World Nutella Day

How fascinating for a snack food to have it's own day - who declared this anyway?

It doesn't really matter because Nutella really does deserve it's own day. After all, it's hard not to love the wonderfully chocolaty, creamy, hazelnutty stuff. Thumbs up to the Italians who combine hazelnuts and chocolate in wonderful ways.

I was well into adulthood when I discovered Nutella. I'd always considered it price prohibitive - more than $4.00 for stuff that gets thrown in with the peanut butter selection at the grocery store? How good could it be, anyway. When it was on sale one day at Publix, I decided to give it a whirl. Boy was I in for a treat.

As soon as I realized how delicious it was straight out of the jar, I went on a journey to find what surface it was best spread upon. For me, Nutella on toast or baguette just didn't cut it. I tried it on various cookies and crackers and fruit and decided upon my favorite - cheap little butter cookies. These are flower shaped, hole-in-the-middle cookies you find at bakery thrift stores and drug stores, never in the grocery store, and they usually sell for about $1.00 a pack. Sometimes they are studied with bits of chocolate in an imitation of chocolate chip cookies. Try it and you'll see what I mean. My second choice is Bimbo Pan Tostado, but that's a little bit more difficult to find outside of a Mexican specialty shop. I suppose Rusk Toasts might be close. Pan Tostado has a slightly sweet taste that plain old toast doesn't have and I think that's why it combines so well with Nutella.

My favorite Nutella memory - It was our last day in Paris and I had taken the Metro by myself to Montmartre, home of the Moulin Rouge, many African immigrants and the fabric stores of Paris. I was shopping my little heart out and filling my shopping bags to the brim when it finally occurred to me that I was starving. The cafes were all full to the brim with tourists and locals taking in the view, along with their coffee, of Sacre Couer on the hill above. A corner takeout window was selling warm crepes filled with a choice of toppings, from plain butter to strawberry preserves to (you guessed it) Nutella. I tucked my crepe into my purse and found a somewhat secluded door step behind a rack of fabric and there I dined, basking in the afterglow of fabric shopping, Paris on a September afternoon and two weeks of French bliss.

Autumn Leaves in January

I was driving down State Road 528 last Thursday on my way to the airport. This particular 4-lane toll road has many maple trees along its corridor. That day, they were blazing in their fall color glory. In the middle of winter.

The Florida Maple trees had previously misinterpreted the long warm weeks of December and early January and decided that spring had arrived, so they set on fresh green leaves. One night last week, we had our first "freeze" in several years here in central Florida with temperatures dipping below 32F and staying there for a few hours. The maples were forced into a second "fall".

The beauty of a maple tree in full fall color is a true treat, especially in ever-green Florida. As I cruised along the highway, the maples were lined up like runway models showing off their fall fashions. And in one particularly spectacular stand of trees, a younger slimmer maple had managed to hold on to its spring leaves and provided a spectacular contrast of chartreuse green to the fiery reds and oranges. Add to that a trio of fat wild turkeys foraging in the underbrush and I was provided a moment of temporal displacement, reliving colder northern climes.

Well, no, not really, but isn't that prettily poetic. And yes, there was a trio of turkeys. And, with a particularly strong gust of crosswind, a scattering of red leaves whooshed over my windshield, providing the perfect fall moment. In January.