Gratuitous banana shot

I've been travelling a little too much lately, so right off the bat I'm going to admit that this is going to be a pretty lame blog posting -- yet not as lame as you would think.

Why am I changing my mind mid-sentence?

First of all, this post is going to inform you that I've been in both Grenada and Montreal over the past week, and have eaten sublimely on each island. Some of my culinary findings will be showing up in future stories in House & Home magazine, on the Food & Wine blog, in the National Post, and yes, right here on the National Nosh.

There's the housekeeping bit out of the way.

So why else isn't this blog posting super lame? Because it includes a photo of a monkey eating a banana!!

Eat here: The Tasting Room

The Tasting Room, on Seattle’s Post Alley, is a spot to sip the state’s finest wines and nibble plates of local Beecher’s cheese while improving your high score at Boggle. It’s practically the definition of a hidden gem. I had almost forgotten about my visit there last December, until I saw the list of Oprah’s Ultimate Favourite Things from her annual show this week, and Beecher’s Mac and Cheese made the grade (good cheese makes good mac and cheese, natch.)

In other breaking news, I’m off to Grenada for a week, where I’ll be cooking and hiking and snorkeling and visiting rum distilleries and waterfalls, a chocolate factory and a nutmeg processing station, I’ll be river tubing and … it would appear, not doing a lot of relaxing.

No biggy: That’s what places like the Tasting Room are for.