Harvest Fest, Part II

I meant to get back to this yesterday, just because my Mommy always appreciates something new to read, but.  However, this morning I am tackling all those cooking jobs I should have gotten to this weekend, if only we weren't so busy being awesome: Chicken broth, roasted tomatoes, pesto.  I have time to write, you see, while things bubble away.  Although this can be dangerous, as I tend to forget about everything else when I'm writing.

The tomatoes will eventually be turned into Eggplant Parmesan, by the way.  But first things first.  Let's not get ahead of ourselves, no matter how delicious Eggplant Parmesan is.

(That's the trick of cooking from scratch.  You have to start at the bottom and work your way up.)

So.  To recap: The history of harvest fest and my family is lengthy; we had one day o' harvest fest fun; and our first stop was to a local craft bazaar.  And ducks.  Don't forget the ducks.

I think that pretty much sums it up.

So!  Our second stop was sort of an ad-on to the ol' schedule.  I'm not sure who decided to hit this little tiny craft bazaar by a local charitable organization, but anyway, we did.  (Peer pressure by The Aunts!)  It's always sort of a sad little sale... you could characterize it as "White Elephant" with a quilt raffle and some baked goods thrown in for good measure.  Everything was half-off because they wanted to close in like an hour.  The girls were starving--Abby had apparently not eaten lunch--so I picked out a small loaf of banana bread for them to split.  For $1.  And I paid the buck.  I was all like, um, you do good work, and I want to pay full price.  And the lady was all like, really?  THANK YOU.  And I was like, wow, that is super sad on multiple levels, but since The Aunts and Clara and my mother all found treasures, that sort of helps my conscience.

I mean, Jan and Joan got baby blankets in packages that hadn't been opened for 50-cents.  They don't even know any babies, but I guess the savings got the best of them.  Carol found some embroidered pillow cases that she bought because she "felt bad."  (Word.)  Clara spent her time in the books.  Mom found a fluted dish that she decided would be perfect for olives at Thanksgiving.  I had just broke it to her that one of her prized possessions--this wooden school house picture thing she got several years ago--was not on my list of things to take from the house when she kicks it, so she was all like, YOU WANT THIS DISH, RIGHT?  And I was all like, TOTALLY.  Except maybe you can stick around for another thirty years or so, if you don't mind.

Oh, and then the girls wouldn't eat the bread because they deemed it inedible.  Ah, well.  That's why God gave us birds.

So next!  Our favorite fruit stand!  The lady who runs it--and her daughters--look for us.  Mom and I go there all the time anyway, but they love to meet our friends and relatives for some reason.  I did my usual fruit and veggie shopping for the week (well, why not?  It's not like Mom or The Aunts were in a hurry).  The Aunts picked up some fruit for various people From Far Away.  Like my grandparents, I guess.  Clara found mini pumpkins and filled a sack for the people she works with--I thought that was a cute idea, although why she thinks mini pumpkins are better than garlic, I have no idea.  There was a cake walk, and Abby, Joan and Carol all won prizes--pumpkin bread, which was excellent and pretty much inhaled.  I felt sort of sorry for the neglected banana bread.

I love going to this fruit stand.  They've got 100-year-old trees that still produce.  It's crazy.  It's local food in action.  It's awesome.  We probably kicked around there for 30-45 minutes, and then it was time to go farther up the road to another fruit stand.

This one is maybe my second-favorite, but The Aunts love it because it's a bigger farm and thus there's more apple/pear variety.  I did not buy anything (not that I was boycotting, just that I had just stocked up and was not about to wait in those lines), but the rest of our group threw it down.  I was sort of wondering all the boxes of fruit were going to go in the SUV, but they must have worked it out.

Oh, here's a story about this particular stop: Abby, Johanna and I went to the back area, where there's this cool fort.  It actually looks like a fort, as in Fort Olden Days.  It was wet and muddy, and the slide was filthy, so I told Jo not to go down it.  But then we saw these kids sliding down by sitting on their feet, so that's what she did.  Several times.  That made a good photo op, especially when she slipped near the bottom and somehow caught herself before sitting on the muddy slide.  But eventually I got tired of sliding around in the mud, so I announced we were going back to the front.  That part went fine.  But then Jo said something to Abby and didn't appreciate the response and stomped her foot.  And JUST THEN this lady walks by and says, "No temper tantrums."  And Johanna was horrified.  She was like, who did that lady think she was, the police?  And I was all like, look, she didn't understand what was going on, and she has no idea how wonderful you are, and so you stomped your foot.  We're going to move on.

And we did, right into my car.  Because it was cold and crowded outside.  The girls and I finished off the pumpkin bread and listened to a little music.  Eventually The Aunts and Clara and my mother got the fruit they wanted, and we moved on to our last stop.  Because now we only had about 1 1/2 hours left of our harvest fest day, and we still had presents to get to.

This is a good place to end this particular episode, so that's what I'm going to do.  Wow, Harvest Fest is lengthy, I guess.  It's funny how some days, NOTHING happens, and other days, there's too much.

Irony!  Maybe.