Fall Fabulous Fun

We finally went corn maizin'! WOOT! I think we've tried for the past two years, but it never seemed to work out. This year, we weren't going to miss - all the right ingredients came together: beautiful day, fine friends, and a Yukon.

So we headed towards Monroe and went on a tour of the states.

I think Lucia got some better pictures...Lucia?

Madeline Island Review, cont.

Better late than never, I guess. To echo Loud: in summary, Madeline Island is utterly sublime. We spent another vacation dreaming up ways we could stay. Variations on the bed-and-breakfast theme won, with attached sustainable farm, catering and event services, art lessons and gallery, and, um, a cottage software development shop (?), of course.

Some highlights included:

• The dude who randomly stopped his car directly in front of the camera when we were taking a group picture in front of the chicken shack/diner. Props to Rick for directing us to the best of Wisconsin roadside attractions. We hit this doozy of a giant, possessed loon on the way home.



• As previously featured, we are good cooks. And good eaters.
• The signs at Tom's Burned Down Bar. Another favorite ...

• Joanna and Whitney maintaining a sense of humor in the face of car ridiculousness.
• Running along Lake Superior. So excited for the race in two weeks!
• Ferry rides and other such island prettiness.
  

The sole lowlight:

Frankly Lucia's continuing domination of the beer-shotgunning circuit is getting a little stale. The rest of us don't even have a chance, as evidenced by her clear and nonchalant victory here. Followed by others thinking they may have, in fact one, won. Ah, well, at least the dog enjoyed it.

What's your sign?

Apostle Islands, Fresh Food Strikes Back

Returned to the Madeline Island againg this year, a few more people in tow. Stayed in the same cabin.


The weather was perfect - PURRRRFECT.


What did we do - we ate...


and we ate...


and we ate...

Canning failure

Ok, so I failed in canning last weekend.
It wasn't the canning part, it was the tomato sauce that I was making.
So, I get 25 lbs of tomatoes.
I lay them out all nice.
I chop 4 huge onions and end up crying profusely because they were really pungent.
I blanch, peel and chop every single one of them.
I puree them and put them in a pot with the onions and a dozen other spices.
Then I turn the burner on with the intention of letting it simmer for 1-2 hours.
Well, I turned the burner on too high, then walked away, and burned the hell out of it.
I figured I could salvage what was not burned to the bottom of the pan, so I transfer it to a new pot, put it in the fridge overnight (cuz it's like 11pm at this point) and go to bed.
In the morning, I put it back on the stove to heat because it has to be hot when you can it.
I turn the burner on lower, and walk away.
And burn the hell out of it again.
Needless to say, I felt pretty lame.
So this weekend, the fiancé and I are going to get like 75 lbs of tomatoes, and make tomato sauce and can it along with just plan tomatoes.
This time, I hope to actually make it to the canning part.
I'll just try to think of last weekend as practice :)
And, here's a very appropriate comic for our current canning obsession, enjoy.
http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF226-Preserves.jpg#211

Visual from previous posts

Willy Street Fair

Food for Thought Festival

Fabulous foodiness

Last weekend was a whirlwind of fabulous foodiness (or was it foody fabulousness?) here in Madison. Friday night was the Food for Thought Forum with Dan Barber, Leah Caplan, and Scott Williams. Here's a good summary in the Capital Times. Intangibles-wise, I found it an odd mix of personalities, as Dan is definitely a sarcastic New Yorker, Leah is a dry-humored, tell-it-like-it-is kinda gal, and Scott is about a sweet and earnest as anyone I’ve ever heard. Slight oddness in the Q&A part, but a good mix.

Saturday was the Food for Thought festival. I went to set up at 6 a.m. Despite a few glitches with non-functioning electricity for the sound system and a temporarily lost tent, everything went smooth as silk. The weather was fall-tasticly cool, and there was a steady crowd all day. Most of the exhibitors were happily busy throughout. I heard Cooking with the Stars was hilarious, though I didn’t get to see any of it. All of our volunteers were supahstars,and we got some good media coverage. My info tent spiel got shorter and shorter as the day went on, but it was a fun, exhausting, productive day.

