She's Baaaccck...

Didja miss me??!! 

So, instead of attempting to put the past 6 days into words, I will do it with pictures. They're worth a thousand, right?

Stop #1: Ursinus College, Collegeville PA

P.F. Chang's - loved how they served the wine flight!

The Collegeville Diner

Campus

Stop #2: Haverford College, Haverford PA

Love it.

Stop #3: Lancaster Art Hotel, Lancaster PA

The restaurant used all local, organic food! I was a happy foodie :)

Amouse bouche: Gazpacho

lettuce+cauliflower+zucchini+beans+snap peas+ fennel+goat cheese = YUM.

One of the best pizzas...ever.

Chocolate cake w. raw almond butter filling. I all but licked the plate.

!!!

Stop #4: Goucher College, Towson MD

[Pit stop in Pittsburgh!]

Baskin-Robbins kiddie cone soft-serve :)

This salad had some of the tastiest roasted tofu EVER. I want to know what they did to it!

Stop #6: Oberlin College, Oberlin OH

Solar energy panels power their entire environmental studies building - too cool, right?!

Dinner at the Black River Cafe:

Homemade raspberry-lavender sorbet. Amazing doesn't even begin to cover it.

Our last stop was to Hyde Park, NY to check out the Culinary Institute of America for me. They didn't allow pictures inside the school and I was so focused on the tour, I didn't take pics of the campus - but it was gorgeous. To sum up, I was in love with it. And if it hadn't been sealed earlier, when we passed by one of the baking classes that focuses on gluten-free/vegan-friendly baking, one of the students brought out biscotti they had just made for our tour to try. I am a little superstitious about talking about the possibility of my going there, just because, um, let's just say I had a truly awful, scarring experience with the undergrad college application process and now I'm totally scared of jinxing this next upcoming process. Stupid maybe, but...I can't help it.

We ate lunch in the school's student-staffed cafe. Mom got a pesto-white bean soup:

It wasn't, perhaps, amazing, but it was most definitely delicious and worth the price. I had a chopped veggie salad:

Now this reached amazing-status. Radish, beets, green beans, carrot, zucchini, fennel, potatoes in a champagne vinaigrette. So simple but so good. And I had a roll because I was not about to leave without trying the bread:

Oh, this is up there on my favorite-breads list. Yes, I have one - it also includes the rolls at Legal Seafoods, the bread from our local Italian specialty food store, and the Tuscan bread at Sergio's. This was a perfect little piece of carb heaven. Crispy-crunchy on the outside, doughy and fluffy on the inside. If I learn how to recreate these, my life could be complete.

The drive home was brutal beyond belief - what should have been a 2 1/2 hour zip turned into a traffic-laden 5 1/2 hour nightmare. Despite a downright blissful yoga class this morning, I'm still exhausted. BUT, it was a very successful and pretty fun trip. My brother has a better idea of what he wants in a school, and I had some seriously delicious eats.

I think I'm going to sleep for a veeerrrrrry long time tomorrow. I can't wait!

~Namaste~