We both had the Friday after Thanksgiving off. We're not what you'd call "Black Friday shoppers", so we went to a couple of small towns with thriving downtown shopping districts; Keene, NH and Northampton, MA.

Keene, in the Mount Monadnock region of NH, really celebrates local and quality food. The community is unabashedly locavore, home to many fine restaurants markets like the wonderful Hannah Grimes Marketplace as well as the rapidly-approaching Monadnock Food Coop. We had an excellent lunch at Lucas Mediterranean Cafe just off the circle at the end of downtown. Keene is between Peterborough and Brattleboro, two more fine foodie shopping areas.

Between Keene and Northampton you can take I-91, but it wasn't a highway kind of day, so we took Route 10 through Northfield to Miller's Falls, then Route 63 and Route 47 to Northampton.

Miller's Falls is home to Element Brewing, one of the many Microbrewers of the Pioneer Valley and winner of the Best of Show for this expedition.

Dan and Ben of Element brew some very big, very interesting ales. For example, their winter seasonal, Winter Ion, is a Belgian White style, brewed with cocoa powder to accompany the coriander seed and orange peel. Then more coriander seed and cocoa nibs are added while it ages. The result is a big, festive, cold-weather beer that epitomizes their fearless approach, uncanny inpriation, and brilliant technique. Element Ales are hard to find and expensive, but they are suitable for very special occasions.

After Miller's Falls we stopped in at the legendary Montague Book Mill ("Books you don't need in a place you can't find") where Lorna got a bunch of books and I got a cookbook that I won't go into now.

The days are short now, and it was after dark when we reached Northampton. We shopped a bit, but I got distracted by a Tibetan restaurant called Lhasa Cafe.

I am always interested in the foodways of other cultures, and have long wanted to try Bocha, the famous Tibetan tea made with yak butter and salt. Lorna was dubious, but she was a little hungry so I got the plates shown here: Tingmo is the awesomely light, fluffy, folded steamed dumpling in the back, then a platter of 10 Momo (dumplings): Yak, beef, chicken, potato, and veggie. They were delicious with two provided sauces. As we were leaving I heard another patron special-order a spicier sauce; I will have to look into that when we return.

The dinner was so good that we ordered the Shingtok Bakley apple dessert: a fat apple ring baked in a crispy pastry dusted with powdered sugar and served with ginger ice cream. Lorna talked about it all the way home from Northampton!