July 9, 2009

We're heading north to Ithaca, NY this weekend. We sell chocolate covered strawberries, cheesecake, and bananas (amongst other yummies) at a great music festival called the Grassroots Festival of Music and Dance. I first went several years ago, when I was in town visiting our good friends Loretta and Eric. As any festival vendor will tell you, seeing a show before deciding to participate is crucial. Well, maybe not crucial ... but highly recommended.

The festival has a Healing Arts Tent, and my first participation was in teaching a class there. I still volunteer part of my time in that tent, as I fine-tune what the offerings of the Lemonade Brigade might be in our goal of easing peoples fears around the breast cancer issue. (That's obviously another post entirely ... I promise I'll get there.) Joanne Kingsley does a beautiful job of orchestrating the varied offerings of donated time by alternative health practitioners.


We stay in Trumansburg, in a 200 year old barn that has been outfitted with summer bedrooms. It is one of the most magical places I know, and we have admitted that one of the major reasons we do this show is the gift of living in that space on our friend Ruth's property. Not to mention the magic that is Ruth herself.

The Hubby is designing a solar powered show booth. We're practicing with it in Trumansburg, but it will be launched officially at the Texas Renaissance Festival. While he's watching battery power levels, I'm packing our personal needs for the week. While I'm excited to be giving the solar booth a try, and excited to have scheduled an extra 3 days for visiting friends while upstate, I still have to hire at least a dozen people for the NYRF show, and I'll have to hit it hard when we return to Tuxedo on the 20th.

Dinner with Friends

We were invited to a beautiful Indian dinner last night. Our new friends from the weekend's show serve and/or sell food as part of the support for the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) of Houston. Like us, they serve healthier food items than the normal street fare. Their show menu was vegan, and delicious.

It was truly a delightful evening, and I'm thrilled we could all make it happen, not just for the gorgeous Thali plates we were served, but also because it was nice to sit around with other professionals strategizing street shows and outdoor events. I was not working Bayou City this weekend, as I'm prepping and packing for another show. I'll drive to Atlanta this weekend for a 2-month visit.

One of the chefs wants to continue discussing recipes with me. The Hubby shared a bag of my kale chips with their shop over the weekend, and the allure of raw food recipe creation has been kindled. I'm looking forward to this, as dinner last night was lovely, and there were raw elements I hadn't experienced before, such as shards of ginger, soaked in turmeric, water and salt. The 2 different colors of the turmeric made for beautiful plate-scaping.

Last night we discussed Nourishment, as feeding people is a cornerstone of their spiritual philosophy. I told them of my quest to find the word for that feeling some of us get when we feed people. "Service Attitude" or "Seva" were both suggested. Our new friends staff their festival booths with members of their spiritual community, and all of their food is blessed before being served ... in this, their staff has that energy that we all wish for our staff to have. It's difficult to put into words (hence my search for a terminology). But I want my staff to be made up of people who are fed on some level other than their pocketbook ... in the act of feeding others. We know that energy in ourselves, but it's difficult to translate it into a question belonging on our job applications.

Bayou City Arts Festival

We're selling chocolate covered stuff at the Bayou City Arts Festival in Houston's Memorial Park this weekend. Weather is perfect, and it really is a Chocolate Covered Strawberry crowd. You might even call it a Sex in the City crowd ... girlfriends out for an afternoon of shopping for fine art. Fabulous.

The art in the show is highly juried, and utterly gorgeous ... as is this weekend's weather. We're having a great show. The Hubby befriended some new vendors, and gave them some tips and tricks. They are from the local Hare Krishna temple and Hubby says their food is gorgeous. (Of course, he's a sucker for a well-made Samosa.) They want to make a dinner for the two of us this week as a thank you. It should be lovely.

Our (built for speed) Bayou City Menu:
Chocolate Covered Skewers of Strawberries
Chocolate Covered Cheesecake
Chocolate Covered Frozen Banana
Fruit and Cheese Plate