Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Still alive

We survived the Folk Fest!!! I believe that I felt at 3 am on Saturday morning wandering around Festival Camping that my survival may in fact have been in doubt. Fatigue had set in. I was surrounded by mayhem. Delightful mayhem but mayhem nonetheless. People dressed up as teddy bears, minstrels of varying quality, a giant sphinx and multiple pyramids, one of my staff in a housecoat wandering around muttering and gesturing to himself, a LOT of glowy stick people and one Christmas light guy, mussels being cooked, lasers being shone into the sky, the smell of pot and booze and cigarettes, seas of tents, and a giant lit up roving dragon. Oh yeah, and we were sleep deprived in a way I haven't been since having a newborn baby.

I loved it, tho. Love the festival, love festival camping. We are now plotting on how to get to Burning Man to cook. I love the idea of bringing fabulous food to fantastic places and being part of this enormous creative energy. We cooked and cooked and cooked. I'm sure that over the next few weeks I will continue to process this whole time in my life because it was so full and amazing.

We moved into our new digs which I have to say I was very worried about. I was not wanting a building, I was happy with my cooking tent and outdoor dishpit and cajoling the health inspector into our perspective: grass if fine flooring. However, change comes and you have move with it or get knocked over. I'm more of a move with it and see where it takes me kind of person. The building is phenomenal! It's huge and airy and bright and has the potential to be enormously efficient. It is cavernous so I had almost no voice by Monday. It was the place everyone wanted to hang out! We had musicians come and play for us and busses drop off folks right at our porch. We have a porch! it is really a beautiful space.

The food was good, too. There were some hiccups: chicken on the bone is tricky but extra tricky when there is no prep time and you have to make it on the fly! Potatoes (most starches, really) for 5000 are just challenging. But there were some highlights: bison short ribs falling off the bone, 3-bean salad out of this world!, grilled cheese sandwiches, and some crazy apple pancake thing that Alex said, "It worked!!" when he saw it (I sense he may have had some fears on its viability). We also cooked in "guerilla tents", setting up tables and burners wherever we could find a bit of space, on the folk fest site and the camp site, we simply started cooking and people would come to get food. When we ran out of food, we shut it down. It was so great! It also has opened up ideas for me around travelling food and bringing food to places.

I have left this festival with many great ideas rattling around in my head and we'll see what they lead to.