After a nice nap, B&M and I attended the Slow Food RAFT picnic, which has a goal of celebrating-to-save some of our country’s native and heirloom food varieties – from produce to animal breeds. The menu featured some of these varieties from all over the country, including American Plains Bison over polenta (my favorite of the night!), a Mulefoot pork sandwich, an amazing wild rice and apple side, marrow fat bean salad with Door County cherries (my second favorite), fabulous Pleasant Ridge cheese, panna cotta, and hickory nut caramels with sea salt. Wow. We ate so much. So, what did we do next? Go to Cocoliquot for wine and chocolates, of course. What a meal!

Sunday consisted of a trip to the Willy Street Fair, where the infamous parade-o-various-ridiculousnesses passed us by several times and we had kettle corn. We also took a leisurely bike ride around the lake. And, across town, some more canning fabulousness that I hope we'll all get to sample.

Even though temperatures are back to summerlike this week, the air has imperceptibly and firmly flipped the switch to fall. I’ve had my first Bailey’s-n-cocoa in honor of the season. Here’s to many more fall-tastic weekends before winter sets in.

Advertising

This is sort of cheating, as I'm blogging about things that are upcoming, instead of reviewing wonderful Wisconsin things already done. But, these things are wonderful, and several of them are very, very important to me. So, check 'em out, and join me if you can!

1. REAP Food for Thought Festival, this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 14-15. An annual celebration of, homage to, and teaching moment about all that is good and great about local, sustainable eating. Come to the forum Friday night or the festival Saturday morning. I'll be at the info tent at the top of the King Street on Saturday from 6 a.m. on - stop by and say 'hi'!
2. Eat Local Challenge, September 14-23. Take a challenge to eat at least 10 percent of your food from local sources for a week. Piece of cake! If you sign up and need any help meeting your goal, just send me an email, and I guarantee we can get you to 25% with very little trouble at all, no matter what your current eating habits are.
3. Slow Food's RAFT Picnic, September 15. Experience Wisconsin food heritage with a delicious meal of heirloom variety crops and animal products prepared by Madison's top chefs. (This is my reward meal for work on the Food for Thought Festival. B&M and I are going - let me know if you're interested in tickets. I'm sure they will sell out before the event.)
4. REAP's Local Night Out, September 27. Eat at a restaurant that is committed to using locally sourced food in their menus. This year's event is also a kick-off for the charter members of the Buy Fresh, Buy Local program, meaning that the restaurants are not only serving locally sourced menus on the night of the event, but have also committed to increasing their use of local goods throughout the year. I'll obviously be going to one of the restaurants that night - just let me know if you want to join me and which restaurant you'd like to visit.
5. MACSAC's Bike the Barns Tour de CSA, September 29. Come enjoy the crisp fall air and scenery, experience the glory that is our local CSA system, help raise money to support underprivileged families who want to eat local produce, and, of course, eat some amazing food.
6. ALNC's Pipers in the Prairie Event, October 6. This major fundraising event for children's environmental education programs features a prairie burn, bagpipers, scotch tastings, and appetizer goodies. As a fundraising event, tickets are $75 apiece or $150 per family. Or, you can let me know if you want to volunteer and go for free ;)

Recommended

While no weekend activities can compete with Lucia's canning extravaganza (61 pounds of tomatoes - utterly insane), I have a few recommendations from the past week.

