Next day, breakfast for me started off the same (pork
products and hash), but I decided to try the pastry cook's
work - a pretty okay mini sticky bun, a quite good raised
doughnut, and a nasty bear claw, of which I ate only part
- it was horrendously sweet but spoiled-tasting at the same
time; couldn't figure that out: probably made to use up
sour milk.

The guys at the next table were talking about the Culinary
Olympics; one of them was telling stories of working with
Henry Haller, back in the day, another discussing how to get
a whole batterie de cuisine into a box that would fit under
the airplane seat in front of you. Perked my ears up.

Carol had her heart set on the Vermont Soap Factory and
Museum and convinced me that I could drown my boredom at the
brewery down the street. Well. Both are north of Middlebury
on Exchange Street, which misnomerously is an ugly little
industrial road that goes through an ugly little industrial
park. The soap factory is in a big corrugated building,
quite ugly, but what the hey, they make soap, and Carol is
happy with her soap. I deigned to sit there and guard her
purse while she snuffled all the soapy scents: she ended up
spending less than $20 there, yay. And we both got to go to

Otter Creek, where we tasted several things out of wax paper
cups (the girl pourer apologized: their dishwasher was on
the fritz) -

White Sail - less objectionable than many, a mostly natural
set of tastes, coriander and citrus, quite light; I'd drink
one if it was free and it was over 99F outside;

Copper ale - yeasty, rich Altbier style, something that I've
had periodically over the years and have gotten sozzled on
more than once: I actually like the bottled version better
than this one;

Wolaver's Farmhouse - another rich brown ale, a bit too
overtly malty for my preference, but pretty respectable;

IPA - a little mild, innocuous;

and Stout, which was kind of average, maybe less stout than
usual, but with a nice creamy head.

Though growlers of the Copper were on sale for $4.50, we
left empty-handed.

Back down rte 7 to Rutland and rte 4 (quite scenic, but it
was interesting in a bad way to see that most of the inns
and restaurants along it are closed and for sale) and across
to Long Trail, where we tasted

Blackbeary [sic] wheat - pleasant if you like that sort of
soda-poppy thing, which I don't except under certain rare
circumstances;

Hefeweizen - smelly and nasty; neither of us cared for
this, and in fact it was the only one that Carol didn't
like; turns out it goes okay with popcorn (provided),
whose butyric acid masks the off-tastes of the beer;

Harvest brown - a low-hop pleasant but uncomplicated
beverage;

the regular ale - an old friend, easily quaffable, but
not so characterful as the Otter Creek Copper;

Doublebag - very brown, very bitter, like the ale, but,
as one can guess, twice as rich and twice as bitter;

and a moderately bitter IPA, which Carol liked enough
to get a whole Vermont pint of.

There's an Imperial Porter that isn't available for
tasting but available for drinking, so I had one -
rich and smooth, very coffee molasses, just what you
would expect except for a zing of sour at the finish.

We had our lunch here - my burger rare topped with Cabot
aged Cheddar was quite good; for $1.50 extra I substituted
onion rings for fries; these were hugely abundant and
very tasty but a little on the greasy side. Carol had the
Angus cheesesteak, shaved tough greasy meat with the same
Cabot cheese. For the same $1.50 she substituted a cup of
Cheddar beer soup. She asked the waitress if she could
substitute a bowl for an additional dollar (the differential
between cup and bowl on the regular menu), and the waitress
said no, but she would just give her a bowl and say it was a
cup. Deal. Actually, not such a great deal, because the soup
was so rich and salty that in order to finish it, Carol had
to sacrifice much of the crusty hoagie roll (healthier and
better) that her sandwich had come on.

The main purpose, other than the scenery, of Carol's trip
was a visit to the King Arthur factory store, another half
hour up, just north of White River.

I thought it was nasty, one step either up or down from an
outlet mall, and I don't know why people make these silly
pilgrimages anyhow.

It's an octagonal or so building that holds quantities of
most of the things available on the Website, with silly
names like Pompanoosuc Porridge, and with bread machines
cranking out reconstituted bread machine mixes and stuff.
I tried the popover, pretty average, and the potato bread,
below average. Didn't bother with the Vermont sourdough
or any of the other breads. I'm not really that much of
a starch guy.

We got out pretty quickly, with only a small handful of
things for Carol and another small handful of things for
her friends, which is good, as we'd whiled away extra at
Long Trail. So we hot-footed it down 91 to Connecticut
instead of doing the leisurely rte 5 thing as we'd planned.