Crowded kitchen

My goodness, it's been cool this week! Today the sun was out but we never got to 50 degrees, and a cool wind blew out of the north. When is it ever going to warm up???

Oh. I just checked. We're forecast for 70 on Saturday and most of next week.

****

I haven't finished the story of our trip to southern Wisconsin last week. It's 95% done, but I have to choose and edit the pictures.

First, though, we had an adventure this week. Yesterday (Thursday), I took my wife to a Taste of Home cooking show in Marquette.

It's the third time we have gone to such an event, and I think we both rate it as the third best. Not because of the content of the program but because of the location. It was held in a middle school auditorium, and all the seats were very close together. Made for middle school kids, not oldsters like us. Aisles were narrow. So when you sat down in the middle of a row, there you stayed. Unless you really had to go ...



At previous Taste of Home shows we have attended (one in Escanaba and one at the dome in Marquette) there was a lot more room--aisles and seating alike. They had vendors along the walls with tables of different foods or utensils or other kitchen products on display, and you walked around before the show to see what you can see and register for what you can win. Here are two 2007 pictures. Compare ...





None of that last night--there was no room for it. The only vendor I could detect was the Taste of Home staff, selling the various cookbooks they had on sale. But that table was at the front of the auditorium, in a corner, and it would have been very difficult to get to. I bet their sales were well below average.

They had a number of drawings (bags of groceries, cookbooks, appliances and other kitchen goodies), but neither of us won anything.

The Taste of Home presenter was very good and witty. She had to be--when she was doing her first recipe of the night, for a guacamole dip, she cut open the avocado and discovered it was going bad. Ewwww! Later, she was making a sorbet in a blender, but the base of the blender wasn't on properly, and when she put the goodies inside, they leaked all over the table.

Live on TV--they had a little TV camera mounted, pointing straight down at the food preparation area, and the image was projected on a big screen behind her. That's how they did it at the other shows, too ...



So the show was good ... but the sponsor (the Marquette newspaper) gets low marks for going cheap on the location. Charge people $2 more and get a decent venue, for goodness sake! (Tickets were $10 per person.) The show itself was its usual high quality. The Taste of Home staff does a good job.

Regardless, the bottom line is that my wife really enjoyed the show. Even if we didn't win anything. And that's the bottom line for me. We got back home at about 11 p.m.

I think that's the end of our travels for a few weeks (outside of the routine trips to Iron Mountain to visit my mom; we're probably going to visit on Saturday). My schedule is going to be pretty busy for the next few weeks, what with the end of spring sports and my son's visit over Memorial Day. After that, maybe we can gave a little fun.

****

As for the saga of the southern Wisconsin trip ... that's coming soon.