Another year, another art fair out of the way. Man, what a debacle. According to the report in the KC Star, 80,000 people attended this year’s Brookside Art Fair. Of those, I suspect fully 3/4 of them were Johnson County residents making their annual pilgrimage to “That quaint little ghetto down off 63rd.” So, that translates into a whole lot of incompetent drivers and 240,000 cigarette butts per hour I had to endure all weekend. Miserable. Suffice to say I avoided that area like the plague. Typical conversation overheard from some of the offending intruders:
“I can’t find anywhere to park, do they expect you to walk around here or something?”
“Oh just stop the car in the street, we’ll only be a few hours. Can I get a light?”
“But we’re in the middle of the street, won’t we get a ticket? Oh good, there’s a Price Chopper, I need another carton of Camels.”
“Oh honey please, they wouldn’t ticket a Mercedes. Besides, I heard the police won’t even come to this area.”
And so on and so on.
Despite being banned from my regular haunts for the weekend, we still managed to stay busy. Friday night Doni planned a fun little “date” for us; We went to the Stadium Club, where they were having a dinner and beer tasting. The food was great. Doni was a bit embarrassed when they had to ask me to step away from the smoked fish table, but she got over it. Hey, they said “all you can eat,” I was pushing the limits. We stayed there for a few hours, and then went home and watched “Mean Girls.” Lindsay Lohan, heh heh, heh heh. (What is she, like 25, 30? Right?)
Saturday I took Gabe up to Kevin Brown’s to hang out and demo the new smoker. We stayed around a few hours but didn’t make it long enough to see how the “product” turned out. He had a brisket, a few slabs o’ ribs, a few chickens… And there was still plenty of real estate left to put more on. The smoker was running smooth; kind of a wood-hog though. Don’t know exactly what to do about that but we’ll cipher on it. Might just have to feed it trees and be happy. Yes, I took some pictures; No, I don’t have them off my camera yet. Later, we headed back home and then went out to dinner with Ronda, Josh and Randy. I was supposed to make dinner, as we owe them one, but I had a new recipe and didn’t think it wise to try it out on company. So, we went to 75th Street Brewery and then down to the Brooksider for a while. (The art fair was closed by that time.)
Sunday was kind of a mix of work, yard stuff, and walking the dog. I’m not sure what all we did, but it wore me out. Todd came over for dinner and I cooked the above-referenced “new recipe.” (Todd doesn’t count as “company.”) Basically it was a pork tenderloin stuffed and wrapped with prosciutto and pancetta. I was quite pleased with the results; That one will have to get typed up and put out in the recipe section. Add it to the list… 1) Post vacation pics, 2) Post smoker pics 3) Post new recipe. Sigh. Anyway, it wasn’t too hard to prepare, but it looked kind of “fancy.” After dinner the weather was just right for a fire, so we started up the patio fireplace and hung outside for a few hours. Thus ended another weekend.