Vermont foodies are cray cray! (Or: Why SArina set her new foodie series in Vermont)

Vermont is famous for its Green Mountains, for skiing and liberalism and for an obsessive foodie culture, not necessarily in that order.

Take Heady Topper. This micro brew scored a rare (really rare!) perfect 100 rating from a couple of national publications. And now people trek from all over the place just to try to get their hands on some. It isn't easy.

Exhibit A: Elle Kennedy tried to send us some as a Christmas present last year. She found some dude on Craigslist selling it on the black market. Then she was outbid! He got all nervous about it, too, because a couple of people have been arrested for reselling it. He actually wrote to Elle "DELETE THIS EMAIL." Dude. The NSA is going to find you anyway.

Exhibit B: If you want to buy some, you need to know 1) which food co-ops they sell to and 2) on which days, and when the drop-off is. The Hunger Mountain co-op gets its delivery on Thursday at 9AM. The line begins forming around 7:30.

This is Heady Topper, the holy grail of beers.

Last week at a family dinner the husband said, "I'm taking Mom out to brunch Thursday for her birthday. In Montpelier."

To which his brother replied. "Interesting timing. When does Heady Topper deliver to Montpelier?" (Note: We do not live in Montpelier. It's an hour's drive away.)

The husband scored two (two!) cases of this gem by using his mother (on her birthday) to stand in line with him. That's more than he managed to score while chaperoning my son's class trip to the state capital building a couple of years ago. ("Be good on the tour, kids! I'll be back in a jif!") He only got one case that time. 

So if you're wondering why BITTERSWEET and the other True North novels belong in Vermont, now you know. Vermont foodies are cray cray. (And adorable. If obsessive.)

BITTERSWEET (True North #1) can be pre-ordered on Amazon | iBooks | Nook | Kobo.