We were afraid that we'd be seeing just the same stuff again this year, because the past few years have kind of trended towards that, but there were actually a lot of new booths, and, more importantly, new foods to try!
There was one company that had different dips and pretzels made with a pepper called "Bhut Jolokia". Don't ask me how to pronounce that. This pepper is considered the hottest one on earth. And they made dips out of it. Yup. The ones we tried, though (and eventually ended up buying) were really very good, though! You can actually taste the flavor of the dip before the heat comes, and even after that you can still taste the actual flavors - it's not just all heat like some dips and sauces I've tried. That's just no fun to me - it has to have a good flavor to me!
There were several companies there which were very new, and which got started through help from an organization called "BEGIN - New Venture Center". This is an organization run out of St. Patrick's Center downtown, that helps people get small businesses up and running - focusing primarily on working with homeless people. We'd never heard of this organization and were both incredibly impressed - not only with what they've done with the businesses, but the products made by these businesses in general! We had some of thee best cookies ever (not better than Jenny's world famous chocolate chip cookies, mind you)! And everyone was so friendly, and really proud of the organization, telling us all about it - even saying we should come down to find out more about it possibly for working with "Jennydoll"! Ya never know!
Another of those upstart businesses was one named "del Carmen Foods", specializing in Cuban foods - including the best black beans and rice I've ever had! Wow, was it awesome! We picked up two frozen bowls of that, which will probably translate to several meals! We knew we didn't have a lot of money, so we really treated this as a trip to the grocery store, and tried to find stuff that we could really stretch into several meals.
After we went through all four tents and figured out what all we wanted to go back and buy (we go back right before we're ready to leave and buy whatever we want so we don't have to carry it around all day), we went outside to the music pavilion where some friends of ours, the Jenny Kavanaugh Band, were playing. They had just recently reformed, so we hadn't heard them play in several years! It's always good to see old friends!
So today was the first day of autumn for us, and as such I was inspired to do a stroke of red, orange and brown - for the leaves we'll no doubt be raking up very soon. Now it's time for me to ramble on.
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