Bele Chere

Annually held the last weekend in July since the 1970's, Bele Chere ranks as the largest free music and arts in the southeastern United States. The festival attracts something like 350,000 people to Asheville, North Carolina. This summer my daughter and I once again joined those masses.

Our primary draw is the 6 stages of diverse musical offerings, but we also peruse the arts and crafts vendors, often making a few purchases and play some games. Here the daughter tries her skills at the Wells Fargo Stage Coach adventure.

Before taking on the crowds, we fortified ourselves with brunch at a favorite eatery, Sunny Point Cafe in West Asheville on Haywood. Sunny Point serves consistently good food at reasonable prices and their wait staff is alt eye candy. They sport detailed and colorful tattoos, interesting hairstyles and hair colors and the dress code is decidedly not uniform.

Fresh flowers grace the tables.

The klezmer sound reeled me in and we soon decided our favorite band that Saturday was Sirius B. Billing themselves as absurdist gypsy folk funk punk. It’s the band’s gypsy-infused violins (they have two), European street sensibilities, world-traveled tunes and multiethnic lineup that warrant comparisons to New York City gypsy-punk icons Gogol Bordello.

Sirius B, however, isn’t planning to follow in Gogol Bordello’s footsteps. Instead, the group considers its sound a happy accident. “Fusion would imply intention, that’s my impression,”says the guitar player Xavier Ferdón. “Absurdist” is one description they’re comfortable with—which is fitting with lyrics like, “Your aunt was a microbe who lived in a bathrobe. She’d wear it night and day.”“This is more our own thing,” the guitarist states, “flavored with various elements.”

Since winning a third-place mention as one of a local paper's readers’ favorite as-yet unknown bands, it’s obvious people want to listen to them and so did we.

Carina

France - It was all about the Food

And the company.

My daughter was finishing an 8-month work assignment. She had contracted to spend the academic year teaching English in the French public school system. Done. We were joining forces for a 24-day exploration of Europe. Her French is fluent. Swedish is my first language and somehow we would manage to communicate with the Germans in Berlin.

I flew in to Lyon and later we met up at the train station. My daughter accompanied me to St. Etienne, the town where she shared an apartment with two other language assistants. That corner of southwestern France was ours to explore for the next several days.

This was a trip for pleasure, not business, and as such the planning was loose. The overbooked, must see everything phenomenon was clearly to be avoided.

We primarily explored in and around St. Etienne, a town of approximately 180,000 people and an industrial heritage. Our food obsession became finding the best macarons in the region. Macarons are a predominantly French confection, made with egg whites, icing and granulated sugar, ground almonds and food coloring. Two disks or cookies are joined together with a filling of jam, ganache or buttercream.




We began our mission with a box from Au Jardin des Douceurs (the Garden of Sweets) trying out pistache, cerise griotte, cassis, framboise, chocolat and praline (pistachio, cherry, black currant, raspberry, chocolate and praline).

We broadened our search during a day trip to Lyon.The venerable bakery of Pignol, an institution of 50 years, is situated just around the corner from Place Bellecour on Rue Emile Zola. They had lovely macarons, but Sève, located on the presqu'île between the Rhône and Saone rivers, was easily the best.




Sève's pomme tatin macaron was all lovely and sparkly (yes, glittery-sparkly) and tasted absolutely delectable. This macaron is a riff on a classic upside down apple tart created in the Loire Valley in the late 1800's.

Sève is even older than Pignol, established in 1905. Richard Sève, a master chocolatier, was voted best pâtissier in the Rhône Alpes region in 1999. The attention to every detail of production is evident in the taste and appearance of each sweet little morsel. Accordingly, Sève's offerings were the priciest of the three as well. Have a peek for yourself.

While I think we sufficiently fulfilled our search for the best macaron, the prospect of further research intrigues me.

Carina

Grammy's Pot Pie and Wild Buffalo Grill

I've promised reportage from Europe, complete with photographs and descriptions and what do you get? Musings on pet food.

At times, I can be such a tease.

The most recent excursion, which likely will get a follow-up post, is to Princeton, New Jersey to catch an exhibit of Kurt Schwitters' work. This 562-mile journey was estimated to take 9 & 1/4 hours, but owing to a tire blow-out on the Interstate, incredibly rusty lug nuts and a missed turn onto Highway 9 instead of 11 in Pennsylvania, the trip took stretched out to 13 hours. Some of those hours included driving rains at night, complete with gusty winds, thunder and lightning.

While waiting for the mounting of 2 new tires the next morning, we wandered the upscale strip mall. The shop that caught our attention was named Utopia for Pets. It featured trendy toys, garments and foods for Fluffy and Rover, or more likely Horace and Killer, Garfield and Bear, given the recent trends in pet-naming.





Marketing strategies that play right into our anthropomorphic tendencies were on full display. Check out the very masculine and feminine appeal of these dry dog foods by Solid Gold. See if you can figure out which is which:




Say, this is kinda hard.





The full line of Merrick's was particularly intriguing. They produce expensive canned cat and dog foods retailing in the neighborhood of $2.49 a can. While the Merrick pet foods are highly rated for their nutritional content, their marketing is decidedly tailored to a specific clientele. Besides the main lines of canned and dry food, there are seasonal varieties. Canned dog and cat food made especially for spring, summer, autumn and winter.





