Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies were the hit of the Kentucky State Fair

Here in Kentucky we know about good food. After all, we invented Fried Chicken (the brand), Papa John lives here, Ale-8-One was first bottled in 1926, and (oh yeah) there’s the whole bourbon thing. I never said the food we promote here is good for you, but it sure does taste good.

New at the Kentucky State Fair this year was Deep Fried Girl Scout Cookies. They were delicious. You could order Samoas, Thin Mints or Tagalongs that were dipped in batter and deep-fried. Four cookies to an order for $5 or a sampler with two of each type for $7. I had the Samoas and thought they were delicious. I love to order food that I can’t make at home and this certainly met my criteria.

Now, if I’d only had a shot of Maker’s Mark to wash them down with …

Related articles

• Deep-Fried Cereal Debuts at County Fair (abcnews.go.com)
• Deep fried Trix: It’s summer for real now (deathandtaxesmag.com)
• Obama’s Favorite Girl Scout Cookie (abcnews.go.com)
• The Importance Of Girl Scout Cookie Programs (girlscoutfun.wordpress.com)
• Does the L.A. County Fair Need These Deep Fried Samoas? (laist.com)

Weekly Photo Challenge: Urban

I searched through my photo archives to find this photo taken in Portland, Oregon a few years ago to meet this week’s photo challenge of “urban.”

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• Weekly Photo Challenge: Urban (dailypost.wordpress.com)
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Another interesting character from the Kentucky State Fair

At the Kentucky State Fair is a special barn for mules and jacks. Mules are the offspring of mares (female horses) and jacks (male donkeys). Mules cannot reproduce.

I don’t know if this is a mule or a jack. I don’t think I asked enough questions.

Hello Colonel!

Remember Colonel Foghorn Leghorn? Doesn’t this fellow remind you of him just a little bit?

This was just one of the many characters I met over the weekend at the Kentucky State Fair. You’ll be hearing more about that later but I just couldn’t wait to share this photograph of a a giant rooster with you.

Related articles

• Ky. State Fair hosts largest watermelon in the nation (whas11.com)
• Cattle take center stage at fair competition (wave3.com)

5 Things We Learned on The Trip

Dear internet,
We’ve been traveling recently and even though we could have planned well and scheduled regular posts to appear magically while we were away, we just didn’t. Honestly, sometimes I think that vacations might not be worth the trouble because you spend days and weeks beforehand taking care of everything so you can be gone for a while and then when you get back you spend days and weeks taking care of things that didn’t get done while you were away. It’s downright exhausting.

But we truly love traveling and this (brief) trip was part work, part play and 100 percent delightful. Here are some things we learned:

1. The best sweet tea in the United States is served in Birmingham, Alabama.
2. At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
3. Hidden in the mountains are tiny tastes of Europe.
4. There are about 14,000 people registered in the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Indians.
5. Next time, we’ll take the motorcycle.

That’s all for now. The garden needs weeding.

Love,
Dianna and Christe

Our historic Schnitzelburg neighborhood

Lydia Street is part of an historic neighborhood called Schnitzelburg where the houses are close together, there’s a tavern on every third corner and every other house is being lovingly renovated. We went on a recent neighborhood history walk to learn more about where we live.

According to our tour guides, the neighborhood was settled in the late 1800s by German Catholics. The guides pointed out sites where, during the 1940s and 50s bakeries, butchers and barbers once were. In some cases, those old businesses are being revived in a hipster kind of way. While others are are still going strong.

You can still get a good haircut in Schnitzelburg.

The famous Check’s Cafe.

The tour guide took us past an ordinary-looking house on Mulberry Street where the new owners discovered it had once been the site of a dairy. They found a box of milk jar lids (and everyone on the tour got one to keep).

Souvenir from the Schnitzeburg history tour.

We also learned that a neighborhood group has a grant from the city to plant redbud trees to replace some of the older trees that have died out over the years. The plan is to create street after street filled with redbuds (which are city-sidewalk friendly) and to eventually host a neighborhood festival in the early spring when they’re in bloom. Nearly 100 trees have already been planted.

We love our historic neighborhood.

All Wool & Yard Wide Democrats live in Schnitzlelburg.

Derbytime in Louisville

Photo by the fabulous Jolea Brown in the Garden and Gun special Kentucky Derby feature.

The magazine Garden and Gun has a special feature on Louisville and the Kentucky Derby that you’ll all want to see.

Yes, we have both.

Garden. Gun.

So I guess that makes us the perfect (heh) demographic for all things cool.

Why home is better than a hotel

The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.

I’ve been in Philadelphia this week for a conference for work. It’s a lovely city and one afternoon we had time to explore the center city and some of the historical sites.

But there’s no place like home.

Hotels can be cold and sterile places. For me it is  tiresome to have someone else prepare all of my meals every day out of ingredients I didn’t choose myself.

Don’t get me wrong — I love to travel and to experience new places and eat new foods. But business travel isn’t like that. I felt lonely, even surrounded by longtime friends and colleagues who I only get to see once a year at these types of events.

But I’d rather sleep in my own bed, with my loving partner and a dog or two. And although I’ve always loved people-watching in airports, I get tired of the schlepping from terminal to terminal and the constant worry about being on time and in the right place.

Ah, isn’t it good to be back home with one dog curled up next to me and the other at my feet, with the windows wide open and a view of the garden beyond?