1. Fish fry at Avenue Bar. I went there for fish during Lent last year, and we went back last Friday for the benefit of a friendly visitor from the South. They offer boiled and fried options, with the fried cod having won multiple "best of" awards. The reputation is deserved. The atmosphere is appropriately Wisconsin supperclub kitschy, as well. There is always a crowd on weekend - make reservations or go early.
2. Community gardens. Saturday morning, I rode my bike 20 miles on the annual Bike Tour of Community Gardens sponsored by the Community Action Coalition. This summer's Wednesday Latino Garden program took place in the Marlborough Park garden. That's where the tour ended up this year, so it was exciting to join in. The gardens are beautiful, and there is a real sense of community there. No matter where you live in Madison, there is one near your house. Go take a stroll through sometime before harvest ends. You'll see people from many different countries, vegetables you've never heard of before, and kids who don't have a lot of access to open space running around and doing manual labor with their families or playing with their friends. Fabulous. As a bonus, I got to ride my bike next to Mayor Dave and translate for him at our Evenstart garden. He is Midwestern nice, as advertised.
3. Orton Park Festival. Yet another Eastside festival with the usual assortment of food, beer, good music, and fabulous people-watching. The performance by Cycropia aerial dance theater was ... interesting. There were a few numbers, particularly an athletic throwing-about on trapeze by two men that was amazing. But, there was also much birds-on-stilts 'BRAWKKING' during the ten-minute breaks between each number, much blocking of views by annoying children or their kneeling parents, and some less impressive acts. On balance, I feel that the experience would be better in a theater with proper sightlines, lighting, and equipment and without the abrupt juxtaposition of Interpretive Art to beer-and-blues-bands. There is only one more festival left this year - the Willy Street Fair September 15-16. I will have attended all of the festivals except the Atwood one this year. Next year I will get my act together and bat 1.000.
4. Mirror Lake State Park. Due to planning negligence on my part, backpacking adventures were cancelled this weekend. We went hiking as a sad substitute. We eschewed perennial favorite, and probably very crowded, Devil's Lake for its near neighbor Mirror Lake. Mirror Lake has some nice hiking/skiing/mountain biking trails, a tannin-filled lake, and apparently a lot of camping spaces. It lacked the physical challenge of lugging up Devil's Lake bluffs, as well as the views verging on grandeur, but it was a lovely, pleasant place to hike for an afternoon. Also, it's close by and I think we ran into maybe two people on the trails the whole time, rather than playing dodge-hiker like you do on weekends at Devil's Lake.
5. Jada's Soul Food. I had a meeting off of South Park Street last night, and a couple of people mentioned this place. I'd heard glowing reviews before and felt not at all like cooking, so I stopped by on my way home to get takeout. The place is not fancy - a few fold-out tables and chairs covered with plastic tablecloths ala church dinner, a pool table with "No Profanity" and "No Gambling" signs displayed by the cue rack, and some, well, soulful music on the CD player. The man who took my order was incredibly polite. It took 15 minutes to cook the chicken, but OMG was it worth it. I'm a notorious chicken-avoider, but I wasn't quite up for catfish or chitlins yet. (If I'm going to eat meat, it's got to be on par with bacon or it ain't worth it.) Enter the best chicken I've ever had. Seriously. Still blazing hot when I got home, I devoured it. Fabulous batter, juicy, juicy, juicy on the inside. The mac-and-cheese side was also excellent, though it got to be a little rich at the end. This may have been due to my general excessive fullness. The greens were OK, but bland. Throw some bacon fat in there and you'd have yourself some mean greens. The next time I have a rich food/grease craving/bad day, I'm going here. And only eating half of my meal at a sitting so I don't spend the rest of the night in a digestive stupor. Yummm!

Canning Chronicles - Pressure Canning

As mentioned last week, I bought a pressure canner at Farm and Fleet. So this weekend I was going to get down to business and use it!

The problem was I only had about 10 tomatoes from my own 3 tomato plants:


My backup, Rick's garden, was hit hard by the heavy rains and resulting tomato splitting. This meant not much of a harvest there.

I found a pick your own vegetables farm: http://www.thetreefarm.org/

Rick and I went together. It was AMAZING! There is no reason to feel guilty ever again that I don't grow enough of my own vegetables. In fact, there was a lot of guilt about the amount of veggies going bad in the field.

I had a great time. Rick had a great time. Possibly too much of a good time. The receipt says we bought:

Tomatoes: 61 lbs, Cabbage 12 lbs, Cucumbers 6 lbs, Hot peppers 6lbs, 4 eggplants, 1 Bittermelon (anyone know what this is or what to do with it???) and then something I can't identify on the receipt: HOTY 11.3 lbs.

