Diane and Justin Fourton (pictured left), Pecan Lodge Catering, have created a wonderful dish, The Hot Mess. Read about it and more on SocialWhirl.com. www.socialwhirl.com and click on Extreme Epicurean.

We're all going to be drinking/eating Matcha tea. We first read about the health benefits in the current issue of D HOME while having a manicure by the fabulous Elen, who shared that in Brazil, they drank/ate matcha quite often. She says it's an acquired taste, but well worth it.

So, to Teavana's web site we go to order from our sponsor and then find more info. below: The health benefits of matcha tea exceed those of green tea because when you drink matcha you ingest the whole leaf, not just the brewed water. One glass of matcha is the equivalent of 10 glasses of green tea in terms of its nutritional value and antioxidant content. For maximum nutritional benefit, matcha tea is unparalleled. We'll try it and see and keep you updated here. Let us know your thoughts.

Order here: If you order from this photo on Socialwhirl.com's Extreme Epicurean, we'll receive a small pay back. It helps offset the costs of running this web site. Thank you:)

We researched links for complete coverage of the Kentucky Derby and have some up with some winners!   Dallas' own Kenny Troutt and business partner, Bill Casner's WinStar Farms' Super Saver has won the Kentrucky Derby! We have links to Marcus Green's article in the Courier Journal in Louisville, watch videos and more.

This page below also links to interviews with Diane Lane and Secretariat's owner Penny Chenery. Lane portrays Chenery in the upcoming Disney movie about the Triple Crown winner's life.

Derby Day and all of the surrounding events are covered. Everything from hats, luncheons, and last but not least, the Barnstable Brown gala videos, photos.

Lots of links, beginning here:http://www.socialwhirl.com/SWBarnstableBrown.html

After reading about the new restaurant, Dish, in Modern Luxury Dallas'  review by Dotty Griffith, we decided it would be the perfect place to celebrate my friend's birthday, so we made reservations, which are advised for dinner.

It was a Friday night at 8:30 and the place was bustling with the young professional crowd, neighborhood regulars and people like us, who are there for the fabulous food and the experience.

We requested seating at the booths against the far wall, backed by draped curtains, which face out onto the entire restaurant. We all agreed, the best seats in the house.  Shawn, our maitre' d, saw to it we weren't disappointed.

The wait staff quickly brought water, offered menus and took drink orders, which were delivered pronto. Birthday girl was in the mood for the black mussels with chorizo, sweet tomatoes and garlic. Our waiter, Ira, suggested a simple flatbread with sea salt, herbs, reggiano cheese, - which was the perfect pairing and enough for three to share. The presentation and quality of the mussels hit all the right vibes. Just enough chorizo and sweet tomato with garlic to moisten the flatbread and not leave a drop behind.

For salads, my friends both had the baby iceberg salad with bleu cheese, bacon, balsamic vinaigrette. The wedge was actually cold - not room temp, like it had been sitting out for a while, as in some restaurants. It was also not too big. A nice medium size wedge, cut 1/2 and the toppings were generously sprinkled on top of both halves. A winner, for sure.

I had the Dish Ceasar salad with Romaine Hearts, Reggiano cheese, croutons and enjoyed every bite. The Reggiano cheese was mixed with generous long shavings and some crumbles. A nice combination, showing how fresh all of the ingredients are. The croutons were not so dried as to crackle and crunch too much.

For entrees, two of us chose the seared natural jumbo sea scallops with roasted sweet corn, bacon, poached egg, parmesan and pearl cous cous. The scallops were jumbo, not large. Sear marks appeared all around - not just on the top and bottom - and the texture was firm but not overdone or soft and mushy. They were just right. The poached egg had been prepared free-hand and the yolk was dark yellow and runny enough to mix in with the bacon and cous cous. I wish Dotty could have experienced this dish!

The other dish we shared was the fresh catch of the day, which was a baked thick halibut filet, topped with a panko crust. Just sweet and crunchy enough to offset the fresh fish. It was served with roasted sweet corn, parmesan and pearl cous cous. Another winner.

We shared the dessert of warm banana cake topped with a circle of bruleed banana slices and topped with salted caramel sauce,   served with decaf coffee.

Visit their website at http://www.dish-dallas.com for hours of operation, the menu and directions. We all heartily recommend it and will definitely return!

Alice was real. Her name was Alice Pleasance Liddell. She died in 1932. She and her sisters used to go on picnics with Lewis Carroll in Oxford, England, where he would make up stories to tell the girls. Really.

I thought it would be fun to read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland again, to refresh memory and to be up to date on the story. Then, I remembered a review I read by Joyce Saenz Harris in the Dallas Morning News about a book entitled 'Alice I have Been' by Melanie Benjamin, telling about the real Alice. After reading that article, I knew I had to get the book.

Perusing Amazon.com and entering Alice in Wonderland, brought up an annotated version by Martin Gardner, one of the world's leading authorities on Lewis Carroll. This scholar's annotations alongside the stories are insightful, to say the least. There is scoop on the original  illustrations, which appear in this book, Victorian folklore, superstitions, mid-19th century society, habits and politics of the times that are directly linked in the original story.

If you ever wanted to know a scholar's viewpoint, fact checks, quotes from other scholars, professors and more, this is it. I can't wait to read it!

And to top it off, there are a few books about the new movie by Alex Burton, glossy photos, insider's views, fun facts and trivia about the movie, illustrations, lots of great, fun, reading material, like the one on the left by DK Publishing. There is another one with a foreward by Tim Burton, not available until March 30. I didn't want to wait! But, I'll probably order that one, too.

 So, the weather is getting nicer, time to enjoy some reading outside by a kiva fire or on a blanket at the Dallas Arboretum, imagining rabbit holes and being Alice, going on picnics with Lewis Carroll as a small child and listening to his stories first-hand. Kind of creepy and exciting at the same time.

And in a wild stroke of foresight on the part of the Dallas Museum of Art, Melanie Benjamin, aforementioned author of 'Alice I Have Been,' will be in Dallas on March 19 at the DMA, lecturing about her book. Just bought the tickets. Make those reservations now!

In talking about these three books with my friends and family, my husband is most interested in the annotated version, so we ordered that one. My daughter, 22, wants to read them all, like I do.

My grown-up girlfriends and I are making it a girlfriend's night out at the DMA to see the author. I ordered one book for each of us. It's one gal's birthday, so I'm going to wrap the book in plain brown paper, tie in raffia, put some wacky graphics and a card with some 'dirt' treatment that says READ ME NOW! on her porch next week. What fun!

Click on the book covers to go to the web pages. Full disclosure: We do not receive any commissions from Amazon.com at this time. We are applying for them now. So, if you click through or buy the books, it's a gift to Amazon and not to us. When we receive the affiliate status, we'll publish it.

A while back when Kiepersol Vineyards and Winery first opened near Tyler, TX, my mother-in-law, who lives in that area, took me on a visit to this fabulous place. Mr. Kiepersol apparently has quite a vision. In addition to the beautiful vineyard and winery, there is a wonderful restaurant, a bed and breakfast, an entire residential area, lake, recording studio and party facility with on-site catering.

While we were there, a live theatre experience was going on in an outside area, that was a 1/2 circle with tiered lawn seating carved out of the hill. Quite intimate and close up, the featured show was a local theatre group doing a parody of some of the most famous scenes from Shakespear's plays.

We enjoyed the wine tasting and were especially smitten with the 2005 merlot and 2006 cabernet sauvignon. So, we bought a few cases and vowed to return and stay a little longer.

Here's a link to our video on Socialwhirl.com: http://www.socialwhirl.com/SWVideos.htm