thewayne | WARNING, WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! DANGER!!!

Me wife and I went to Ruidoso for Valentine's Day yesterday. Among other things that we did, such as me buying a license for robbing the Wells-Fargo stage, we visited a shoe store that Russ wanted to see. We'd located it on a previous trip but they were close, so we window shopped the store and the other retailers in this little cluster.

One was a wine shop that looked to me like it might also be an epicure shop. It was closed, so there was no way to be certain.

Well, yesterday we confirmed that it was, indeed, an epicure shop.

To the tune of $75.

And that was without buying any wine.

Amongst MANY wonderful things, such as award-wining pasta imported from Italy, they had genuine Parmigiano Reggiano. As I was looking over the blocks to select one, I noticed that one had broken into three blocks and had burst the wrapping. I brought it to the owner's attention and asked jokingly if that meant we could have samples (we'd already sampled some wine). She said sure, and a couple of minutes later I tried it.

WOW!

I have to say that I love cheeses that bite back, and this one certainly did!

Anyway, we left with lots of goodies and that store cost more than our French dinner did (sans tax) 90 minutes later. I got two blocks of cheese and some parmesan wafer crisps, Russ got some truffles, chocolate cups, a raspberry filling for said cups, and perhaps something else.

Wonderful stuff!