Besides being a bear to carry up the stairs into the kitchen (why can't I figure out how to make the dogs into pack animals?), ummm, what in the world was I thinking... 61lbs of tomatoes!

Rick and I spent Saturday evening doing the exact same thing over and over and over:
1) wash tomatoes
2) blanch tomatoes in boiling water
3) plunge tomatoes into ice water (note for you want to be canners: you need a lot of ice. If you run out of ice, those frozen ice packs do just fine. If those all get defrosted on you, then feel free to use the multicolored plastic ice that came with your summer cocktail mixing set.)
4) peel tomatoes and core them
5) chop tomatoes
6) cook tomatoes into a sauce

Some pictures from our processing night:



Sunday - ah, the easy part, right? canning.
Here is what I did - (after going to Farm and Fleet to get 2 more cases of jars, 5 gallons of cider vinegar, a Tide sized box of canning salt, mustard seed and dill seed)
1) start sterilizing jars in dishwasher
2) start huge vat of boiling water
3) clean cucumbers for pickles (those buggers get real dirty)
4) set all clean cans out on "canning station" table
4.5) feel good about how beautiful everything is in my kitchen
5) start heating up all the tomato sauces, salsas and stewed tomatoes from yesterday
5.5) remember that I have two cantelope that MUST be "processed" somehow today
6) get a bit overwhelmed at number of things on the counter!
7) cut cantelope, spread on baking sheet and put in freezer
8) cut up all the cucumbers, stuff into jars
8.5) get distressed about number of jars of cucumbers. There are two more jars than planned for! I fear some cucumbers aren't going to make it into the promised land of pickledom.




Once the cantelope departed into the freezer, and the sauces were boiling it was time to get started. Soon, the table of clean jars turned into this:

Notice that George and Deuce have morphed into vigilant jar herding dogs. They have rounded these all up into a tight pack. Only one was lost in the night to a poor seal.

At this point in the evening I am very proud of myself. and exhausted.

The most beautiful picture and yet the most depressing still awaits. The remaining bounty:


this is all still sitting on my table. I was too tired to do anything with them...oh, and my original tomatoes on the porch are still out there too! eek.

The final haul:
6 P and 1 Q of dill pickles
3 Q of spaghetti sauce
9 P of salsa (4 mild and 5 spicy)-all yellow
8 Q of stewed tomatoes (and 1 pint of lonely leftovers from each pot :)
3 Ziploc bags of frozen cantelope

The casualties: 1 broken glass jar, 1 quart jar of pickles had to be thrown away (lack of dill seed, never doing that again!),

Leftovers: more salt and cider vinegar than I know what to do with, all those vegetables on the table, hot peppers (Rick is going to make a sauce of some sort. I was pretty exasperated as he picked 6 lbs of tiny little hot peppers, I wasn't going to delve too far into what his plans were for them), and then of course the mysterious 11lbs of HOTY.

Final call- Fun, very fun. But could be enhanced by breaking it out over a couple more days, and including wine and some friends to entertain me.

Canning - it is the hippest old woman thing to do since knitting

I couldn't have written the canning post half as good as 11Frogs. It was a masterpiece.
However, I will tell you that I spent the week telling everyone at my customer site about how I was canning this weekend and would be doing it next weekend too. They were a bit surprised I think. (I am a real ball buster at work...)

I also experienced this bizarre high all week from the knowledge that I stored food for the winter. My insides get all squishy and I get a little wild eyed thinking about what I will do with my pressure canner this weekend. I may or may not be a giant squirrel.

I even woke up in the middle of the night in my hotel room this week worried that because I put oil in my recipe my canning would be ruined (as I read another recipe that strongly warned against it). But, I looked up the recipe and it said oil so I am fine.

Domesticity is cool. If the country's infrastructure is destroyed I feel confident that I can live off the land. (with the help of a close by Farm and Fleet store).

Kind of exactly the opposite of roaming

More like very tightly gripping the very essence of home and this moment of summer, grinding it all up, boiling the hell out of it, and sealing it in a jar to enjoy next winter. Or next Tuesday, as the case may be. Ni modo. The moral of the story is: We took up canning, and it's awesome.

