Books 2 Eat (Part 2; our recipes)

While Barb and I spent many hours preparing pretzels and dips for Books 2 Eat on the weekend it took place, it was really the tip of the iceberg, as there was a lot of practice before hand, and ideas tossed around. Much pretzel-eating was enjoyed by our husbands and kids. (And for us it was usually dinner as well on our practice days). The pretzel recipe I used can be found here: soft pretzels. Since there are a lot of recipes, which I found online, that were used for this event, I am just going to provide the online links, since it will make this post super-long otherwise.

Adding a melted butter and egg wash to make the pretzels
super golden

Books 2 Eat (Part 1)

Barb and I heard about Books 2 Eat (Midland Library - Books 2 Eat) a few months ago, from our friend Nicole DiPinto, who owns Grounded Coffee Co.with her husband Scott Campbell. Nicole organized this event with Scott Cooper, a great local musician who also works at the library. And loving books AND food, we decided to enter. I had almost forgotten all about it, but Barb had not, and she came up with the idea to make Golden Rings of Power, from the Lord of the Rings. We were going to make doughnuts at first, but during a cooking session at my place, making pretzels, decided to make pretzels instead which could be made into ring shapes, and made individually for the 200 people who bought tickets to the event, in aid of our local library.

So we spent a lot of time practicing and getting our technique down, and deciding what sauces we would make. I worked mostly on sauces and made a few batches of pretzel dough, but Barb quickly got the knack of twisting the pretzels into cute round braided-like rings, where mine ended up mangled and misshapen. Barb drew some great maps of  Middle Earth, and I got place cards ready (with cool Hobbit Paintbrush font) and a bunch of quotes from the book to scatter along our table. We placed one ring of power on the display. We had made quite a few practice models of really huge braided pretzel rings, but when it came to our actual display it didn't really work out as well as we'd hoped, and we knew that with 150 pretzel rings of power, there would be enough rings for mortal men....Unfortunately, no elf kings or dwarf lords were present. I spent a lot of time organizing
the text and photos in this post, and no matter what I do, when I publish it, it all changes and
it does not look as nice :( I'm not sure why, but this will have to do.

Fried Chicken

** This blog was updated on April 2, with adjustments for quantities**

Fried chicken....mmm......most people love it. As Steve says, deep frying makes anything taste good. With all the fair fare you can get  these days  ....Deep Fried Butter,  Deep Fried Kool-Aid,  and check out this article on strange deep fried foods Odd Deep Fried Foods, he's not wrong. On our honeymoon in Italy  we ate at a restaurant (a famous one, I'll share another time :)) and we ordered deep-fried zucchini. I had never been a zucchini fan, but this made me one, and now I grill it on the barbecue all the time in the summer, and throw it in stirfries too. When was the last time you had stirfry, though, really, that's so 1990s!! (Yes, I am old).  It had to be deep-fried for me to try it again though.   And mmmm... Deep Fried Pickles (Cellarman's Ale House here in Midland makes the best garlic dip ever, to go with them), and Barb and I love them. She has a funny pic of us sharing one when we were ...slightly...into our cups on St. Paddy's Day two years ago, you know like Lady and the Tramp (lmao, ok, we joke about that too), but I'm not sharing it, lol.  Although I tried deep fried Mars Bar at a fair once, I was disappointed. It was sickly sweet.

Memories of Mimere

My dad is from a French Canadian family, and he grew up in a nearby francophone village, Lafontaine, where I spent most of the first six years of my life (I was born in Montreal, moved to Oakville a few months later, and then Lafontaine). My dad had four brothers and and four sisters (two of his brothers have now passed away), and even after my parents separated when I was six, and we moved to nearby Penetanguishene, I remember spending a lot of time visiting my grandparents on the concession road a little way out of the village proper. There was one wind-bent pine tree that as soon as we could see it, knew we would see mimere's house as we climbed the hill, and whichever one of us started chanting "I can see mimere's house, I can see mimere's house" first was the winner, of well, nothing. Just the first, because that is what siblings care about.

Their house was a white stucco farmhouse, with green trim, and even though there was an upstairs, it was always blocked off, and I always had the idea that dark and scary things went on up there, maybe it was haunted. After my mimere died, it was opened up for the first time that I remember, and there were three or four sunny rooms up there, with a neat landing bedroom with another just off it. It must have been a constant hive of activity with nine children growing up there.  I also remember here bathroom, with everything PINK. Pink carpet, pink toilet surround carpet, pink toilet seat cover, pink bath mat, with a lovely toilet paper doll dressed in a hand-crocheted pink dress. It even smelled pink in there. Like pink soap. (Oh, my goodness, that reminds me of a story I wrote when I was about eight or nine, and if I can find it somewhere, I'll post it at the end of the blog. Haha. I found it, it's there :)).