This was a busy but fun Weekend

The weekend started for me on Friday evening when my son and Daughter-in-law and I went to the park, downtown Traverse City. We had tickets to Paella In The Park. Paella is a Spanish recipe which apparently is open to interpretation (just Google Paella and you'll find lots of recipes, all using different ingredients, combining rice with meat, beans, vegetables, and/or seafood, with saffron and olive oil. The festivities included 7 chefs from 7 area restaurants all well known for their cooking fare. Each chef was paired with wines from the Wineries of Old Mission Peninsula ( http://www.wineriesofoldmission.com/ ) The chefs each made 3 versions of Paella, fish, meat and vegetarian. We had our choice of 3 of any of the 21 varieties made. We also had our choice of 5 different 2 ounce samplings of wine from any of the wineries. The lines were long but these guys knew what they were doing, the lines moved fast and we were served fairly quickly. The wine was DELICIOUS as was the Paella I chose (I had one with a combo of chicken, duck and artichoke. Next I chose one with sausage and mussels (told them to hold the mussel)which was my favorite because it was hot off the cooker and spicy hot to eat. The wine I chose was a white fruity winecalled Late Harvest Riesling from Chateau Grand Traverse, I'm not really a wine drinker the other 2 I tried were Chardonnay's and I only got 3 drinks from the 5 tickets in my pocket.

Also on the agenda was a concert. Opening the concert was Rootstand, a local group who plays Reggae/Celtic/Bluegrass followed by Blues Traveler, a blues-based rock group. Actually Bluegrass can get boring after the first couple songs (my opinion, naturally)and I felt like Rootstand was more of a country-type band. Anyway, I liked them.

The opening picture shows a balloon in the background, the stage with Blues Traveler and some of the crowd that was seated in front of us. It was definitely dusk when I took the picture. Somehow my son wrangled a seat on the balloon but it remained tethered, it just raised and lowered a few times, never going much over 3 feet off the ground. (I have no idea why)...

Personally I enjoyed Rootstand's music more than Blues Traveler's but then its my age I guess :-) Anyway we went home tired, full and happy. There was a heck of a crowd but plenty of room and food so it was an enjoyable evening.

Saturday was the opening day for the Northwest Michigan Fair. I'm ashamed of myself for not having something to enter but anyway..we went Saturday and watched as the 4H'rs brought their livestock and other goodies to enter. We walked through the horse barns and the livestock barns. I stopped and talked to a young girl who was sitting in a pile of fresh hay with her calf's head in her lap, the calf was taking a nap. She told me she was going to sell the calf and that the calf she raised last year was sold to a 4-H'er who was showing the steer this year. She was also showing a steer that will be sold during the 4H Livestock Market Auction. That brought back lots of memories of my kids doing the same when we lived in the U.P. of Michigan years ago. Sunday we went back and watched a Draft Horse Driving show. We also walked around checking out rabbits, llama and alpaca barns. Fun. I peeked in the 4H and adult exhibition buildings to see what knits had been entered. I swear next year I'm going to enter a knit but need to find a book with the rules, etc. Will ask when I go back to see the results of the judging later this week. Here's some photos of the animals we looked at yesterday.....
And the 4H winner of the draft horse pulling event was a young boy who definitely was at ease with his horse and never had a bit of trouble following the judges wishes, (back up, turn, etc).