Official Party Business

Our Green Carpet Unveiling party is tomorrow, and I’m starting to freak out. We’re going to have between 40 and 50 people coming. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it will be like other parties we’ve had and people will be staggered throughout the day (there’s certain to be lots of staggering by the end).

I have a 16 pound pork shoulder, 5 pounds of London Broil, ~3 qts of buffalo chicken dip, however many mini quiches I can make, 6 lbs of burgers, 4 or 5 lbs of hot dogs, 60 deviled eggs, 100 oysters, 8 lbs of macaroni salad, 10 lbs of potato salad, 4 pounds of cheese, hopefully enough bruschetta (I bought 4 pints worth of tomatoes to make it), and….??? I think that’s all. We’re making Grown-up Arnold Palmers… Sweet Tea Vodka & Lemonade, 2 cases of pumpkin ale for slutty pumpkins (pumpkin ale w/ vanilla vodka in a cinnamon & sugar rimmed glass), 4 30-packs of Miller Lite, plus some wine. OH! And I’m also making mini ice cream sandwiches… homemade vanilla ice cream sandwiched between chocolate chip cookies. Last night I scraped the vanilla beans and infused ice cream with the vanilla. I found that working with vanilla beans is kind of a PITA.

All of our dishes except for the burgers and hot dogs are being made with local ingredients. I’m pretty happy about that. I hope that it comes out in the taste. The meats came from Cedar Run in Sudlersville, the oysters are coming from Choptank Oyster Company in Cambridge, cheese is from Chapel's Country Creamery in Easton, any egg dish came from our chickens, milk products came from Nice Farms Creamery in American Corner, and other various ingredients came from Clayton Farms in Denton. So basically everything came from within about 30 miles of our house. Pretty cool.

Now if we can somehow pull this all off in the next 24 hours, I will be a happy camper. I’m praying that the weather holds out for us. We’ve been incredibly lucky in the past during all of our parties being on beautiful days. Let’s hope that trend continues!

Cedar Run Trip

Well I have some wonderful news... Dresden is alive and well at Cedar Run Farm!

On our way to pick up our meat, Jay and I were wondering if we would be seeing our little buddy again. We were prepared for the worst, thinking that his previous injuries and stupidity with picking on the wrong guy would finally catch up with him.

Turns out that we were happily wrong!

Jay goes, "I see Dresdy!!" I didn't believe him, but then there he was. We called him and he came running over to check things out.

Then, he ignored us. After all, he has an image to keep.

Cedar Run also has a host of free-range turkeys. I wish that we were hosting Thanksgiving this year so that we could get one. When they say that their poultry is free range, it really is. I'm happy that what I'm eating is kept humanely and has lived a happy life before it's sacrificed for my dinner.

A member of the Cedar Run Cattle herd... their cattle lives much longer than most other beef producers. While most commercial operations slaughter their animals at an average of 18 months of age, theirs average 4 to 5 years old.

 I hope that we have enough meat for our party... a 16 pound pork shoulder, 5 pounds of London Broil and a free range chicken for the buffalo chicken dip. Plus a few pounds of spicy sausage, which is AMAZING. I will never be able to enjoy sausage from anywhere else now... they have ruined me for life.

Friday was awesomesauce

The day began with eight ladies and two babies at Outstanding Dreams alpaca farm.  Levi and Liam (the babies) had a great time gallivanting with the alpacas, although Liam was not happy that Meghan wouldn’t let him down to crawl around the pasture. Babies + alpacas = cutest ever.

The alpacas were so soft that I had to buy some fiber at the farm store… so I guess I need to learn how to knit/crochet. The girls tried to convince me to get some alpacas (you can raise up to 10 on a single acre). I think that we need to buy siding more than a $5,000 animal – those adorable critters are expensive!

I stole some of these photos from the Caroline County Tourism page on Facebook. Our buddy Christina (who works for the tourism board) took us to the alpaca farm and the place with the crazy outhouse guy who is obsessed with hoes.

Now on to Shore Good farms. The owner Jack is born and bred Caroline County. Jack loves his hoes and outhouses, but his real passion is to use his farm to educate kids about growing vegetables and gardening. He has a large amount of acreage on his farm, but the part that we visited is farmed strictly by hand. Jack can hoe his entire farm in 16 minutes.

Here is a blurb from the agritourism website:

Take a step back in time to Shore Good Farm, a heritage farm located in Preston. Shore Good Farm highlights Caroline County’s rich agrarian history, featuring an unmatched collection of antiques and heritage artifacts from yesteryear, fresh-cut flowers, artisan carpentry including vintage outhouses and chicken coops, the plumpest blackberries on the shore, old-fashioned kettle corn and more!  Jack Stieff also runs his peanut roasting operation on the farm, offering 15 varieties of his signature peanuts.

We all became 12 year old girls when he started talking about the proper way to hoe a garden. He told us that all you need to grow vegetables is a small area of land and a good hoe. Now, lots of people tend to use big hoes, but Jack likes to use small hoes. You’ve got to make sure that you keep your hoe in the ground. He showed off his mother’s hoe and had all of us take turns holding it. “Yep, that’s a light hoe.” Cue us giggling like little girls and making “Your mom’s a hoe” comments.

Jack is a purveyor of moonshine and tall tales. He doesn’t trust the government and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him on Doomsday Preppers someday.

Here he is greeting us when we pulled up – we caught him in the outhouse, of course:

Some more pics at Shore Good Farm:

Sadly, the blackberries weren’t ripe enough to be picked, because as Jack said, “That Mother Nature is a hussy!”

We’re planning to go back after Mother Nature wises up and cooperates with Jack. I’m looking forward to talking to him about his chicken feed. He makes his own and according to him, he gets 14 eggs a day out of his 10 chickens. Tall tales, indeed.

We found ourselves famished and thirsty after the farm visits, so we headed to The Market Street Pub for some deliciousness. I was too hungry to take any pictures of our food, but I did snap a shot of our Orange Crush pitcher.

After the pub, we bid adieu to Meghan, Sherye, and their babies and headed over to Black Anchor Tattoo to get some work done. Sara now has Harry Potter stars behind her ear, Jamie got a peace sign behind her ear (there was a DUDE – SWEET moment at the tattoo shop, which was hilarious), Angela has a gorgeous pattern going down her spine inspired by wrought-iron gates, and I now have this (inspired by my dad's photo on the right):

It looks pretty gross in that photo, because it was newly finished - irritated and weeping. I’ll post another photo when it has healed. I have to say that it hurt way more than I remembered tattoos hurting, and it took a little over two hours! After the first minute I was thinking, “I wonder if it’s too late to get him to stop.”  I’m very glad that Angela ended up getting her back done at the same time, because it was nice to have someone to suffer with. Sara and Jamie’s tattoos were done in no more than 15 minutes. Lucky girls.

I still have to get the Sagan quote added. I didn’t like the layout that the shop did with the words going through the butterfly's wings, so I’m going to go back once it’s healed and figure out a way that we can work in the quote around the tattoo or maybe to the side somewhere.

After tattoos we went to Harry's on the Green for some tasty drinks, plus delicious fried pickles and green beans.

As if all of that fun wasn’t enough, we also had book club on Friday night. Wine, cheese, and tasty noms. It didn’t go as late as usual, probably because the book (Still Life by Joy Fielding) was awful and most of us were exhausted from our busy day.

Saturday brought more shenanigans at the 2^nd annual Southern Summer Cocktail party and we also got a bushel of crabs on Sunday. It was a crazy fun and busy weekend and now I am completely worn out.

I can’t wait for a 7 p.m. bedtime this evening!