Food Adventures: A Weekend in Madison

So being the young, exciting couple that we are, my fiance and I like going on weekend adventures in Madison. As social human beings, so much of our social world revolves around food, and our adventures reflect that by almost always involving food. Marrying a local has its perks, as one gets insider information on local spots.

Fro Yo! (courtesy of their Facebook page)

One of the fun things we did this weekend was visited the farmers market. A few local vendors were out, selling their products, as well as plants. Being the plant addict that I am, of course I had to go look at the plants. I ended up bringing home a new member of my plant family, Henry the tomato! (I have 9 plants, including the herbs we planted for this class-mint, basil, cilantro, dill, a dwarf orange tree, a cactus, a {dying} gerber daisy, a succulent, and now the tomato...I'm the cat lady of plants.)

I'd love to be able to grow our own food, so the food bearing plants that I now have are the start of that dream. I'm currently reading the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, in which Barbara Kingsolver chronicles a year in the life of her family, a year that consisted solely of food products they grew themselves or bought at the local farmers market. If it wasn't a local food, they would not eat it. While I can't go to that extreme, because we don't have the land to grow everything we eat, I can at least do something, by growing our own tomatoes and peppers and making homemade salsa. As Grandma says, "Every little bit helps!"

After our adventure to the farmers market, we went to our locally-owned frozen yogurt joint, The Red Peppermint. One of the things I love about Madison is the ability to eat and shop at local places, so that the money is more integrated into our community, instead of going into large corporations' pockets. The history of frozen yogurt is also interesting. Evidently fro yo didn't become a thing in the United States until the 1970s, as the technology used to make ice cream was utilized for yogurt. Yogurt-eating has been going on for four millenia in the Middle East and India, so we can thank them for the deliciousness of yogurt, and especially frozen yogurt!

To wrap up our day, my fiance and I made homemade barbeque sauce my fiance made barbeque sauce, and I handed him spoons and put stuff back in the fridge. This is one of those things he has done for a long time, and is really, really good at (Lucky me!). In these next pictures, we were making mesquite sauce.

Ketchup!

Corgi support team!

Secret ingredients added..it's coming together!

You have to smell the sauce.

It's fun to make your own sauce, because you can control the flavors and taste, and it is a million times better than store bought sauce! Luckily, I'm marrying someone who knows what he's doing, so it always turns out great! 

Sauce Selfie!