2009 Nebraska State Fair

Men and their vegetables.

This is the last year that the Fair will be in Lincoln – pending the outcome of  the most recent lawsuit, of course.

El Jefe and I went – both of us for the first time in almost a decade – and we had a great time.  No joke!  Another mostly pic post, but c’mon – they’re fun.

We started off with the Lucky Daredevil Thrillshow, and they were wonderful.  Swords, fire, knives, a snake, a blade box and a sexy, sexy woman.  His fire work was especially good and she was perfectly charming.  Loved it.  Hated the *ahem* people in front of me who kept moving exactly into my line of sight, but the show was still great.

Lucky Daredevil Thrillshow

This fantastic wool coat won a special “Best of Fair” award.

Then we went to the 4-H building and jefe let me geek out on the stuff I used to enter – cakes and breads and clothes I’d sewn and…yeah, 4-H stuff.  Sadly, I never had animals.

There were lots of pretty amazing sewing projects and the age of the kids making them just blew me away sometimes!

There were dioramas, cases of pinned out bugs and moths and butterflies, electronics with lights and buzzers, incredible furniture and refinishing entries, odd ‘home decorating’ showcases, and the list goes on.

I loved this poster board on Bison, with a big old pile 'o scat on it!

Only a red ribbon, but I thought it was cute that they looked like they were necking.

New catagories include "3 jar Quick Meals" or something like that.

Looks like my kitchen counter this summer!

One of Jefe's Fair Favorites - the burger basket!

Off we went to the little burger stand.  I love their patties, generously doused in Canadian seasoning, their crispy fries, their obscenely sized ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles, their fountain soda to wash it all down.  They will be missed when they move to GI.

Oh beautiful burger stand...

...you have such tasty little burgers.

(Burger stand photos by El Jefe.)

We saw the eco-magician, Steve Trash:

Open class art, both good and completely disturbing:

Uh…Hall & Oates:

While waiting in the grandstand for Hall & Oates - nice night.

The Big Shot – on the Midway:

And another of Jefe’s faves – the steers:

Jefe's photo of his little Fair buddy.

I’m really glad we got to got this year, and that we had such a good time.  I grew up going to the Fair every fall, so it’s one of those seasonal passages that I’ve missed.

Olive You, Creek.

I haven’t had my tent out (except to air it and check it for holes) in a very long time.  So sad.  So on Girls’ Night Out at The Oven last week, when Kelly Jo invited me out to Olive Creek for a night, you know I said yes.  (Actually, there may have been an expletive or two in there as well, just to show my enthusiasm.)

Olive Creek has several camping areas and we stayed over on the East side.  Nice for sunset, but brutal that afternoon with no shade!

Hot on the water, no smoke yet.

About  a dozen of us showed up – friends, family, random stragglers (like me) and it turned out to be a really fun mix.  A few of us stayed behind while the larger group took the Winnebago back into ‘town’ to the ‘bar’.  Had a nice neighbor, played some games, listened to music, fished, cooked hella lotta food, and slept like a baby.  And we left it clean as a whistle.  Great, great time.  Thanks for having me!

My bestest girl!

Olive Creek is about 30 miles SW of Lincoln – in the same general area as Wagon Train, Stagecoach, Blue Stem and a few other smaller lake spots to camp.  I’ve never been there when it was packed, but there were far more people out there this weekend than most of us had ever seen.  Even folks boating in spite of the blue-green algae warnings.  Cost was $7 per camping unit (a tent or camper is a unit) and there was an outhouse near our site.  Park personnel were great and even brought us back the dollar we’d overpaid for our two tents.  Nice.  I’d have given those guys some s’mores…if we hadn’t eaten all of them.

Flash Salsa

Forgot to post any pics of the delish salsa from Farmer’s Market and CSA goodies.  Not so much chit-chat in this one, just look.

Market and CSA parts for salsa.

Lime y cilantro to go in tambien.

Tomatillo innards.

It's almost salsa now...

