Indian food has become the go-to comfort food in my household. One of my favorite places to pick up take-out nan, samosas and aloo gobi is Taste of India in West Hartford.

However, there's a new Indian place in WH that is becoming a favorite of mine for eating in. Ambassador of India has been welcomed to the neighborhood for being kosher as well as vegetarian. Located at 968 1/2 Farmington Ave (sometimes referred to as 968R), it's in a small building that has now housed three restaurants in as many years so I'm hoping this one will stick.

This is the final week of the Rice Talk Festival at Forbidden City Bistro in Middletown. If you love Dim Sum, you might want to make a visit.

Willimantic's annual Boom Box Parade will head down Main Street at 11:00 a.m. on Wednesday. Marching from Jillson Square to Memorial Park, participants carry boom boxes tuned to the marching band music broadcasted on WILI 1400 AM.

I don't know of any parade that pays better tribute to independence than this one. There's no theme and no pre-registration. Marchers only need to wear red, white, and blue and bring radios, but everyone is encouraged to get as creative as possible with their costumes. Get the full history of the parade and see photos at WILI's website.

If you can't make it on the Fourth, Willimantic is great for a visit anytime. My last visit included dinner at Willimantic Brewing Company's Main Street Cafe.

Housed in a 1909 former post office, the cafe is a good stop for casual diners as well as serious beer fans.

After dinner, we heard some bands play at the Annex. The Annex hosts live music and dance events on the second floor of the Windham Arts Center, a gallery and community space that is also the home of the Windham Area Arts Collaborative.

When our plans in East Hartford fell through on Monday night, we found ourselves driving around EH and Glastonbury looking for somewhere to eat. When we walked out of our first choice because we weren't getting served, it seemed like our date was doomed. We were about to get on Route 2 and head home when I suggested we drive around Somerset Square, though I referred to it as "that little expensive mall," to forage for a restaurant. Max Amore, a branch of the Max family tree, looked good and we knew our evening would be redeemed as soon as we walked in. The staff was friendly and accommodating and our meals were just as comforting. I had to take most of my dinner home with me because I had filled up on focaccia, olives, and roasted garlic. Evening saved.

Check out the close-up on Farmington Bucolic Delight and its acccompanying photo tour.

My idea of Farmington fun includes Naples Pizza and paddling on the Farmington River from the put-in under the bridge on Route 4.

One of my favorite restaurants, China Pan, is technically in Farmington but since it's in a big un-bucolic shopping plaza I always think of it as a resident of that non-town, The Mall.

Sample a little bit of everything at tonight's Taste of Black Rock, a fundraiser/celebration of the culinary offerings of Black Rock, the neighborhood just at the edge of Bridgeport on the border of Fairfield.

Tickets cost $35 and include items from a variety of restaurants while benefitting the Black Rock Arts & Entertainment District. Get tickets, directions, and more information from the event's host: the Black Rock Art Center.

During my last visit to Black Rock, I enjoyed some comfort food at Bloodroot, a vegetarian restaurant and bookstore. Check out Bloodroot's website for a list of upcoming events and classes.

Women's portraits cover the walls of the dining room at Bloodroot.

The Falafel Sandwich - deep-fried patties of ground chickpeas or fava beans wrapped in pita - is one of my favorite meals.

I don't think I could bring up falafel in Connecticut without mentioning Mamoun's Falafel Restaurant at 85 Howe Street in New Haven. Opened in 1977, the place is an institution. The food is tasty and cheap and you can eat there until 3:00 AM. If I don't get falafel, I get spinach pie.

Mamoun's makes pockets...

My favorite falafel, however, is from Tangiers International at 668 Farmington Avenue in West Hartford. It's on the corner of Prospect Avenue right at the city line. Tangiers is actually an international grocery store offering items from Europe and the Caribbean as well as from the Middle East. Order a falafel sandwich from the lunch counter and pick up some of Tangiers' own pastries on the way out.

...At Tangiers they wrap it up.

My boyfriend and I will be visiting Mystic for an extended Thanksgiving weekend. Can you suggest a place to go for Thanksgiving Dinner? Thanks!
-Amanda

Hi Amanda. I know that the Flood Tide Restaurant will be serving on Thanksgiving. The Flood Tide is on the grounds of the Inn at Mystic, a historic hotel with views of the Sound that prides itself on hosting Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall on their honeymoon.

