Kutztown Folk Festival

   
Braving the severe storm warning, we headed out to the Kutztown Folk Festival, our family tradition. As usual there was much eating, a little shopping, and ogling of the quilts.

This beauty greeted you on entering the quilt barn. The colors were just so smashing. I'm not sure I've captured them.

This quilt had a striking three dimensional look. That center square just **popped**. Remarkable.

This quilt was called "Distelfink Log Cabin." The distelfink is a stylized goldfinch regularly used in Pennsylvania Dutch folk art. What a great idea!

I take this photo every year. But usually, there's a blond child next to the brunette. This year mom rode  the carousel with her because her sister is in North Carolina. 

And the dude should always have his photo taken while he is eating.

Fair Food

As is our 4th of July tradition, we headed to the Pennsylvania German Festival in Kutztown today. We looked at the quilts (and bought! I'll show you that tomorrow) and checked out the crafts and the artisan demonstrations. Mostly we grazed. It's going to look like we ate a lot...but we shared...okay, we ate a lot. But what are these holidays good for if not for eating?

The dude wanted to start with ox roast. This ox was put on the spit last night. They take about 20 hours to cook. This was the fifth ox of the festival. We ate its predecessors. They were good.

I turned this photo around. Promise. I don't know why it's uploading like this. This was billed as a corn fritter but it was a corn pancake. And pretty yummy.

Homemade chips. We sprayed them with vinegar and sprinkled salt on. These were awesome.

Pickle on a stick. The dude's was spicy and mine was half sour. Everything tastes better on a stick. (I was tempted by the frozen cheesecake on a stick, but the dude pooh-poohed the idea.)

After we bought our quilt we brought it to the car so it wouldn't get wet. On the stroll back through the food area, the dude saw pie and coffee and had to have it. That's blueberry. I had a bite, but it turns out I still don't like fruit pies. He thought it was a good solid pie.

I only had two bites of the ox sandwich, so I was still hungry. I had the sweet potato fries and the hickory smoked sausage with onions and peppers. The dude who'd just had pie and coffee claimed to be full but the power of sausage was too great. And those peppers and onions were awesome.

To make up for the lack of vegetables (that weren't fried) we had a veggie dinner of kohlrabi and salad. The salad included spicy greens mix. They taste like mustard and horseradish. If I liked roast beef, I'd totally put those greens on a roast beef sandwich. But they're good in salad too. More on kohlrabi in the days to come.

Hope your 4th of July was as tasty as ours!

Weekend Stitching

On Saturday, we decided to head out to Lancaster to make fun of the Amish to show my MIL, who still doesn't believe the Amish don't use electricity, how the other half lives. I nearly finished the Santa ornament for my nephew before I fell asleep in the back. We went to the Quilt Museum, which is really just a small section of a shop, and saw some beautiful contemporary quilts that made me wish I could sew. (Yes, that's ironic.) I dragged my hands over some beautiful fabric and contemplated buying some felted wool. Then we went in search of a quilt that we could hang in our living room with our other textiles. But we're too poor. Even when we got off the beaten path, we just liked the really quilty ones. And those cost. My husband decided he needs a hobby, and he was thinking about turning bowls. I tried to convince him to learn quilting, but I think he finally settled on jam making. My mother was a bit disappointed, since she was willing to give him free lessons... Saturday ended with us stuffing ourselves full of hearty Amish food, like we were about to lead a team of horses into the field.

On Sunday, we took both the mothers (yes, mine arrived Saturday afternoon) and one father for dim sum. Sissy, the dude, and I also picked up the tab for everyone, including my cousin. This is what happens when you give birth. Everyone came back to our house so dad could get the grand tour. Then my mother rearranged the furniture in the living room. As they departed, my father told the dude that he was going to call in twelve minutes, and he wanted to hear the sound of the lawnmower in the background. Since it takes about 12 minutes to mow the lawn, he missed it. Then the dude, MIL, and I set about to finish the desk we bought at IKEA two weeks ago. (We stopped about halfway through when we realized we had just spent hours making extra holes in the piece because we were too dense to follow pictograms--yeah, there were 5 advanced degrees in the room.) We still haven't finished but I think that may be on the agenda for today. We had to stop in order to make it out to Exton for Mother's Day dinner my cousin was cooking for everyone. I thought that place used to be full when we lived there, but on Sunday there were 8 adults, two kids, and three dogs (my parents brought their chocolate lab, Coco, with them).

Today sucks. Everyone else got to go to the Classic Diner for breakfast. I had to put on my duck boots and slosh to work.