CSA and Farmer’s Market Goodies

The summer has gone so quickly for me this year and I find that – unlike most years – I’m sad to see it departing.  I didn’t camp at all, grilled only once, went nowhere near a large body of water…in fact did very few ’summer’ things.  Alas and alack, cry me a river already.

One of the wonderful things to come late in the season, however, has been my access to delicious, fresh, local produce – and other goodies, as it turns out!  The CSA this week has honey in it, and okra and jalapenos.  Combine the peppers with the tomatillos and onion from the Farmer’s Market this morning, as well as the garlic and cilantro I’ll have to get from the store (why did no one have either one? Weird.) there’s bound to be a bright little salsa verde in my immediate future.

And since the veggie packets turned out so well the other night I think the okra, carrots, beans and potatoes will go into another round of those.  I ate the last of the last batch cold from the fridge the other day – they were even more lemony than when I’d heated them.

Working every Saturday morning means not many opportunities to go shopping myself at the market, but thanks to the rain today, I was able to sneak off for half an hour or so and grab some tasty treats for myself.  Since lamb’s not very widely available in the stores, I grabbed a pound of ground for some lamb and feta burgers (only $5.99/lb.).  And I haven’t had wild chokecherry jam in – well – decades, so I was tickled to find this little jar.  I was sorely tempted by the pints of wild plums, but wasn’t sure I’d get them used well in time.  The farmer said that neither fruit did very well this year, which is surprising, because it seems that everything else did, especially the weeds.

I got hedge apples (4 for $1.00) to help with the spiders in the house.  The woman at the stand said that they repel spiders and other bugs.  The spiders have been just wicked this summer and I’ve had some truly scary bites, so I hope they really work.  BlueHawk says his mom used to just throw them around the house – one under each bed *doink*, one behind the couch *doink*, one in the closet *doink* – so I’m going to follow suit and spread the love.

Plus, dang they’re cute!

Tomatillos in all their papery goodness – 12 for a buck.

And a final happy fresh image.

What’s not to love about some sweet little zinnias?  Nothing, that’s what.

Hope you’re enjoying the dog days!

The Great lemonpig Revival!

So, a year and a half isn’t thaaat long to let a blawg sit idle is it?

So we’re back, and to celebrate I’m sharing a pic I snapped yesterday.  Had to run to Sam’s club for work and spotted this bus sitting in the parking lot, with “Corn Dawg” painted on the side.  When I got close enough to take the picture, I saw the much smaller sign indicating that it was owned by a seed company.  As someone who detasseled for 5 summers – by choice, no less – it made me smile big and wide.  (You know, unlike my normal small and tight thing.)

I'd ride it.

Mutter fookah!

One of my favorite places to shop, both for the range of offerings and the price, is the India Market in the strip mall by La Mexicana (you know, the old Pickles place). 

For a semi-homemade meal from there you can still eat well.  Jefe’s fave is the Mutter Paneer.  Paneer is a cheese , and the rest is peas in a nice little sauce of tomatoes, milk, onion, sour cream, and whatnot spices.  The purchased part is a frozen entree – the homemade part is instant rice.  I know that’s barely, marginally homemade, but compared to takeout which you had NO part in, it’s slightly moreso.  If you were really bad, you could still screw up the rice.

 

First, take your Deep Foods frozen Mutter Paneer and remove it from the package.  Puncture the film over the top 3 or 4 times.  Nuke it for 2 or 3 minutes, peel back the film to stir, and cook for a couple more minutes.

In the meantime, cook your rice as you choose.  If you have the time and want real rice, start it first, obviously.  On nights that we’re crunched and tired but don’t want take out food yuk-ness, this is fast and actually has nutritional value – the paneer will get you Vitamins A & C, Calcium, Protein and Iron.  Not bad for 5 minutes.

What’s not to love about fast, easy and tasty?  If you snag a package of frozen garlic-naan when you’re there and crisp those babies up in the oven with a light brush of butter, you’re in a good way, dinner-wise.  The selection of ready-made meal items there is pretty great and they’re not ridiculously loaded with sodium and fat like so many microwave options.  Prices are right in line with comparable items at another grocery store, though one of my only complaints with them is that I never get a receipt, so I’m not always sure what each item cost.  Meh, I don’t care that much, I guess.

