Several months ago I watched several episodes of a show made in Britain called “Inside the Factory”. It’s pretty interesting mostly because the host, Gregg Wallace has an infectious excitement. The format has him following the manufacturing process of whatever item is showcased that week. There are a couple of other actors who did other bit parts but Gregg is the main draw.
One of the episodes featured the Cherry Bakewell, which is a popular treat in the UK and Australia. It is a pastry base, filled with a layer of raspberry jam, then a layer of frangipane (almond-flavored custard), then a layer of almond-flavored fondant icing and topped with half of a glace cherry (yes, that’s the only cherry involved). They come six to a package and are the kind of thing you might put in your kid’s lunchbox or serve as an after-school treat.
Of course, after seeing the show I searched a bit to see if I could find Cherry Bakewells in the US. It wasn’t a productive search and I gave up pretty quickly. I’ve found the recipe online but it’s a little putzy so I haven’t attempted it yet.
Then I found out that YA would be going to Dublin for two weeks for work. I still have contact with someone in Dublin who works for the DMC (destination management company) that BIW uses and I suggested to YA that I would ask my friend for a favor in finding Cherry Bakewells in Dublin for me. YA wasn’t crazy about this but then I found out the client has brought in a different DMC for their program, so I let the project slide and then forgot about it.
Imagine my surprise when a few days after YA returned from Dublin, I found two boxes of Cherry Bakewells in the fridge. Apparently the little pastries are not commonly found in Ireland but a more thorough internet search had turned them up here. A late birthday gift.
I’ve been spreading out my enjoyment of the little tarts, so I actually have a couple left. And while I am enjoying them, it’s not earth-shattering delight and I doubt I’ll ever order them again (the shipping probably cost more than the bakewells). Maybe someday I’ll try whipping up a batch to see how they compare freshly made. Maybe not. But it’s been fun to try them and fun that YA remembered.
What kinds of things were in YOUR lunchbox as a kid?
This is not only not a comprehensive look at the 2023 State Fair Food Offerings, it is also not objective or even fair. Just reflections from YA and me.
Don’t Bother
Cheese Curd Dill Pickle Taco. Sounds good on paper but dill pickle ends up taking away from the cheese curd taste. It also made the fried taco shell really soggy really fast.
Sweet Corn Ba-Sant. Marketed as a cross between a bagel and a croissant with a creamy corn custard, this didn’t live up to its hype. Not a lot of custard and if there was corn in there, I couldn’t tell. A little dry.
At Least Once Every Year
Sweet Martha Cookies. Get these early (so you don’t have to wait in a long line) but only get what you think you (and any companions) can eat before the day is up. Wonderful when warm but “meh” if you still have some around the next day.
Pickle Pizza. So much better than you expect. White sauce, garlic, dill and then the sliced pickles. Not an every day taste, but fun at least once.
Hot Honey Cheese Sticks. Strips of fried Haloumi cheese slathered with a hot honey sauce (and for some silliness, a sprinkle of honeycomb cereal). Hot sauce on cheese might not be everybody’s cup of tea, but it didn’t keep YA and I from having it for breakfast more than once.
Yes Yes Yes
Roasted Corn. Fabulous as always. Perfectly roasted, dipped in melted butter, salt and pepper. What more is there to say?
Cheesy Siracha Bites. Little ball of dough, deep fried and then covered with cheese, green onions and chives. Served with a siracha sauce that is the perfect hot/not too hot blend.
Hawaiian Shave Ice. Still the best way to cool down on a hot summer day. Biggest shave ice on the fairgrounds. I always do cherry and orange.
Sota Sammie. Grilled sandwich with peanut butter, almond butter and fresh blueberry jam. Sounds good and tastes even better.
Deep Fried Blueberry Pie. Really, how can you go wrong with this. Freshly fried blueberry hand pie with a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream. This vendor added a cookie dough version of the pie this year but both YA and I say “why mess with perfection”?
Wedge-Hammer. Refreshing combo of orange juice, lemonade, ginger and a splash of lime. Not too sweet so just right for sipping in the sun.
Birthday Cake Mini Donuts. The big surprise of the year, this new concoction turned out to be great! The donuts themselves were a little fluffier than the usual mini donuts, doused with a cinnamon sugar mix and then drizzled with icing and sprinkles. It was the consistency of the donuts that really made this a winner.
There were plenty of other foods and beverages over the visits we made, but we decided these were the highlights.
Can you stomach carnival/fair food? Any favorites? Any really NOT favorites?
Where are we with Growing degree units you might well ask. We are about 450 growing degree units above normal here in Rochester. Extremely hot days don’t add as much as you might think because typically the plants shut down over 86 degrees and below 50 degrees.
