Nighttime Crave

Night time crave.

Hello band, you so good, but SO loud.

PICKLES WHATS HAPPENING

Look that's the salad I sorted. I'm important. And the apple strudel I tried. YUM

Desert plate. My favorite kind of plate.

Make shift kitchens have make shift cabinets. Where they put muffins.

I'm artistic.

Finished desert plates. I ate some of that. You can't notice. I hope.

People be cooking.

OMG more people are cooking.

Look at that rice. Its purple. Too fancy for this ish.

That's my mentor guys. That's him.

Those are miniature pumpkin things. And they put them on the purple rice.

Pretty good for not a real kitchen.

He was the one who gave me the coffee to pour. Broke Spoke sweater is Wendy. Wendy is cool. (Look at the girl in glasses. She wasn't happy about the classes.)

Plating. Like on the food network. But with out the dramatic music.

Look at them plates.

#stress

Even thought those look like creatures from the deep sea, they are actually mushrooms.

CHEESE, I LOVE YOU

I took a sneaky picture of the menu. Like a spy.

Well it’s happening. With great pain I am facing my procrastination. I’m not kidding about the pain part. I’ve had to take two naps just to face this. Once I put something off I have some deep trouble doing it. It’s been a lifelong struggle.

So. Nighttime crave. That was a while ago. Sorry bout that. Procrastination like this won’t happen again, but mostly because I will start failing my class. Yay. Here’s the story:

After I went to daytime crave and visited the goats, I went home, ate some cheese, put on my boots for the first time this fall and made my mom drive me to Crave again. (This procrastination thing isn’t just with my blog, I promise. It’s also why I’ve had my  permit for a year but only three lessons.) Anyways…I had promised John (my mentor) that I would meet him over where the band was playing so I followed the sound of electric guitar and found him and a bunch of other people in chef outfits. The plan was to watch them make a 15 course meal. It was going to be intense.

The menu was:

·      Amouse Bouche – Holly Hill Inn – Brown Bread Croustade with herbed goat cheese tomato jam and pickled baby okra. (This was super exciting because the cheese was from the goat farm that I had visited that morning. AND at Crave Susan Miller, the goat cheese lady won for best cheese. Yay for yummy cheese. You go, goats.)

·      Small Plate – Laurentia and Sebastian Torrealba – Pan roasted lamb belly stuffed with pears, finished with red wine reduction

·      Soup – Dan Wu’s pork and vegetable ramen

·      Pasta – Lexington Pasta

·      Intermezzo – Wendy Meadors pickled fall vegetables

·      Beef – jerry Broderick – Braised beef short rib with local tomato ragout (now I'm not super sure about this because I think I missed it or they didn’t include it because it was crossed out)

·      Lamb – Shannon Wampler – Collins

·      Pork – Jonathan Lundy – pork three ways

·      Greens – John Foster – Roasted wild mushrooms tossed with shallot sorghum dressing and baby fall greens (MY MENTOR AH)

·      Cheese – Pat Wylie

·      Ice creams – Crank and Boom, Pedal Sassy (remember them? Farmers market goodness)

·      Assorted Pastry – Jim Betts – apple strudel, Fatima Shamash – baklava, Sofia Wu – olive oil financiers

·      Coffee – A Cup of Commonwealth

·      Bread supplied by Bluegrass Bakery

I mean, wow. Really.

So I get there and there are a bunch of people running around battling this impressive menu, and I like, “Ummmm, hi, John what can I do? Um”. I am articulate. He assigned me to follow his friend Wendy (the one who made the pickles.) She was so nice. She works at my all time favorite restaurant in Lexington, Stella’s. Her girlfriend’s daughter was with her too so we both followed her. The daughter went to my old middle school and is currently taking a class wit my all time favorite teacher, Mrs. Jones. It was a good night. They kept giving us scraps to try. It was equally as delicious as it was fancy. And it was pretty fancy. My favorite was the apple strudel and the pork, and the rest of the menu. I was a proud pan holder during plating and lettuce sorter for the salad greens. I mean, such an integral part of the process.

It was an amazing night. So many cool things. And it was a lot of fun being behind the scenes. Except for the part where I was emptying coffee packets into a container and I accidentally shook it too hard and it went into my shirt. I smelled like coffee for like three days. Other than smelling like coffee and pickles, It was fabulous. (I got pickle juice on me. I'm clumsy like that.) I mean, who wouldn’t love watching delicious, organic, local food being made into magazine worthy plates. I mean, really.

Daytime Crave

I took this not so great selfie after eating my pad thai in a record time of under 2 minutes.

Random creepy picture of strangers. You're welcome

My crepe. Ahhhhh. Om nom

A Mexican food booth. I wanted to eat there so bad but then we went to the goats.

He's sticking his tongue out at you.

Half the reason my mentor agreed to be my mentor is because he was planning this event (called Crave) that he thought would be right up my alley. It was this weekend. If you go on the website you can clearly see it was a weekend festival with music and food and also food tours around the city. My mission: To schmooze with the vendors. To make connections. To learn things. This is all so I will be able to post the things I have learned on this blog. It’s all for you my friends, all for you. I woke up on Saturday morning not the happiest camper. That's funny because it's an understatement. I was not excited. But I trench-coated-up and Frankensteined my grimace to a semi smile/snarl. Then Crave turned out to be wonderful. So I had to be happy. All of the food looked delicious and the crowd was impressive considering it was a dreary morning. The first thing I had was Pad Thai from Jasmine Rice because I am boring and go straight for my favorite food. My mom has some incredible butternut squash curry from Thai Orchid Cafe. After walking around and schmoozing a little, we had a dessert break. My mom had coffee from A Cup of Commonwealth and a brownie from Martine’s Pastries. A teacher friend of my mom’s bumped into us simultaneously eating Tiramisu from Shakespeare and Co and some pork and potatoes thing from an undisclosed source. I was impressed. After finding my mentor who looked sufficiently stressed and more walking around mom dared me to get something I wouldn’t normally get. I got “Nashville-style hot fried chicken in a Korean style bun w/ bread and butter bok choy” from Azur. That was interesting in a good/strange way. Then I went back to boring with a cinnamon sugar crepe from La Petite Creperie, the most European and wonderfully French place we have in town.