Two weeks ago when I went home to meet the babies, I helped my aunt (the one who has a garden measuring in acres and can feed 200+ people with no problem) can salsa and pickles. I also snapped a five gallon bucket of beans - the big ones for garlic-pickled beans (yum!) and the small ones for canning. Lessons:

1. My aunt is goddess-like in the food realm and makes the best refrigerator pickles EVER.
2. The canning process itself is very easy. Basically, you just boil some jars of food.
3. Getting food ready to put in the jars is a whole lotta work and a ginormous pain in the ass.

I came back on a mission, and the Universe supported me. Jars at Goodwill for 15 and 25 cents apiece. A tomato U-pick scheduled at our CSA farm for this week. And the clincher: while waiting for my laundry to dry one morning last week, I gaze across the mounds of stuff in the basement and, alas, in the distance I see a ray of light shining down upon my neighbor's canning kettle ripe for the borrowing. Clearly, this was meant to be.

And so Saturday morning found Wintergypsy and I foraging tomatoes, hot peppers, a buttload of basil, tomatillos, and a stray eggplant and squash or two from our CSA farm and the quickly overgrowing garden from the program I volunteered at this summer. Lucia foraged from her and a friend's backyard and the farmers' market.

This was my starting supply o' produce. Ridiculous.

Sunday morning, we each slaved over our respective stoves. I made tomato salsa, green tomatillo salsa, and spaghetti sauce. This took me about four hours of chopping and boiling. Lucia make spaghetti sauce and cherry tomato salsa. Wintergypsy made tomato salsa, spaghetti sauce, and some pesto (for eating/freezing, not canning). Spaghetti sauce takes FOREVER to cook down.

We then gathered at my house to encase the food in jars. In typical Lucia fashion, there was none of this halfway, try-it-out, used, borrowed b.s. for her. Oh, no, she took the Farm & Fleet canning section by storm and bought a canning kettle, pressure canner, and sundry jars, lids and canning tools. The lil' magnet jobby-do for picking the lids out of the boiling water was the cutest.

We sanitized (well, mostly) jars and lids, heated our food back up, and popped several batches in the canner. 15-20 minutes for salsas, 30-35 minutes for spaghetti sauce. With our expected organizational glitches in the timing of the various heatings and fillings and sanitizing, particularly the "sanitize" cycle on my dishwasher, this took us nearly 4 hours.

After the ladies left, I proceeded to make a buttload of pesto. The limiting reagent turned out to be the cheese.
2-1/2 hours later - a full 11 hours after I started cooking - I had a bowl full of green gold. And that was without the several hours of work the ladies saved me earlier by picking all my basil off the plants for me. Yeesh.

It may not look like much, but the final results of all our efforts looked like a masterpiece to me:

And my reward meal of sweet cherry tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and pesto, which was so summerly sublime I almost cried.

Lucia is making the leap from water bath canning into pressure canning this weekend. The adventure continues ...

Sweet Corn

It was raining. It was muddy. It was 58 degrees. It was not enough to stop four girls from getting their fill of sweet corn and cheap beer.

Once again, the Sun Prairie Sweet Corn Festival proved worth the drive (especially since it's so much closer for me in my new house). Who doesn't love getting their own corn, having it hand rolled in butter my teenage girls, and salting it from a giant tree of salt shakers?

Since I didn't get any pictures (if I had, I'm not sure anyone would've felt they missed out), so in memory, here are some shots from last year:

This time, however, we did add a stop to a local Sun Prairie dive on the way out of town. Can't recall the name of the bar, but they had a rockin' jukebox and made great Old Fashions. Mmmmm, Brandy....

a blog for Kitty to check out

http://empresseve.com/

I have decided that when I feel like crap I will find something on the internet that makes me laugh.

for instance this morning, when I am so sick I am taking a sick day and missing a flight to my second home, and yet staying awake (albeit moaning audibly) for two work calls. The first one at 730am, the jerks organizing the call never gave any call in info and then didn't bother calling me either. then, my 8am with a customer... it is 30 minutes later and still no call despite emails and VMs. sigh.