Too bad the weeds never stop growing. I mentioned once before, my soybean fields have really filled in and from the road, although short, they look pretty good. Except for all the weeds. I’m really discouraged about all the weeds. If this was a normal year, I probably would’ve had a second application of herbicide applied. But this year, I can’t justify the cost.
You can see from the photo, because the plant is so short, there’s not a lot of pods in the first place, and those pods that are in the bottom 3 inches are difficult to get in the combine because it doesn’t typically cut that close to the ground. I have talked before about guys rolling their fields after planting to help level them and to press rocks and such down into the soil. This is exactly why; to get as close to the ground as possible but still, it’s hard to get that low.
And the beans that are there, are not very big. There just hasn’t been the moisture to develop and fill a bean.
The corn looks kind of rough from the hail as the leaves are shredded up, the ears are OK, except again, small, and not filled to the tip because of drought stress, and I expect the kernels will be small because again, not enough moisture to fill the kernel.
Notice the kernels on this ear and how the tip didn’t fill. Drought stress and the plant pulled resources from them to save the other kernels.
This ear is 13 rows around and 43 kernels long. Everybody remember our math from last year? 13×43 equals 559 kernels on this plant. 80,000 kernels per bushel (bushel meaning 56 pounds), means I need 143 ears to create a bushel, but if the kernels are small and light, it will take more than 80,000 to be a bushel. Be sure to subtract deer, raccoon, and turkey damage. This year will be what it is.
I made a little more progress on the shop. I have some of the two by fours installed on the walls that the interior steel siding will be fastened to. And electricians came back and installed the breaker box and some outlets. The other end isn’t hooked up at the pole yet, but he’s hoping to get that on Tuesday.
Momma and the chicks are doing well. Kelly calls her ‘Mother Clucker’. How many chicks can you find in this photo? (She’s still got all 13) And the 4 young guineas are hanging out with the older guineas. And we like this batch of ‘mixed breed’ chicks from this spring. They have pretty plumage.
Kelly has one tomato plant, growing wild, and doing better than her plants in a pot.
Daughter waters the plants. She enjoys having chores. And it’s fun to watch her do it. She turns on hose, puts it in plant, thinks for a few seconds, counts “1,2,3…4,5……..6, 7…. 8…. 9,10” thinks for a second, takes hose out. Good thing the pots have drain holes in the bottom.
Last week I mentioned the lack of women behind the parts counters. I feel like I should clarify: There are a lot of women in agriculture. I just don’t often see them behind the counter. There are women who are large animal veterinarians. There are several women agronomist’s I work with and the lady who runs the Crop Insurance agency. There are a few women who are solo farmers and there are several on YouTube I follow. There are many out there working with their families and contributing as much as the men. I am in no way disparaging them. Being a farm wife is a huge task.
We used to have one woman farmer in our neighborhood. Rita. Hair all done up and nails painted and she ran the farm while her husband worked in town.
Kelly and I try to spend a few minutes in the evening sitting on our veranda without a roof watching the world go round.
Do you drink the recommended 15 cups of water in a day? Who do you know in non-traditional roles?
YA was three when I took her to the fair for the first time. We took her umbrella stroller although she didn’t use it too much that day (YA never liked any kind of enclosure – no exersaucer, no playpen, no doorway jumper). The following year we didn’t bother with the stroller at all – she kept up with no issues or complaints.
Since this is our experience, we are both a little surprised at the stroller revolution. Strollers have gotten bigger and bigger as the years have gone by. Now there are side-by-side doubles, front to back doubles, not to mention all the additional pockets, cupholders and clip-on fans. They seem like a lot of trouble to me but they are clearly popular with parents of toddlers.
I shouldn’t be surprised that strollers have taken the next step – wagons. The fair was full of them – large wagons, almost all with canopies. They remind me of the old Conestoga covered wagons that took settlers west. Most of them also have a lot of extra storage area and, of course, cup holders. Most of them have seating and trays (think tv tray) inside. And have I mentioned storage? Cookies, stuffed animals, shirts, bubble blowers, straw hats…. If you can find it at the fair, YA and I have probably seen it in one these wagons over the last week. I saw a handful filled with so much stuff that there wasn’t room for the kids. On Wednesday, a family with their full wagon held up the bus back to the park `n ride as they figured out what to do with all their stuff before they could fold it up to go in the bus luggage compartment.
Who know what the next step in stroller evolution will be but for now I’m absolutely sure that if I looked closely enough, I’d find that one of these covered wagons was named “Intimida”!
What would you have wanted in your Conestoga if you were heading west?
Wednesday was the most frustrating day. I drove from St. Cloud to near Oshkosh, WI to visit husband’s sister and BIL. I have never encountered such road construction for so many miles. The trip took about six hours. The day before our trip to St. Cloud took seven hours. I haven’t encountered such traffic for a long while. Where are all these people going?