Any suggestions for a scenic drive and lunch in the Northeast corner of Connecticut? We will be coming from the Worcester, Mass. area on Saturday and celebrating our anniversary with a daytrip.
-Deidre

Happy Anniversary, Deidre! You should consider stopping at The Vanilla Bean Cafe in Pomfret. Everybody loves that place. Before your road trip, check out this story on our Quiet Corner.

Going to hear David Sedaris Saturday night in Waterbury at the Palace Theater. Do you know of any good restaurants in the area?
-Chris

That sounds like a great show, Chris. As you can tell from my post on the Palace Theater, I have high hopes for the Brass City.

Within walking distance of the theater, there's Drescher's, which is known to be a little formal. If you don't mind driving, I know people love Bacco's and Carmen Anthony's Steakhouse.

A co-worker of mine who is from that area highly recommends Crossroads Cantina. She says they have good Mexican food as well as burgers and ribs, but she especially likes the drinks that come in big jars, like the Jack Daniels punch.

Have a great night!

More Waterbury Restaurants

For my annual apple collection, I picked 20 pounds at Johnny Appleseed's Farm at Routes 83 and 13 in Ellington.

So far I've made two apple crisps and I will probably turn the rest into pies.

More Applecentric Items on Explore New England
125 years on, great grandma's `recipe' still in the family - Fun Story about an Old Mystic Cider Mill
Last Year's Visit to Rogers Orchards
Some of My Favorite Orchards
The CT PYO Message Board Thread

Telling a reader about Alchemy Juice Bar Cafe piqued my curiosity. So we headed there for very tasty lunchfast on a recent Sunday.

The menu includes sandwiches, entrees, breakfast, smoothies, teas and organic juices...and oxygen.

Being full from my spicy tofu wrap and peanut butter smoothie, I didn't have room for oxygen. I did peruse the retail corner of the cafe. They have organic health and beauty goods, clothes, books, and enough lefty bumper stickers to cover an entire microbus.

On Sunday, my mother and I headed to White Flower Farm. She brought the gift certificate she had gotten for her birthday and I brought my camera. Neither of us brought directions.

But I did bring my copy of National Geographic's The American Road: Atlas & Travel Planner and was confident it would get us there. It had once gotten me through 20 states on a month-long road trip.

It's easy to find Litchfield. The town's historic green lies at the intersection of routes 63, 202, and 118. Though White Flower Farm is a 56-year-old Litchfield institution, the property is technically over the border in Morris. When we stopped to inquire about our destination and have drinks at The Blue Bakery, we were assured by some friendly patrons that we were to keep heading south on 63 and we couldn't miss the place.

White Flower Farm is a mail-order horticultural business with a retail store and gardens for wandering.

I spied this living advertisement for a butterfly bush.

Many of the plants in the gardens are available for purchase at the nursery. I took advantage of the sale on annuals and bought a few fuschias for the planter that had been sitting empty on my front step all summer.

Back in the center of town, we had sandwiches at The Village Restaurant and filled out the afternoon with window-shopping. Litchfield's storefronts along the green offer all sorts of pretty, expensive things.

More on Litchfield
A village ideal on display
Explore New England's Litchfield Guide

Hartford's Taste of the Nation is from 6:00 PM to 9:00 PM tonight at 960 Main, "The New G. Fox," which is just a new name for the old G. Fox building. Taste of the Nation is a fundraising event for anti-hunger causes in Connecticut and offer tastings of food and wine from over a dozen of Hartford's upscale restaurants. Tickets are $75 at the door.

For more Connecticut events, check out the Explore New England Events listings.

There's this billboard on 84 that says, "Come to Hartford. I swear, it's fun." It's a quote from the New York Times story "Downtown Hartford Stirs from Slumber" that ran in January.

I'm not sure if this slogan is catching on, but I can tell you about one place in Hartford that, I swear, is fun: City Steam at 942 Main Street.

Housed in a multi-level, historic H.H. Richardson building, City Steam has cast-iron details that give it a lot of 1870s charm, but it also has all the amenities of a modern bar, i.e. pool tables, several big TVs, and a full menu.

My party had some Brewery Lemonades with our table of appetizers, but City Steam is probably better known for its menu of special home brews. Even if you don't drink, you'll enjoy the names, like Naughty Nurse and White Rabbit.

