Wine, Flammkuchen and Recharging

We’re officially halfway through January and hopefully you’ve acclimated to writing 2021 without having to creatively turn your 0 in to a 1 after writing 2020 for the millionth time. I know I’m not the only one guilty of this. Also, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but take your Christmas decorations down (it’s me, I needed to hear this).

    John and I have slowly taken down some of our Christmas decorations, but we’ve been so busy with other tasks that it’s been low on the totem pole of “to do’s”. Our Christmas tree and ornaments were put away on Monday morning before we headed out to Fredericksburg for our first adventure book vacation. Like I said before, work has pretty much been a non-stop thing. Working from home is great in so many ways, it allows us to be flexible with our schedules and we’re not confined to wearing real pants to work, hello sweatpants. But it also caters to working more than if we went to a normal 9-5 job. Even when we’re done working for the day we habitually monitor our inboxes and our ever-growing volume of work, anticipating notifications even when they’re muzzled. So needless to say, we were both looking forward to unplugging and relaxing for a while.

    Off to Fredericksburg we went. For those of you not familiar with Fredericksburg it’s a city with German Heritage located in central Texas, known for its wineries. It’s about an hour drive for us, so not too far at all for our little getaway. We arrived around 11am and our check in to our Airbnb cabin wasn’t until 3pm so we had some time. We headed up Main Street which is the center of action for this city, boasting a number of shops, boutiques, art galleries and restraunts. One of my favorite shops was “Rustin’ Rob’s Texas Gourmet Foods”. Home to over 350 gourmet foods from nut butters, mustards, jams, salsas, dressings all available for sampling. One of my samplings was Jalapeno Peanut Butter, surprisingly the two flavors worked well together but the money was on this Salted Caramel Pecan Butter. I of course had to check the ingredient label to see what this thick heavenly butter was made out of and let’s just say you definitely couldn’t sub out your normal nut butter for this one.

     From there we headed up the road to the vineyards for wine tasting. This was actually my first experience with wine tasting. My assessment was, I enjoy reds over whites and my favorite was a nice Port. After hitting up two wineries it was time to get checked in to our Airbnb which was a really awesome cabin close enough to main street to have access to everything but set back far enough that we had privacy. Once settled in dinner time was rolling around and what do you eat for dinner when you’re in a town with rich German heritage? German food of course.

    German food was also a first for me! My assessment? Absolutely mouthwatering. This is one of those meals I’ll look back on when I’m deep in prep and remember fondly while I’m counting out my grains of rice. The Flammkuchen (German Pizza!) and Schnitzel were out of this world good, like an explosion of flavor on each taste bud. John and I appreciate the occasions that we get to sit down in a restaurant and have a meal together because it is such a rarity. No food scale, no Tupperware, just some good food and conversation. It truly is the little things that can make life so rich.

    We headed back the next day after getting breakfast and going for hike. Although this was a quick trip it was just what we needed to recharge before heading in to another week full of work. Regenerating your energy is so important and something that should be made a priority. Unplugging is a key component to our personal happiness and work productivity. The two halves of a healthy whole.

    Our next adventure will be cleaning out our garage to make a home for the ’68 Ford Mustang Fastback that’s in route to San Antonio as we speak. We’ve (John especially) have been eagerly awaiting the arrival of this classic beauty. Stay tuned for updates and to find out if we ever take down the rest of our Christmas decorations!

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Renee Jewett IFBB Pro