One of the detours near Watoma, WI took us past several huge fields of cabbage. That was lovely to see. When we arrived at the family house, I found that they didn’t have wifi, so I couldn’t use my computer to show them the Ancestry info I had promised them. They have a computer and pay for wifi but have it all unplugged and turned of. This is a low tech household. We will go to the local library to access the wifi there. Whatever works, I guess. One problem is that I couldn’t figure out how to insert a header photo on my phone. Maybe I will add it tomorrow at the library.
Tell about your most memorable trip? How do you deal with being off-line?
The breed standard for our Cesky Terrier calls for a rather long skirt and long fur on the legs, with long bangs that go all the way to the tip of his nose. The fur on his skirt and legs is very fine and feathery, and attracts weeds and sticks. He really dislikes being brushed, but he would be a tangled mess if we didn’t attend to him. Here he is sitting on the bench in the front looking for bunnies in the garden. He is a rather pretty boy by Cesky standards. It takes a lot to maintain that beauty.
Husband always wanted to grow his hair long when he was in college in the early 70’s but his hair is so curly he could only get it a little above his shoulders before he started looking like Bozo the Clown. My boy cousins in Pipestone were mortified that their dad insisted they keep getting crew cuts when everyone else had longer hair and bangs. Uncle Harvey thought that a crew cut was all a boy needed to look good. I had the standard long, straight hair popular in the 70’s. My mother had a wash and set every week at the beauty parlor. I read the other day that a North Dakota man holds the record for the world’s longest beard, at 17.5 feet. Oh, the things we do for looks!
Who did you want to look like when you were a teenager? When have you been the happiest with your hair?
Last Wednesday was our grandson’s first day of Kindergarten. He was happy, proud and confident. He is, after all, 5 years old, and in his mind, he can do anything! His parents were dewy eyed, and our DIL had to redo her eye makeup when she got to work after dropping grandson off. I reminded son that I missed his first day of school since I had moved to Iowa to do my psychology internship, leaving him for the year with his father.
My first day of school was in Mrs. Helling’s room. I teased my mother in the weeks before school as she, a Grade 3 teacher, was getting her room ready and I would go with her to the school , warning her that I would slip into Mrs. Cooney’s room next door. Wouldn’t you know, my teasing got me all confused and I actually went into Mrs. Cooney’s classroom and was told to go next door. I was mortified!
What are some of your memories of first days of school?
My best friend from Howard Lake texted me on Tuesday to say that the heat index there was 114 degrees. She had never experienced such heat in Minnesota before. It is hot here, too, but not like that.
I wonder how we would cope if there was no air conditioning. I remember as a child we spent a lot of time in the basement on really hot days before my parents had an air conditioner installed in the living room. It was one of those that sat in a hole especially cut in the side of the house. Most of my relatives on farms never had air conditioning in their homes. They just hung out on their porches and tried to keep cool. There was no air conditioning in the school in Luverne. The nights were the worst, as it never really cooled down because of the humidity.
When we moved here in 1987, our house didn’t have air conditioning, and we really didn’t need it because it always cooled down at night. The humidity here is low. After about five years, things changed, the nights didn’t cool down, and we decided to put in Central air. I think that was my first direct knowledge of climate change. I don’t know what we would do without it now.
When did you first live in a home with air conditioning? How did your family cope without it? Share some weather songs.
The past weekend was supposed to be relatively quiet one devoted to housework and gardening, with very little cooking. The only dish I was going to make was a rice and cabbage minestrone to use up one of our lovely savoy cabbages from the garden. We had almost everything we needed from the store on hand, and just needed to pick up a few things.
Everything changed rapidly when we got to one of our two grocery stores and discovered they were having a Hatch chili extravaganza and were roasting the peppers right there in the parking lot. The smell was wonderful, and, of course, we had to get some of the freshly roasted medium hot peppers. Husband started feverishly thinking about cooking with them, and by the time we got into the store he decided we were going to make roasted tomato and tomatillo salsa. Since he was going to fire up his grill to roast the veggies, he figured he might as well get a rack of baby back ribs and some of the Hatch chili brats. He insisted that we had to get the tomatillos at the Mexican grocery store downtown. Once we got to the Mexican store, I realized that I had left my debit card at the first grocery store, so we had to drive back out to get it. We drove home after that.
Husband got more tomatillos than he needed for the salsa, so I decided that I would make some Texas green sauce with the leftovers. My recipe called for six Serrano peppers, which we didn’t have, so I ran to another grocery store to get them and some more limes. When I got back home, I couldn’t find the Serranos I had purchased, so I drove back to the grocery store to get more. I must have dropped the first ones in the parking lot. Husband roasted all the veggies and meat, and we ended up with three pints of Texas Green sauce and seven pints of salsa, and they are all in the freezer. It was rather exhausting running to various grocery stores five times in one day. We also planted a late crop of cold hardy spinach and fenced it in to keep bunnies out. Sunday we slept in. I never did get the minestrone started.