Recently, I was there on a low-key Saturday afternoon, but I've also visited on a Friday night when the place was full and buzzing. I imagine it would be packed on the night of a UConn basketball game. Remember, college basketball is religion in CT, and the Civic Center, which hosts several home games, is a short walk (or stumble) down Pratt Street, home to a few other drinking establishments.

On a recent afternoon of traveling up and down Whitney Avenue in Hamden, I found two great stops.

First, up at the Cheshire end, we stopped at Duck's Soup, a vegetarian place at 3584 Whitney Avenue.

We had wraps and cookies and also enjoyed some of their reading material.

The owners of Duck's Soup aren't just animal lovers, they're animal keepers. The restaurant is decorated with photos of their horses, ducks, and other pets.

The restaurant is across from Sleeping Giant State Park. Now that the weather is getting nicer, I hope to get up there soon and take more photos.

Later on, down at the New Haven end at 1235 Whitney Avenue, we stopped at Books & Co.

Books & Co. offers used books at half off the cover price from just about any genre you can name. They also have a coffee bar. It's a nice spot for sitting and reading.

I recently had a great day of lunching and tea-sipping with friends in New Haven. We sat down to eat at Claire's Corner Copia.

One friend ordered this High-Protein Salad. I meant to take a photo of my meal, the Corner Copia Burrito, but I launched into eating it as soon as it arrived.

We had been thinking and talking about Claire's cake selection on the drive over. They are very tempting.

But, instead we decided to stretch our legs. We looked in windows up and down Chapel Street and then sat down for some tea at Oolongs Tea Bar.

Oolongs has an extensive variety of loose-leaf teas. You can take a whiff of these samples before you order. I had the tasty Organic Lemongrass.

For more ideas on where to eat and drink in the Elm City, check out Explore New England's New Haven Guide.

Just because we don't have any major league teams doesn't mean we don't have and love sports bars. In most cases, we are divided by allegiances to Boston and New York teams. But as a state, Connecticut is unwavering in its devotion to one sport: college basketball. It's like an organized religion around here.

I checked the schedules, and UConn isn't playing on Sunday, so there might be a football game on at these bars that night.

One of the popular joints in Hartford is Coach's. It's located downtown (the faithful like to gather near the Civic Center, the Huskies House of Worship) so check out my post about parking in Hartford.

Continuing the trend of establishments named with sports lingo is Rookies in Cromwell. People just plain love this place. The same goes for Sliders in Berlin.

I recently read in the Courant that TK's offers 30 flavors of their famous wings. I can't really imagine what those flavors are, but it sounds like a good place to watch a game. TK's has locations in New Haven and Danbury.

Know of a good place to watch the Super Bowl? Post it on the messageboard.

Before I tell you about my visit to Mystic Pizza, let's get a few things straight.

1) Mystic Pizza is a restaurant that opened on Mystic's Main Street in 1973.

2) Mystic Pizza is a 1988 movie starring Lili Taylor, Annabeth Gish and some other actress.

3) I've watched Mystic Pizza, or parts of it, on TV at least eight times over several Sunday afternoons (and I know you have, too).

The restaurant was the inspiration for the movie, which was filmed in and around Mystic, but it doesn't appear in the movie. What you see on the screen is some kind of stunt-double restaurant.

When I stopped in recently, I had a tasty slice and a salad. I think Mystic Pizza did have a burst of sightseers when the movie came out and I'm sure the place gets really crowded by tourists in the summer since it's right in downtown Mystic. But what you'll find in the off-season is a good local restaurant serving families and maybe even hosting a birthday party.

The movie does live on in the restaurant. The walls are covered with autographed posters and still photos. The spaces that don't pay tribute to the movie are filled in with stills from The Sopranos and mob movies. I saw at least one roller skate on the wall.

You can read Mystic Pizza's complete history at www.mysticpizza.com.

Also in Mystic:
Mystic Restaurants
Mystic Hotels
Mystic Sights

Now that my Christmas frenzy is over, I'm thinking about all the places I want to see next year and the fun things I want to do. I'd like to think I'm more likely to stick with these resolutions if I publish them on the Internet for everyone to read.

1. Try snowshoeing.
Roaring Brook Nature Center in Canton rents snowshoes for $6/hour ($4/hour for kids) for tramping along the nearby Werner's Woods trails.

