State Fair

Last week we continued to enjoy harvesting beans and cucumbers from the garden.  We now have a good supply of frozen beans for the upcoming winter.  Also made our first batch of sun-dried tomatoes for future pasta creations.  Still haven't had any of the full size tomatoes ripen although there are several on the plants and it appears our blueberries are finally finished.  We had another fun and exciting weekend.  Friday Jo treated me to a birthday dinner at Sanford's in Milwaukee.  We have been meaning to try out Sanford's for about two years and finally managed to get there.  We chose the 7 course "surprise" menu to which Jo added the wine pairing menu (more on that in a bit).  The surprise menu is seven courses selected by the chef and you don't find out what they are until they show up at the table.  We absolutely loved six out of the seven (the oyster and foie gras course wasn't a hit with us) and we were stuffed by the end.  Jo's wine pairings were all interesting but she found out that starting with a cosmo before dinner and then having seven half glasses of wine left her a bit over-served and made for a bit of a headache on Saturday.

Saturday we headed to Madison in the morning to show off our condo to John, Linda, and their daughter Jenna.  They came over to enjoy the Farmer's Market and the botanical gardens.  We had a great time grazing our way through all the bakeries around the square before heading out for lunch on State Street and getting to some good suggestions on how to renovate our condo.  John did manage to manuever his large SUV out of our basement parking although there was some tight moments.  We are thinking maybe a Smart car is in our future.  After lunch we headed back home to join our neighborhood block party.  Spent the afternoon/evening talking with some new neighbors we hadn't met yet and catching up with some old ones while enjoying watching the young kids run around in their "Frozen" princess costumes.


Sunday was State Fair day.  We tried something new this year and biked to the State Fair.  There is a bike path that runs from downtown Milwaukee out to the fair and it was a really convenient way to get there and avoid all the traffic and parking hassles.  The bike racks are in a different location than where we would normally park so we did the fair circuit in a new direction and it was like a whole new fair (yes, we are easily amused by things).  Jo got in her annual cow petting and we were almost run over by a run-away pig at the pig judging.  The clever thing figured out how to bump open the gate in the judging pen with its nose and then took off into the crowd - pigs can really scamper.  We enjoyed the usual healthy fair food and managed to eat something wrapped in bacon (tater tots this year  - quite tasty but what isn't when wrapped in bacon and deep fried) along with our favorite fair dessert - whoppie pie with buttercream filling (yum).  Lastly, Jo just had to do one of the rides.