Home Sweet Home

We spent an entire weekend in Milwaukee for once.  It was nice not having to make the drive over to Madison on Friday and therefore we could enjoy some home made pizza (pepperoni in case anyone cares) for once.  It made for a very relaxing weekend as we tried out a few new things around town.  Saturday morning after getting in a hard workout we headed over to our first (and probably only) Kopp's custard for the summer.  Hard to believe that it took us until the end of September for our first Kopp's but to make up for it we decided to try the Kopp's burger.  Their burger regularly wins the best burger in town award, so we figured it was finally time (after seven years of eating just their custard) to try it out.  It didn't disappoint - great burger, lots of topping to choose from, and most importantly to the neat eating crowd a bun that could stand up to the juicy burger and ingredients.  We topped it off with some Turtle Pecan custard to make it a perfect meal.  Now if it just hadn't been 55 degrees outside while we were eating the ice cream it might have been ideal.

Jo got a massage Saturday afternoon while I perused the college football games - bye week for the Badgers - and caught up on some fun reading.  We capped off our diet extravaganza with cauliflower macaroni and cheese.  Nothing makes a Wisconsinite feel better on a cold Saturday night than a bowlful of melted cheese.  We figured some exercise would be valuable after that so we braved the cool temperatures for a nice walk before watching the hometown Brewer's advance their way to a tie for the NL Central.

Sunday's weather was rainy and overcast but we braved the elements to take in the Harvest Fair and Maker's Faire (their spelling of Fair, not mine) at the WI State Fair grounds.  The Harvest Fair was mostly an opportunity for all you can eat pancakes from the Lion's club - I only managed five  and Jo four though, so all you can eat is rarely economically viable for us any more.  Then we toured the Expo (everything you might need to groom or feed your horses/cattle - not a market segment we need a lot of stuff for) and the cattle judging.  Jo always seems to really like cow judging although we are both a bit mystified at what makes one cow better than the other.  Afterwards we toured the Maker's Faire which is pretty much exactly as it sounds.  People displaying various things they have made.  Some really interesting hobbies out there especially one person who had managed to jury rig up the equivalent of a 3-D printer using clay to make pottery.  Did make us both feel a bit sluggish being around all these people finding time in their lives to make some interesting stuff.

Then it was home to some cooking.  We made a batch of bread and butter pickles using the last cucumbers of the year, Jo cranked out a tray of cinnamon rolls for a work event, and we (that's the royal we, since it was mostly Jo) finished it all off with a batch of meatballs meaning that beyond the spaghetti and meatball dinner that night there are some great lunches of meatball sandwiches coming in the future.