Sunday, April 28, 2013

It's festival time!

Years and years ago, there was an annual strawberry festival held in the town where we currently live.  I can't find information about when the first festival was, but I know it was being held as far back as the 1930's and ended sometime around 1971 or 1972.
It really was a big deal here, and in 1937 was even attended by First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt! She wrote about it in her "My Day" newspaper column. June 12, 1937 and June 14, 1937
This year is the third for the resurrected Strawberry Festival here in Wallace.  The first two years I participated along with the local art guild and had craft items for sale. This year, since I have been busy with the kids and working on the house, I am entering the cooking contest instead.
I have decided to enter the Salads/Entrees/Appetizers category with a traditional strawberry spinach salad. I have devised (what I think to be) a rather agreeable strawberry balsamic vinaigrette dressing - and I don't even like vinaigrette.
I am also entering the dessert category. For that I have decided to do a peanut butter and jelly bar cookie with homemade strawberry jam. I did my first test run today, and while I found the flavor good, I think the texture leaves something to be desired. On the whole, it wants to fall apart. The jam did not thicken sufficiently, and left the whole bar too moist.
Still, it tastes really good and would kick butt with some vanilla ice cream.
If all goes well with the Strawberry cook-off, I think I am going to enter the one in the Blueberry festival as well. It's in June, in the next town over.
I will post recipes once I have worked out the kinks. Stay tuned...

Friday, April 26, 2013

Z-day... not so much

My husband works at a nuclear power plant. Yes, he is Homer Simpson, stfu. We were just discussing nuclear reactors and both realized that their very existence causes the whole "Zombie Apocalypse" scenario to fall apart. Think about it. For whatever reason most of the population has been wiped out or zombified. The handful of survivors that remain are too busy surviving to be like "Hey, the power is out pretty much everywhere. Perhaps I had better get my ass to the nearest nuclear power plant and monitor the reactor so it doesn't go critical."
So really, about a week after the world turns into a zombie smorgasbord, it won't even matter, because the whole planet is going to go kablooey anyway.
Problem solved.