So, I found the blog above. It reminds me very strongly of Kitty, in fact, I think that she needs to get on the website redesign, as her current one is not at all "her".

The line that made me laugh:
So, there I was, bored with nothing to do when a guy sits next to me and busts out a portable DVD player. I couldn’t see what movie he put into the player, but I knew one thing: Someone sits next to me with a portable DVD player, then I hope they want some company, cuz I’m watching what they’re watching.

Canoe Trip, cont.

More pictures from the Great Wisconsin River Canoe Trip of 2007.

The whole crew, sans moi. Funny how disposable cameras don't come with little timers.

You can't get much more relaxed than this.

Cherry pit spitting contest, featuring Honeyweiss.

MEAT!!!

We fought the sun, and the sun won.

There are also several hilarious pictures of the Divine Miss M in various states of undress mid-river, but one mustn't post photos of one's female friends in their skivvies on the Internet, however amusing they may be.

Kickapoo Country Fair

A few of us trekked out to La Farge this weekend for the Kickapoo Country Fair, which was organized by Organic Valley. Full disclosure: I'm a big Organic Valley fan, partly because I eat a lot of their food, partly because my aunt and uncle are Organic Valley producers, and partly because I think they have been one of the major pushers of Wisconsin leading the way in organic agriculture in the past decade. The fair was on the grounds of their headquarters.

As always with sustainable agriculture events in this state, the fair drew a fascinating mix of ol' fashioned farmers, foodie/yuppies like ourselves, hippies, and the various dashed combos of the above (hippie-farmers, yuppie-hippies, yuppie-farmers, foodie-hippies, etc.). It would be very easy to do a rural sociology thesis on the interactions among these strange bedfellows. What do the farmers think of the yuppies with their literary events and "Child Nurturing Tent"? What do the yuppies really think of the farmers - not just the barefoot, liberal, college-educated ones, but the old school, church-going, many-children-having, high-waisted-Lee-jean-wearing, manual-laboring, fifth-generation-on-this-land ones who are mostly in organics because the milk check is bigger? And what does anyone really think about the dude with the sketchy dreadlocked beard that could have been housing several species of rodent? This odd conglomeration is either a brief blip of artificial togetherness that will fade as the food-eating public outgrows the current "green" fad, or it is the nascent networking of a new social order that will move all of us away from a culture and an agriculture of consumerism and degradation to one of respect, sustainability, and community that I believe all of these disparate groups are so diligently searching for. I'm betting my career and my future children on the latter. One can hope.

There was a breakfast, farm and headquarter tours, nature walks, kids' activities, a workshop series, and a whole lot of other things we didn't participate in. We did, however, check out the information and vendor booths (my favorite: the goat cheese fudge + history lesson on the round barns of Vernon County), gaze at antique tractors and other history displays, see the rather paltry animal barn, and eat pretty much every type of food they offered. Our submissions to the suggestions box for next year: more food and some cows to pet.

We saw keynote speaker Jean Feraca, host of NPR's Here on Earth. She addressed the importance of the family table as the center of children's education about food, family, nutrition, civility, and many other topics whose mastery would help the next generation solve problems as diverse as childhood obesity, farm worker rights, and environmental degradation. It was a good talk, if a bit repetitive. Ms. Feraca has many good points, though her speaking style is an acquired taste due to her tendency to sometimes come across as a bit like Janice on Friends.

The true highlight of the day was a reading by Michael Perry, author of Population: 485 and Truck: A Love Story. I previously expounded on his lyrical greatness, and he did not disappoint in person. I laughed and I cried and I enjoyed shutting my eyes just to listen to the rhythm. Wow. He has three main qualities that I envy and seek to emulate:

1. He straddles multiple worlds with grace.
2. He can write sentiment without sap.
3. He is utterly hilarious.

Yet another lovely day in the country and beautiful Wisconsin weekend.