Check out the description written for Burger Pie and Sweetie Fries and the other summer seasonals:
"The summer beckons all of her children to shake off the shackles of spring and frolic in her warm ways. Sun screen, sand in your toes and deliciously healthy outdoor meals are in the sights, sounds and tastes of Summer. Merrick's Summer Seasonals are the very essence of fine Summer cuisine, captured in a can. Give your dog a treat - let him dine outside!"

When I asked the clerk whether guys purchased the more manly sounding varieties like Cowboy Cookout and Working Dog Stew, she pointed out that shopping for dog food is a task that most often falls to the lady of the house. That may help explain why the most popular variety is Grammy's Pot Pie.





Carina

More regulation, less filling

Anyone that follows this column knows of my great disdain for the current governor of Wisconsin, the state where I grew up. Scott Walker's misguided attempts to reshape a state once known for its progressive politics into a bastion for corporations and wealthy individuals at the expense of everyone else takes some bizarre twists and turns.

You've gotta love this latest move.

Tucked into the latest state budget is a little-noticed provision to overhaul regulation of the beer industry.



In a state known for beer, the provision will make it more difficult for Wisconsin’s burgeoning craft breweries to operate and expand their business by barring them from selling directly to restaurants and liquor stores, and preventing them from selling their own product onsite.

The state currently has about 60 craft breweries and they sell about 5% of the beer consumed in Wisconsin. The new provision would treat craft breweries like their mega-corporate competitors. Small breweries would be required to use a wholesale distributor, a.k.a. a middleman, to market their product. Under the provision, it would be illegal, for say, a brewer located near a restaurant to walk next door to deliver a case of beer. They’ll have to hire and pay a third party to do it instead.

Not surprisingly, this provision was quietly slipped into the massive budget legislation without any consultation from independent craft brewers, who are justifiably outraged by the proposal. One group that did have input is one of the world’s largest beer makers, MillerCoors.

Chicago-based MillerCoors, which operates a brewery and eastern division headquarters in Milwaukee, supports the proposal because it shares concerns with wholesale distributors about the possibility of Anheuser-Busch buying wholesalers throughout the country, according to company spokesman James Wright.

Craft brewers contend that the real competition MillerCoors is trying to protect itself against the growing craft beer market.

It does not go unnoticed by this blogger that the reason that Governor Scott Walker, who calls himself a champion of small business, has sided with the big boys may have something to do with their largish campaign contributions. MillerCoors, which is a joint venture with foreign-owned SABMiller, contributed $22,675 to Walker's campaign.

As for me, you can rest assured no Miller or Coors products will grace my lips or be purchased by this household.

Carina

1,114 Photographs Later

I'm back - in fact, I've been back for two weeks. An embarrassment of riches and some minor technical issues have kept me from my blog. Pesky things, those technical glitches.

Just to bring this tale up to speed, my one and only child just finished a gig teaching English in France. She was working in the public school system of a small town called St Etienne. She was an employee of the French government and had a 7-month contract.



As her contract concluded, I met her in France and we spent 24 days traveling in Europe together. The trials and tribulations we encountered were a result of various travel conditions and the two of us weathered those few storms rather well, and I hope to tell those stories here bit by bit.



Our travel itinerary included southern France, London, Berlin and 3 cities in Sweden.



Join me soon for the forthcoming travelogue.

Carina

The Vegan Doughtnut Eating Contest

One of Portland, Oregon's quirkier claims to fame would have to be Voodoo Doughnuts (the Magic is in the hole). They have been referred to as the Salvidore Dali of doughnut shops.

http://voodoodoughnut.com/vddtv1.html


Above is a link to a short video by one of the founders, Kenneth "Cat Daddy" Pogson, promoting the stores. Known for unusual and creatively decorated wares, there are 3 shops, 2 in Portland and 0ne in Eugene. All locations also offer a variety of wedding packages,


including this one:

Deluxe Legal Voodoo Wedding

$300

Legal wedding ceremony, coffee & doughnuts for
60 people, 700 sq ft Chapel, free parking,
doughnut centerpiece with bride and grooms
names on doughnuts.

Treasured doughnut varieties include the voodoo doll doughnut pictured below, which is of course stuffed with a red raspberry filling. Note the pretzel stake through the heart.

Not only does Voodoo Doughnuts make a Bacon Maple Bar doughnut, but they also feature a vegan variety with tempeh bacon. Varieties of vegan doughnuts abound at the shop which brings me to the tofu and potatoes of this tale.

The first place I stayed on my trip through the Pacific Northwest was the Hawthorne Avenue Hostel in Portland, Oregon. Early in my 5-day stay, two young, vegan women engaged in a doughnut eating contest in the main dining room. Their exact motivation for the contest was never stated and thus remains unclear.

They had purchased a baker's dozen vegan doughnuts and split the contents onto 2 plates.

And the contest began in earnest, doughnuts chugged down with soymilk.

Not another bite! Defeat may have been preordained in the selection process. A review of the doughnut shop informs me that the chocolate doughnuts are denser than the yellow ones.

On the home stretch now.

One last bite!

Victory is sweet.

Remember the magic is in the hole.

Carina

Turning toward home

Did a little shopping in the Victorian fishing village that is Port Townsend, then hopped the ferry for Whidbey Island, where I was able to score 2 hours of public access computer time in their newly remodeled library.

My plans today include a little bit of hiking in and around Deception Pass and taking in the Skagit Valley tulip fields.

Tomorrow I fly home.

Will be posting my own photos soon.

Carina