Category: Entertainment

  • Plated Landscape at New Creation Farm: a pictorial

    After a great experience last year, we took our show on the road with Spice of Life once again, this time to New Creation Farm in Chardon. New Creation raises pigs, cows, chickens (meat and eggs), some dogs, and a whole bunch of kids (they have a pretty interesting story if you want to do a little research). They’re all natural, GMO-free, and all good – we bought our half-pig from them, and a few random chickens here and there, and can vouch for the quality. If you’re lucky enough to find a local source like this, where you know what you’re getting, what the animals are getting, and can watch them run around like happy animals do, it becomes just about impossible to go back to buying supermarket meat.

    Anyway, we had a chance to walk around the farm(s; they’ve expanded so much that they use pasture at another farm down the road for the cattle and meat chickens), and visited with some cows, saw the egg-layers, some piglets (about 8 weeks), and some big pigs (5 months). And a new batch of puppies. It’s a nice little operation – hard work, for sure, but they do it right.

    Of course, much of the food (at least the meat) was from New Creation, and most of the rest from other local farms, including the gardens right behind Spice’s restaurant. The food was fantastic, as was the dinner conversation. One of the really fun things about these events is that, since they’re not super-cheap (more than $20), the people who attend are serious. You know you’ll have something in common with everyone else, so it doesn’t really matter who you end up next to. We ended up between a couple of veterans, who’ve been to many of these and are on a first-name basis with the staff, and the couple who edit and publish Edible Cleveland. Talk ranged from discussion of the dinners at other farms (the one in Killbuck Valley with the mushrooms sounds like it’s a can’t miss), to backyard gardening (and chickens, or the opposition to), to the local restaurant scene, to the best local ice cream places (not enough summer to enjoy them all!). All in all, it was a really good time, and lasted well into the night. Definitely worth the time and money.

    And since this is a pictorial, enough words for now. The food pics are a bit dark, since we were eating in a barn after sunset, but they give you an idea.

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    Abandoned by his mama, this little guy was up by the house to greet the guests.
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    There’s a pretty decent chance that one of these guys will end up in our freezer in about three months.
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    There’s also a pretty decent chance he was giving me the look because we had one of his relatives for dinner.

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    First course was a pork and liver terrine.
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    Second was a mixed-green salad, with Yellow House blue cheese, bacon fat croutons, and pickled onions.
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    Sweet and spicy Italian sausage fettuccine, with cherry tomatoes and eggplant.
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    Smoked beef brisket and spare rib, with potato salad, kohlrabi slaw, and chili peach barbecue sauce.
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    Pecan pie with homemade vanilla ice cream and bacon caramel sauce.

  • Blossom Time 2013

    This year, it wasn’t as windy as last (though it was cold – remember the frost warnings?), so we did get to see the balloons go up. C was quite excited, as was E (and mommy), who got to wear her balloon shirt to mark the occasion 🙂 It is pretty cool to see them all go up at the same time.

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  • Happy Easter (a day late)

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  • A triumvirate of lousy Christmas songs

    It’s that time of year, when the world falls in love, every song you hear seems to say “Merry Christmas.” As long as it’s after Thanksgiving. I refuse to listen to it before then, and any radio station playing it early has a good chance of being boycotted for the entire season.

    I enjoy most Christmas music. But every year, a little part of me dreads the time because there are also some awful, awful songs out there that call for an immediate intervention, i.e. changing the station. If changing the station isn’t possible, I put myself into a kind of self-induced coma until it’s over. The worst part is how, despite being so terrible, these songs always end up stuck in my head. Maybe they’re so bad, it’s like listening to a train wreck and I just can’t help myself.

    So this year, to vent a bit, I’ve come up with a trio of bad-ness. I could easily come up with many, many more (really, why do so many people feel the need to record Christmas music? Surely it’s the money.), and my list will differ from others. If you happen to like any of these listed below, I make no apologies, and merely ask, what’s wrong with you??

    Without further ado, the list, complete with their respective awesome music videos.

    3. Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band-Aid


    Sure, the message and intent might be on the right track, and I give them credit for that, but was it necessary to leave this for all future generations? Throw together every early-80s pop/rock superstar, add some cheesy lyrics (“the only water flowing, is the bitter sting of tears”; “well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you”) and some synthesizer (what 80s song would be complete without a heavy dose?), and there you have it.

    2. Wonderful Christmas Time – Paul McCartney


    I would have expected better from a member of the Beatles. Again, absolute overkill on the synth, mindless lyrics, and the same flipping thing repeated over, and over, and over. The actual song is less than four minutes long, but when you hit “Simply having a wonderful Christmas time” for the fourteenth time, it feels like an eternity.

    1. Last Christmas – Wham!


    This is my undisputed, number one, all-time terrible Christmas song. Any band that needs to put an exclamation point in their name is automatically knocked down a couple notches. And just because they say “Christmas” in the chorus, doesn’t make a Christmas song. It could just as easily say, “Last Wednesday, I gave you my heart…” and the world would be better off, because it wouldn’t be treated as a “Christmas” song, and would have been relegated to the dustbin of Terrible 80s Songs (funny that two of my top three were released in 1984, and the other 1979). Instead, it gets played incessantly every year and these guys are still probably raking in the royalty money. I can honestly, and proudly, say that I have not listened to this song in its entirety for years. I do love the sweet 80s hair in the video though.

    Honorable mentions:

    Christmas shoes – Newsong – In a more sentimental life, I might tolerate it, but I just can’t. And the made for TV movie based on it stars Rob Lowe. Funny.

    Silent night – Stevie Nicks – The first time I heard this song when I was younger, I honestly thought it was a sheep singing it. That should tell you all you need to know. Fortunately it doesn’t make the radio rounds much anymore.

    Feliz Navidad – Jose Feliciano – Another one that repeats incessantly. Seriously, the song has 18 words. I liked it when I was younger, I think because of the novelty of Spanish, but can’t really tolerate it much anymore.

    I know there are lots I’m missing – anybody else have any least-favorites?

  • Winterfest 2012

    Was not as warm as Winterfest 2011. Nothing like that icy wind coming off the lake that cuts through every layer of clothing. Ahh, Cleveland.

    It was still fun though. We didn’t spend nearly as much time down there this year, but got to see the lights, fireworks, and food trucks again. Several times now since then, C has associated Christmas lights with food trucks. Chip off the old block, that boy. By the time we made it back to the car, he was fussing because he was so cold, which almost never happens, but on the car ride home, we were able to reminisce warmly.