Pomelo Virgin

I woke up this morning to a 9 degree chill in the air and this beautiful site from the back porch of my parents' house.

Ah, the clean white canvas of a Vermont winter morning. There's nothing like it. After work yesterday Matt and I drove through the night to make it to my home town around midnight. We're leaving Riker with my parents for the weekend while we join a group of 15 of our closest friends for a ski weekend in Stowe, which is about a half hour from where I grew up. All our friends arrive tonight, but we wanted to get up here a day early to get Riker settled before leaving him for a few days. It's the longest we've ever left him, so I'm a little sad to kiss his cheeks goodbye for more than one night, but I know he'll have a great time with my family and I'll have a great time relaxing with friends.

Before I met up with Matt for the New England trek, I actually had a really great day at work. I was crazy busy in the morning, but we had a management seminar in the afternoon which concluded with High Tea at The Plaza hotel in New York. It was such a girly afternoon, I loved it!

I've been to High Tea a few times, but never at The Plaza (actually, I've never even seen The Plaza except for on Home Alone 2, and don't judge me for being excited to actually see the inside!). After settling down to cups of hot tea served with traditional silver service, our server brought out the towers of goodies.

I'm always a bigger fan of savory than sweet, so loved the cucumber, pesto and salmon tea sandwiches. My favorite was the blue cheese whip & green grape sandwich.

So pretty! I also indulged in two small scones with lemon curd, which were warm, flaky and delicious. I try to stay away from sugary treats in the afternoon since they often give me a headache and make me sluggish, so for the most part I stayed away from the top tier of sweets, but I did allow myself one little fruit tart.

Adorable. And delicious.

I was exhausted by the time we got home last night, but it was definitely worth making the trip the night before to have the whole day here. Riker let us sleep in until 8:30 AM (amazing!!), and while I awoke an hour earlier than that, it was great to just lay around in bed all cozy reading for a while. Once everyone was up, I made us all a simple breakfast of Ezekiel sprouted wheat cinnamon toast with peanut butter, and an enormous piece of citrus fruit.

Seriously, how huge is that thing? It took up my whole plate! I found these Pomelos at ShopRite the other day and had to try them. Apparently they're grown in Asia and are similar to the grapefruit. Matt and I split one since they were so large. They smelled like grapefruits, but were sweeter and had a really unique flavor - hard to describe.

It was quite tasty, but a whole lotta work. The pith on this thing was no joke - it was about 2 inches thick and really tough, so took forever to peel. I'm not sure I have the stamina to deal with that on a regular basis, but it was fun to try it.

We're headed out now for some exercise in the brisk air, then off to run some errands (definitely need to baby proof my parents' house) before meeting my mom for lunch. Excited for this weekend to start!