It was right around then that my aunt called and asked if we wanted to go on one of the Crave Farm Food Tours to a goat cheese farm, and we were like, “uh, totally”. So we hopped in the car and drove off to Athens. Pronounced Aethens. I fell asleep in the back with a Literature textbook as a pillow. It was blissful. When I woke up we were at the cutest/quaintest/most bucolic little farm ever. We went and visited the goats and then went inside where they were serving sorbet and cheese. I love both of those things so I was basically in goat farm heaven. I had mango-lime sorbet, mom had pawpaw and my aunt had caramel goat chèvre. Chèvre means goat cheese. I think. All of them were fantastic. We talked to both the cheese and sorbet lady. We also negotiated a pawpaw cheese exchange so they can make more sorbet. (I'm excited cause that cheese was good and now its all gone.) Then we got some cheese and I went home and ate it. And it was delightful.

The Beginning of the Weekend: Picture Day and Poetry Slam

I had an insanely hectic weekend. Therefore, I have decided to post once a day for the next three days about it, because who wouldn’t want to hear about my weekend for the next three days? We will start off slow.

This is my before/bedhead picture. It was early and I was not happy

After and equally unhappy. I'm not a morning person.

I saw an R.A. from GSP at the poetry slam. I didn't talk to him but I took a lot of really zoomed in pictures.

These are from the Latino festival. Below is the churro man. He made a mean churro.

This is the beginning of my crazy weekend. Friday was Senior picture day and because my parents aren’t into sentimentality and I am into procrastination I did not get my pictures done over the summer.  Insert upset face. So I woke up early after staying out late to go her Wendell Berry and Barbara Kingsolver speak at a Stop I-75 event to do my hair. I wanted to look pretty but because waking up at 5 took away from my beauty sleep time I think it canceled out the curled hair. School sucked. Because I woke up early and only did my hair I did not do any homework so I was frantically doing math in Macro and English in World. That was not fun. That evening my mom and I went to the Gypsy Women’s Writer Conference Poetry Slam. IT KICKED BUTT. The best and winning poem was a hilarious tale of when the poet got a yeast infection. Genius. After the slam my mom and I walked down to the Latino Festival where I got one of my top three favorite desserts, a churro.

Now, I am telling you all of this so one, you will understand how hectic my weekend was and feel pity and envy and two, because it is my goal in life to learn how to make a churro. So if I am very lucky I will be posting that on this part of the interwebs one day. Get excited.

Crave Lexington

 http://cravelexington.com/

Something big is happening. And it's called CRAVE (all capitals). It is a free food and musical festival in Lexington going on THIS WEEKEND. I'm super excited because I get to meet a bunch of people who will (hopefully) give me recipes and fun stuff to put on this here blog. To express my excitement I took many ratchet selfies of myself and a poster I found at the work room of my school. (I wasn't supposed to be there. I'm a rebel.) These posters are everywhere and these are just two of my worst selfies with one of them.

Anyhoo, above is the website so you Lexantonians can learn more about it. Even though just about everything is happening this weekend, you should go. I'll be there. Actually, I just had the best idea, take the trolley to this and all the other stuff that is happening like the poetry slam. Just remember: you have to flag the trolley down. With your hands, not your mind. If you don't it will pass you and you will chase it down the block looking like an idiot but it won't care so you'll have to sit on the curb for 45 min singing Seasons of Love and getting strange looks. This may have happened to me before. 3 times.

Kentucky Stuffed Squash (a.k.a. A Bacon and Breadcrumbs Baseball Bat of Deliciousness)

*And I recognize that it looks a little bit like cat food but it was great so get over yourself.

Ingredients:

·      1 giant squash/zucchini (the bigger the better)

·      ½ cup bell pepper, diced

·      1 cup onion, finely chopped

·      1 cup tomato, chopped and seeded

·      ½ cup sharp cheddar cheese, shredded

·      ½ cup Italian breadcrumbs

·      4 slices of bacon, fried until crispy and crumbled (but personally I don’t think you can have too much bacon…)

·      1 pinch of salt

·      Lil bit of pepper

·      Butter (for sautéing)

Directions:

1.     Preheat oven to 400 degrees

2.     Cut squash in half lengthways (I put olive oil on the skin but I’m not 100% sure it did anything.)

3.     With a spoon get all of the seeds and gunk out of the middle and put it in a bowl. (Warning: It will look like pale zombie guts. That is ok.) The squash should look like boats.

4.     Sauté the onions and red pepper in the butter.

5.     In a separate pan sauté the squash innards until it is soft.

6.     Combine the squash pulp, onions, peppers, tomatoes, cheese, breadcrumbs, bacon and seasoned salt. (That means all of your ingredients.)

7.     Sprinkle the inside of the hollowed squash with salt and pepper.

8.     Pour the mixture inside of both boats. Top with more breadcrumbs. And drizzle with olive oil.

9.     Bake for 20 to 25 min until top is golden. (Or in my case go to the dollar tree and ask your mom to pull it out and pray it isn’t burnt.)