2. Eat out in New Haven more often.
This city has just about any kind of food you would want, but its most revered offering is its pizza. It's actually the birthplace of American pizza. Thank you, New Haven!

3. Go antiquing in Litchfield County.
I have Tiffany taste on a Target budget, so I don't know that I'll bring anything home with me. But I love browsing and the Northwest Corner is known for its antique stores.

4. Kayak the Housatonic.
I definitely won't be attempting this one until at least May, but I'm already looking forward to it. I have my own boat, but rentals are available from Clarke Outdoors in West Cornwall.

5. Take more photos for my loyal readers.
Wherever I venture in 2006, I will be sure to take lots of photos for all four of you.

Happy New Year!

I recently visited the Wood-n-Tap on Sisson Avenue in Hartford to celebrate a friend's birthday.

The Tap is a cozy place to spend a Saturday evening with a congenial crowd. They have a full menu, but their biggest hits are some of their snacks: the little Slider-style hamburgers called Bar Bites and Softies, warm soft pretzels.

Later a few of us headed to Koy Lounge for some karaoke. The lounge is at the back of Butterfly Restaurant on Farmington Avenue in West Hartford.

Whether you're a performer or a spectator, this place is great for karaoke on Friday and Saturday nights. Some of the guys were definitely ringers, but everyone is welcome at the mic. I saw and heard the entire karaoke spectrum, from the guy who sang flawless renditions of both "My Way" and "Unchained Melody" to the laid-back trio who warbled through most of the Allman Brothers catalog. The crowd cheered for all of them.

I made my first visit to the new Whole Foods Market in West Hartford this weekend. There was a lot of buzz about the WF opening because this is just something people get excited about around here and because it's part of a large development project that's always in the news anyway.

What really had me curious, though, was this thing called Candy Island. Whole Foods has this candy station with a chocolate fountain and fresh chocolate-dipped strawberries. You can see the truffles being made.

So I finally went to Candy Island. And it was okay. It's not like I was expecting Oompa Loompas and a chocolate river or anything but I wasn't really moved.

Then I started walking around and looking at what was under the glass. They have the prettiest truffles I have ever seen. There are hearts and pyramids and espresso cups shaped like...espresso cups. Some are topped with hot pepper, crystallized ginger or other exotic flavors. I didn't buy anything. I couldn't decide. But I'll be back.

The Candy Island chocolate fountain at the Whole Foods in Austin, TX

Even though I've been dazzled by this newcomer, I will always be a loyal fan of Connecticut's own Munson's Chocolates. Munson's was founded in 1946 and remains a family-owned and operated business. They have stores around the state, including the main store in Bolton, which is also where the candy is made.

A glimpse into the Munson's Chocolates factory

I've added two new farms to my list of fall must-visits. Though pick-your-own has died down, these farms offer Connecticut-made goodies throughout the winter.

First, we hit the Rogers Orchards store on Long Bottom Road in Southington. They have an impressive variety of apples and other produce. I did some pick-your-own from the shelf and stocked up on apple butter and pumpkin butter, too.

We did go to the Rogers' PYO orchard down the street for some Ida Reds. They were gorgeous.

Next we headed to another Southington destination, Karabin Farms. Karabin offers a wagon ride to the pick-your-own orchards and a farm store full of goodies and gifts. There are also cows, pigs, chickens and other farm friends to visit.

Like it says in my bio, my favorite restaurant is It's Only Natural Restaurant (386 Main Street, Middletown). The food is primarily vegetarian, but most omnivores will enjoy ION's delicious options as well as the homey atmosphere and eclectic drink menu.

The restaurant is always decorated with art for sale, from folksy sculpture to watercolors, as well as other funky items. Last night, there was a vintage Vespa in the center of the main dining room. The other dining area, the Cafe Room, sometimes features live music and there is also patio seating for warmer weather.

The specials menu suggests a wine for each dish. However, I prefer the peanut butter smoothie.

More info (inlcuding a map): www.ionrestaurant.com

In the Area
Kidcity: an interactive museum for little kids. I once went with a two-year-old and he was entertained for hours.

Main Street Market (386 Main Street): a small shopping center including jewelry, clothing and gifts at Echo Trading Co. and African art at PBR Ltd. It's Only Natural Restaurant is located at the back of Main Street Market.

More Info
Middletown Downtown Business District: lists of everything to do in M'town.