what about the plastic animals?

Cookie Croissant

A few years ago I wrote about the City Bakery's pretzel croissant.  Today I ate a cookie croissant at the newly reopened Panya on Stuyvesant St.  It doesn't look pretty but it was buttery, flaky, and almondy.  More of a deconstructed croissant than a cookie.

The Burger Carte

The Burger Carte is in Smithers, about ten miles downstream from Hawk's Nest.  Given the name I ordered a burger, fries and coke.  All were good and dinner cost something like six dollars.  Later that evening I learned that I really should have ordered a hot dog here.

According to West Virginia Hot Dogs, the Burger Carte serves one of the best West Virginia-style hot dogs in... West Virginia!  If you follow that first link you'll see that a West Virginia hot dog is one that includes a steamed bun, wiener with yellow mustard, chili and creamy cole slaw.  Adding insult to injury, in my criss-crossing of the state over the next week I was never again near a really good hot dog joint (or HDJ in WV Hot Dogs parlance).  I must return some day.

Galco's Soda Pop Stop

A few days before I left for Pasadena I happened to see a video about John Nese, a man obsessed with soda pop, and his store in Los Angeles.  I checked out the address of the store and saw that it was just a little bump from what was already a meandering route from LAX to Pasadena.

Galco's is amazing!  Over 400 different types of sodas and 500 different beers.  Since I was only going to be in town for three days I limited myself to four sodas:  Mr. Q Cumber, Jamaica's Finest Ginger Beer; Cheerwine and Double Cola.

The Mr. Q Cumber was delightful!  You might not think cucumber and soda are meant to be said together but the soda was very refreshing on a hot day.  Not pictured, the ginger beer was also excellent.  Not quite as spicy as Blenheim (which, by the way, I can no longer find in the city) but it still had a good kick to it.  Cheerwine is a tasty cherry cola.  Double Cola is not imaginatively named, it has twice the cola flavor as other sodas.

To make Galco's all that much cooler, while I was there a tractor trailer pulled into the parking lot with a delivery.  To get the forklift needed to unload the delivery, Mr. Nese had to pull his car out of the storage shed.  He drives a DeLorean!

If you clicked on the Cheerwine link you'll notice that it is a little nutty.  It is sane compared to the Pop Shoppe.  Beware of flatulent clouds and harp playing bunnies!

Autumn Harvest Festival and West Virginia Roadkill Cook-off

The last, and wettest, festival on my trip was the Autumn Harvest Festival and WV RoadKill Cook-off in Marlinton.

Before I left Lewisburg that morning I checked the radar and could tell that my window for dryly enjoying the festival was very small.  It started raining a couple of miles before I reached Marlinton and really started pouring about fifteen minutes after I arrived. 

Despite the rain everyone was having a good time.  There were lots of arts and crafts to see and roadkill to eat.  The only food I sampled was the delicious "Chunk of Skunk Innards" stew by last year's champions, the Roadside Remnants.  I also checked out the bear preparation demo for a couple of minutes and bought a souvenir t-shirt. 

The last picture is misleading!  There was a decent-sized crowd along the street that I thought would make a good "look at all the people despite the rain" photo.  I hopped on one of the picnic tables they had set up in the street and carefully extracted my camera while balancing an umbrella between my chin and shoulder.  When I looked up the crowd had scattered.  I swear!

It was another West Virginia festival with a beauty queen.  Sadly, I did not see Miss Roadkill.  I wish I could have stayed longer, but I was getting soaked and there was a long drive ahead of me.  I'll definitely consider returning next year.

Buckwheat Pretzels

I've got to get cooking now that I've got five pounds of buckwheat flour.  Last night I made the buckwheat pretzel recipe from Birkett Mills.  It took a while to roll out the dough, and my twisting technique needs a bit of work, but the pretzels turned out pretty good - slightly chewy and full of buckwheat flavor.

Preston County Buckwheat Festival

The festival parade continues!  In my travels the past couple of weeks I managed to spend a couple of hours at the 68th Annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival in Kingwood, West Virginia. 