Leaf meh alone!

Perhaps the Fall posting should have come ahead of the Winter one, but in this state the weather is so fluid that it’s hard to tell just what season you’re in at any given moment.  With that in mind, let me offer up a few things to make the inevitable leaf clean-up more tolerable.  And less back-breaking, blister-forming, and allergy-inducing.

Rock & Roll ACE has rental lawn equipment – tillers, aerators and the like – which you can ‘borrow’ an hour at a time for the low price of $12.  In the stable of hp is the Husqvarna leaf vacuum – a handy implement for yard clean-up in the fall.

It won’t clean your yard like a Dyson does your home, but it will help pick up small twigs and even some pinecones and acorns and whatnot in addition to leaves.  It mulches that stuff down so that you have less bags to fill and have hauled away.  Bonus, right?

If you’ve got to do it manually I can’t recommend enough those goofy-looking toothy hand-paddle things (around $6).  And a lawn funnel (about $25).  Battling a paper bag makes me want to go Trix-zilla and crush things to fine powder instead of remembering how much more eco-friendly it is to NOT be running another small engine, and just enjoying the awesome thing known as Autumn in Nebraska.  Jumping into a pile of blower/vacs has none of the charm you might think it would. 

 

You don’t have to believe me, check out what real humans have to say at epinions.com

THOOP!

Attention bargain shoppers!  Russ’s has cans of all Progresso Soup varieties on sale for $1.99 and they’re, get this, BUY ONE GET ONE FREE.  You just can’t really beat that for a deal.  I’m having spicy chicken and sausage gumbo for lunch as we speak.  Sluuuurrrpp!  Mmmmmm.

You can see their ads online, if you like.

November First Friday

It’s First Friday ladies and gents, and tonight I’ll be holding it down solo at Bad Robot.  If you haven’t been to the shop lately, it’s a great time to go.  While the other stops on the Gallery Walk will offer you cheap wine or tepid drinks, I’ll have the good stuff.  Hot, melted, creamy-liscious chocolate.  No silly, not just any old chocolate.  I said I have the good stuff. 

Scharffen-Berger hot chocolate is about as far from powdered stuff like Swiss Miss as you can get.  We’re talking dark chocolate, warmed until melted, with just a touch of milk to make it drinkable.  The cherry flavor is what tends to stand out to me.  And the fellers always make a great whipped cream to top it – espresso-mint, or cinnamon-vanilla, or some other tastiness.

 If you can’t make it down, you can still browse the wares and start making your holiday shopping lists by cruising through the flickr photos to the right.  Yeah, over there, in the sidebar.  No, too far, back up.  Yes.  There.  Let me know if I can help you find something.  Thanks for stopping.

Chugga Chugga Woo-Woo!

Jefe and I went to The Darjeeling Ltd (& Hotel Chevalier) tonight at The Grand.  Just got home.  First takes: I love the feeling I get when W.A. uses the slo-mo button and I get to see what small, quick gestures and expressions look like as they’re dialed down.  Drew was right, Nat and Anjelica are not sweethearts.  But so what.  Yellow, yellow, yellow.  French yellow, Indian yellow, saffron or rusty or sandy or palest buttercream, they were all there.  My eyes love it.  I feel like I saw the preview, but that the story was just getting started when it was over.  I mean, I liked it a ton, don’t get me wrong.  But I was waiting for more meat.  I loved everything that was there.  I wanted to see them all really lose control, though.  Here it seems like they hang on to it, even with the minor kerfluffle and whatnot.  Is the implication that this is how far ‘class’ will allow you to break down?  That this is really soul-searching for the Vuitton set?  I may simply have been spoiled by my love for “Rushmore” and the trip it took me on at the time I first saw it.  Who am I kidding…it still does. 

By all means, go take this in! 

(If for no other reason than the wallpaper and fabrics on the train.)