Play at American Players Theatre

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see Merchant of Venice at the American Players Theatre in Spring Green. APT is an outdoor amphitheater in the woods. It had been a few years since I saw a play there. I'm honestly not a spectacular judge of classic Shakespearean acting, as long as it's not utterly horrific a la Keanu Reeves in Much Ado About Nothing. (The mere mention sends me into convulsions. We read the play and then watched the movie in English senior year. ~Shudder~) To my amateur eyes, this production was very good, particularly the last act. As with performances of all kinds, comprehension and appreciation improved after the intermission drinks. We ordered tickets early and got them for $23 apiece. Normal ticket prices are somewhere in the $35-41+ range. When night falls, the fireflies go sparkly and other, less flashy bugs flit through the lights. If you're not into Shakespeare, APT might not trip your trigger. But, if you like seeing plays at all, this is about as good of a venue as you can get.

Wisconsin in the summer ...

... is truly a fabulous place. On Friday, Witty decided that, after reading many descriptions of summer beers, she needed to try some of them. So, I lit the tiki torches, got some beer of my own and some chips and salsa, and turned on a great 80s radio station on my deck. She came over along with Lucia and Vavra and we chilled out there till 11 p.m., drinking interesting beers and enjoying the wonderful weather.

On Saturday, Loud had the great idea of having a beer tasting evening with a theme - all WI beers, all one type of beer, etc. Of course, we'd have to give them all snooty wine-like descriptions too. I think that would be fun. I may be hosting one towards the end of summer, depending on how everything shakes out.

Canoe trip down the WI River

Last weekend we spent 2 days on the beautiful WI river doing mainly two things - drinking and eating.

I think there was also some paddling involved, but not much :)

And now pictures! Thanks to loud for telling me how to upload them a couple of weeks ago. Without her this post would not have been possible :)

Each day started off with our 9am morning constitutional:

Picture most likely to end up on a tourist brochure (of B&M):

The scenery:

Some of our motley crew:

Me, looking goofy after a full day of drinking:

It was a really fun time, however I was glad to get home on the second day to have the use of running water and indoor plumbing so I could wash all the sand off and to use sunburn soothing stuff since all of us are apparently incompetent when it comes to putting sunscreeen on our entire body. We more prefer the red/white spotted look. There were some pretty funky designs. Too bad they weren't intentional ;)

The Second Annual Deep Fry Extravaganza

Yes, it's officially an annual thing now. Let me see if I can remember everything we had this year:

Turkey (so damn good), chicken, fish (best batter award for this stuff), squash, cheese curds, pizza, mushrooms, onions, cherries, peppermint patties, twix, cookie dough, brownie bites, apples, beef/cheese stick combo, cheese-stuffed jalapenos, cheese and rice balls (yummy!), tortillas with salsa.........did I forget anything?

My faves: turkey, squash, onions, fish, mushrooms, cheese and rice balls, and snickers.

Lessions learned (in addition to the good points already discussed by Witty and Lucia):
1) Food should spent less time in the holding area. They should go straight from staging to the deep fryer. The more the things sit around, the more batter drips off.
2) More batters are needed, and they need to be a bit crispier and stick better
3) Have less stuff. Or, at least, a smaller quantity if we still want to have the same amount of variety.
4) Being around the deep fryer to see things in action is essential.

However, the snicker's bites worked a lot better than last year. Tiki torches kept the bugs away, and a general good time was had by all. Most people cleared out by midnight or so, and I think we finally went to bed at 2am. Pretty much the only cleanup that was needed was doing about 4 loads of dishes, which makes me very happy.

However, last night I was definitely feeling a salad for dinner, and my fridge contains lots of leftover chicken and fish. I also have some leftovers that didn't get fried and various containers that I don't think are mine. Let me know if they're yours and when you want to get them :P

Sadly, I don't think I have any pictures, but Lucia painted a pretty good one with the docker's-commerical-without-the-acutal-dockers reference.........even though I never would have come up with that :)

Oh, and Ding convinced me to go browse wedding dresses at a cute store in Verona with her when she goes to pick up her dress in a few weeks. I do beleive I was already feeling the effects of beer + having eaten no food all day when I agreed to this.