Another Gem

OLNEY, MD-April 23 We've been very fortunate that the weather has been very good during this trip. We had a little rain yesterday, but nothing too worrisome. We stopped for an oil change yesterday and then spent the night in Smithfield, NC. We were in the car quite a bit longer than I expected, but the ride was beautiful with the trees lining the roads all starting to bloom. At a previous stop at a Cracker Barrel restaurant, we picked up a book on tape and it defintely helped us pass the time.

This morning, we hit the road again early. We stopped at another Cracker Barrel for lunch and if I didn't know better, I would have thought we were back at the one we had eaten at a few days before. It looked exactly the same, it was almost eerie.

We timed our arrival in the Washington area well so we were able to avoid most of the afternoon traffic. However, it took us awhile to find a place to stay in Olney, north of Washington, where we were scheduled to do a winemaker dinner that night. I started to worry that we would not have enough time to shower and change before dinner, but thankfully we found something in the late afternoon.

Dinner that night was at Ricciuti's which is located in an old, historic house. Our winemaker dinner attracted a good crowd, filling two of the three rooms upstairs. It was a nice surprise to see that we spilled over into another room.

The group was very enthusiastic and the food and wine pairing was great. The restaurant is owned by Amy and James Ricciuti and uses a lot of ingredients from local farmers. I especially liked the first course, which was a watercress salad with roasted pears and goat cheese from a Maryland cheesemaker called Firefly Farms. The course was served with our New Gewurz and the two really worked well together