It was in Kingwood where I began to realize that festivals in West Virginia have lots of parades.  Like two or three a day in some cases.

It also became clear that all West Virginia festivals have some form of royalty.  The Mothman Festival had a slate of beauty queens.  The Buckwheat Fest had King Buckwheat and Queen Ceres along with a King Fireman and Lady Fireman.

However the real royalty in Kingwood was the Buckwheat Cakes and Sausage Dinners in the Community Building.  The pancake batter is made with yeast and allowed to rise for at least four hours before being "baked" on the griddle.  I had never had pancakes made with yeast before.  They were good.  I was slightly disappointed in the fake butter and syrup but I survived.

A group of senior citizens sitting nearby saw me taking a picture of the pancakes.  A woman in the group was quite excited to see me doing so.  It seems she was given grief by her husband and friends for taking pictures of all her meals on a recent cruise.  I assured her I was on her side and she showed me a picture of her pancakes and sausage as well as several photos of her dog.  She then announced to her group that I was obviously a professional photographer because I had taken a photo of my pancakes "with the stuff on top".  That pretty much made my day.  Well, that and I bought a five-pound bag of buckwheat flour, exclusively packaged for the festival, for about half the price I can find it around here.

Galco's Soda Pop Stop

A few days before I left for Pasadena I happened to see a video about John Nese, a man obsessed with soda pop, and his store in Los Angeles.  I checked out the address of the store and saw that it was just a little bump from what was already a meandering route from LAX to Pasadena.

Galco's is amazing!  Over 400 different types of sodas and 500 different beers.  Since I was only going to be in town for three days I limited myself to four sodas:  Mr. Q Cumber, Jamaica's Finest Ginger Beer; Cheerwine and Double Cola.

The Mr. Q Cumber was delightful!  You might not think cucumber and soda are meant to be said together but the soda was very refreshing on a hot day.  Not pictured, the ginger beer was also excellent.  Not quite as spicy as Blenheim (which, by the way, I can no longer find in the city) but it still had a good kick to it.  Cheerwine is a tasty cherry cola.  Double Cola is not imaginatively named, it has twice the cola flavor as other sodas.

To make Galco's all that much cooler, while I was there a tractor trailer pulled into the parking lot with a delivery.  To get the forklift needed to unload the delivery, Mr. Nese had to pull his car out of the storage shed.  He drives a DeLorean!

If you clicked on the Cheerwine link you'll notice that it is a little nutty.  It is sane compared to the Pop Shoppe.  Beware of flatulent clouds and harp playing bunnies!

Animal Style

On the way back to the airport in Los Angeles I was becoming hungry and wondering where to eat.  At a stoplight near the Hollywood Park horse track I spied an In-N-Out Burger, the legendary California burger chain that uses fresh beef and potatoes for their burgers and fries and has a secret menu.

The only secret item I knew to order was "Double-Double, Animal Style".  I didn't know what that meant but I figured I should order it.  I almost was thrown for a loop when asked if I wanted the fries animal style as well, but I just said yes.  Double-double means two patties.  Animal style means the burgers are grilled after having mustard spread on them and you get pickles, grilled onions, and extra cheese and Thousand Island dressing.

The burger and fries were great for fast food.  I ate most of the burger but only got through about half the fries.  Believe it or not, and I need to state this for the record, the meals I had in the three days between the spuderito and the double-double animal style were much healthier.

Purple String Beans

Seen at the Union Square Greenmarket on Monday.

Here's Stringbean with Earl Scruggs and Lester Flatt. 

Unrelated bonus:  Wanda Jackson.

Spuderito from Rick's Drive-In

Rick's Drive-In is just a couple of blocks away from where I was staying in Pasadena.  Rick's serves burgers, tacos and burritos but their specialty is the spuderito - a burrito made with french fries, cheese and salsa.  I don't think there's much of a nutritional benefit to a spuderito but they are a gloriously delicious mess.