What are your biggest distractions that get you off task? What fresh produce are you enjoying now?
We took a long weekend last week. Daughter has been saying we needed to take a vacation, and we fully agreed with her. But May through July is Kelly’s busiest time, and of course spring is bad for me, and, well, we can always come up with an excuse NOT to go somewhere. Spur of the moment, we decided, let’s just take a weekend. We asked daughter what she thought we should do; I mean are we renting a cabin on a lake or are we going to a hotel. Well, she wanted swimming, and rides at Mall of America. OK, sounds like we do the Embassy Suites, which has been a family favorite over the few years because they do complimentary breakfast really well. They set the standard for hotel breakfasts! Fruit, yogurt, Sausages, bacon, eggs (not as good as ours of course), hashbrowns, bagels, made to order omelets, cereal, drinks: milk, juice, coffee.
We got there late evening Thursday and had supper at the hotel restaurant. Friday we all slept in and took naps and didn’t leave the room until 3:00 PM. Over to “THE” mall and had lunch, then walked around a bit and bought some ride tickets. We waited in line for an hour so we could all do the log flume ride. Because there was some bad weather in the area, the rides were going at half capacity, so the wait was longer than it should have been. Boy, if we didn’t get covid waiting in that line. Then daughter and I did a crazy spinning loop de loop roller coaster and I think I learned I might be too old for those rides. Woo boy. A couple times I had to just put my head back and close my eyes and I’d think, “DON’T CLOSE YOUR EYES!” There was a young boy about 8 years old who was on the ride with us; he said he had two little sisters and mom had to stay with them. After the first spinning loop he said “That was unexpected!” Yep, sure was! When it was over, I told him I had no idea what had happened in the last 40 seconds.
Even daughter, who’s a daredevil, was a little shook up after that. We all went to the Ferris wheel from there. And then Daughter and I went on our favorite roller coaster from 10 years ago; the one that goes straight up, then straight down. And upside down and right side down and over this way and around and back upside that way. Aye aye aye. Whew. That was easier last time I did that. Kelly and daughter did the carousel and we decided that was enough. I saw a sign that read, ‘Barking Lot stroller parking’, and I thought it said ‘Barfing lot’ which I thought was really appropriate.
I bought the 30 point arm bands, but no one put them on our arms, so I’d just show them to the ride operator. The first ride scanned them all. The second person was talking and looking away and only scanned one, and the third ride just put us on without even scanning the tickets. We gave them to a young couple and told them to have fun.
Daughter also wanted Red Robin for supper. We don’t have one of them in Rochester. At some point in her brief past, she had a shake at a Red Robin she really liked and wanted another. Supper was really good there and my vanilla malt was yummy. I don’t know about hers.
Saturday, we got the swimming in and had the pool to ourselves for an hour. We saw the Barbie movie, (and got a free icy drink), and had supper at Giordano’s pizza with a hostess named Joy who was super helpful and sent us back to the hotel with plates, drinks, and plastic ware.
Sunday, we stopped to see our son and daughter in law. When we got home, the dogs were glad to see us, (our neighbors took care of the dogs and chickens while we were gone) and Humphrey just had to stay outside for a couple nights. Once in the house, he had a big drink of soft water, and slept for several hours on his pillow.
Everyone survived on the farm, and Monday morning, daughter said she wasn’t ready to go back to her program. None of us are kid, none of us are.
We called this our ‘practice vacation’ to remember what works and what doesn’t when travelling together.
The soybeans are looking good, you know, for 6 weeks behind. They’ve finally started to canopy and, to add insult to injury, the weeds are coming too. A few buttonweed, lambsquarter, and ragweed are towering over the soybeans. Plus, a lot of volunteer corn. Which doesn’t really hurt anything, it just looks bad in a nice field of soybeans.
I started working on the shop again and started getting 2×4’s put on the walls and removed from the work bench an old radial arm saw that I haven’t used in I-don’t-know-how-many years. Back on Amazon Prime day I ordered one of those 360 degree green laser levels. It is pretty cool!
Remember a few months ago I showed a bunch of eggs under the deck? Well, the chicken hatched out 13 baby chicks the other day. She’s a good momma and moved them down to the main pen and she’s keeping a good eye on them. Thirteen chicks?? Don’t hold your breath for all of them. The other chickens seem jealous: ‘How come YOU got chicks!??’
My brother came out and we unloaded the last load of straw into the barn. 600+ bales in there again. Coming up, planting winter rye as a cover crop! Deep roots good for the soil, but it will over winter so it will have to be killed off in the spring before planting corn.
And back at the college, all my computer stuff is working this week! Yay!
Trail Baboon 