You may not know this, but Cyril is a pretty talented snowboarder.  Each year when winter hits he goes out and brings his board to some of the good ski mountains along the east coast (and a few out west too).  Miriam doesn’t do any kind of winter sports, but she’ll sometimes tag along just to ride the gondolas at the resorts, or go snow tubing, or hike at some nearby trails.  Anyway, at the end of January the Northeast got hit with a blizzard, so Cyril decided to take advantage of the fresh snow and head up to New Hampshire to hit the slopes, with Miriam in tow to just hang out and check out some interesting things to do up there.  We made a weekend of it, including checking out some cool places to eat, and we’re going to feature here all the interesting food we found.  Be warned, however, that we do show one image of meat in this post.

The first place we went was the town of Lincoln, home of Loon Mountain ski resort.  Before Cyril headed to the mountain we decided to get some breakfast, and we discovered that New Hampshirites really love themselves some pancakes (probably because there’s an abundance of maple syrup to tap from local trees).  Luckily, Lincoln has its own pancake place in the form of Flapjacks, which is just down the road from Loon Mountain.  We each got something different there for breakfast – for Miriam it was the chocolate chip pancakes, topped with the restaurant’s homemade maple butter …

… plus a side of home fries.

Meanwhile, Cyril got the Hungry as a Bear breakfast, which comes with two pancakes, two eggs, bacon, sausage, and home fries – plus he ordered an extra grilled English muffin with it all.

Later that day, while Cyril was snowboarding, Miriam sett out to explore the town and see what other interesting food was on offer.  First she headed over to The Moon Bakery & Cafe and grabbed two cookies to share:  one ginger molasses (on the right) and one trail mix, made with oats, nuts, and dried cranberries.

She also went to check out Chutters, a local candy store that has several locations in New Hampshire.  The original shop has the world’s longest candy counter, clocking in at 112 feet and verified by Guinness World Records.  At the Chutters in Lincoln, the candy counter is only 63 feet long, and the way it works is that you grab a paper bag and a plastic glove and then go nuts picking out the candy that you want, and at the end you pay by the pound.  So Miriam got a selection of the chocolates – this is a combo of chocolate peanut butter caramels, chocolate covered cookie dough, chocolate covered brownie batter, cookies and cream caramels, birthday cake cookie bites, milk chocolate cake batter bites, and peppermint bark shortbread.

Then Miriam headed into the neighboring town of North Woodstock to check out Woodstock Pie and Coffee Company and get a slice of their peanut butter pie.

Back in Lincoln, Miriam treated herself to lunch at Black Mtn. Burger Co., which makes their own in-house veggie burger.  This one is topped with white cheddar cheese, avocado, and jalapeños, plus some sweet potato waffle fries on the side.

That night, after the slopes at Loon Mountain closed, we headed a little farther north to a town called Littleton, where we were told that Littleton Freehouse Taproom and Eatery was the best restaurant around.  We decided to split two appetizers there:  here’s the roasted Cajun carrots, sprinkled with Parmesan and Cajun seasoning and served with a spicy aioli.

And here are the panko-breaded fried cheese curds.

And we also split an entree of the mac n’ cheese, made with Vermont white cheddar and topped with Parmesan-panko breadcrumbs.

The next morning we had … more pancakes!  We drove over to the town of Sugar Hill to check out Polly’s Pancake Parlor, which many people rate as the best pancake restaurant in the state.  Here’s the magnificent breakfast we got:  one gingerbread waffle topped with their homemade maple spread, one platter of whole wheat pumpkin pancakes (which was the special flavor for the day) with two eggs and home fries, and a side of potato pancakes.

We also bought some of their blueberry scones to take with us for a mid-day snack.

And finally, on our way home at the end of the weekend we decided to stop into Tilton House of Pizza in Tilton, which many say has the best pizza in all of New Hampshire.  They specialize in Greek-style pizza, which means that the pie is cooked in a pan, making for a chewy crust that’s somewhere in between thin and thick.  We decided to go for the Cindy’s eggplant pizza – it’s topped with breaded eggplant, garlic, roasted peppers, and red onions.

Of course there’s tons and tons of restaurants and food in New Hampshire that we didn’t get to try over our weekend away, but we think we got a pretty good sampling of things to eat.  We had pancakes at two different places plus pizza, burgers, some interesting brewery food, and plenty of snacks and baked goods.  We don’t go to New Hampshire very often, but we’re glad we got the chance to spend a weekend there and see what the state has on offer.