made it to the car before I opened the jar and dug in! Heaven in a jar is the only way I can describe this. It does taste a lot like gingersnaps and I loved the crunchy little cookie pieces. Even my friend gave it a huge thumbs up. I liked the cocoa one too but I think the chocolate over powers the gingerbread taste. It tastes like hot fudge with a hint of gingerbread. I tried it on toast and it was good but not as good as the plain Cookie Butter!
After we went to Trader Joe's we decided to go be active and enjoy the beautiful day. Since she is fairly new to the area and wasn't quite sure where a good place was to walk we kind of just winged it. Fortunatley we ended up driving over a bridge the crossed the Erie Canal and noticed there were walking paths below. We took her dog Leo and started down the path. It must go quite a way because we walked almost 3 miles down with no end. We then turned around and headed back but the walk was beautiful. The weather was a dream and the changing trees looked lovely against the water. It was also nice to see so many people out and about enjoying the day and getting some exercise. We saw bikers, walkers, runners, and many other dogs!
After our wonderful walk we headed back to her house to get cleaned up and go to dinner. I was famished so I munched on some Sweet Blueberry Almonds which were really yummy. I talked about them in a post the other day. We went to a place called Champps for dinner which was a sports bar type of restaurant. It was really nice and open. I also liked that the kitchen was open so you could see everything that was being made. We munched on some chips and queso for an appetizer and I enjoyed a couple Michelob Ultras. For my meal I ordered the Mahi Mahi with a spinach and penne cold salad. It was AMAZING! The girl said "nice choice," when she set my plate down and she wasn't kidding. I ate every bit of it. The fish was perfectly cooked and flavorful and didn't have a strong fishy taste. It was topped with a brushetta like mixture. The salad was also good. It had spinach, penne, tomatoes, capers, and roasted red peppers with a kind of lemony sauce.
It was an amazing day from beginning to end. The weather was awesome and I spent it with my best friend. Not to mention I got to snuggle the cutest puppy ever!!!
