Lambies, a Donkey, Bulls, Cows and Calves, and a Blind Pig

Maya and I went down to the field where all the baby animals are this morning to see what we could see.  Lambs were dancing and jumping, mama sheep chomping on new green grass, the watch donkey sauntering over to be greeted.  Meanwhile three enormous bulls were stomping and pawing the ground across the drive from the sheep field, and across the road were dozens of calves and their mamas.

Maya said, "We need butterflies!"  The lambs sounded like kittens, and the sheep ba-a-a-a-ed back to them.  The bulls snorted and yelled, and their yells echoed across the valley.

Tonight P and I went to a Blind Pig dinner, an amazing event that is held in Asheville every few weeks.  You buy a ticket for a dinner on a theme;  ours was a gift from E and K, and the theme they chose for us was Origins:  The Evolution of Cuisine.  The location was not divulged until the Thursday before the dinner, and we didn't actually get the email that was sent to us because my spam folder grabbed it.  I had gotten the idea that we were supposed to meet at the center of town at 6 PM, but when nobody else was there by 6:10 I called E to find out if he had a contact number for the organizers.  He suggested looking in my spam folder, which I couldn't get into on my phone;  so he went into it and found the errant email and told us to get on over to an antique shop on the river road, which we did.  There we found around 60 people having a cocktail hour featuring beer mostly and long tables set up the length of the antique place.

Details of the dinner, which was curious, delicious, unexpected, unique;  drawing 4273 is of an iron antlered deer's head that was our table's centerpiece, viewed from the bottom.

Each course was served on a small plate and beautifully presented.  Some of the courses looked like things we used to make when we played restaurant as kids-- a tiny, immature radish sprinkled with what looked like dirt and dipped in buttermilk-- completely delicious.  Others had small portions and bites of exotic ingredients paired with unlikely but perfect other ingredients.  The dinner was filmed by the food channel, so the tv crew was there but unobtrusive during most of the evening.  A blue grass band played all night, and a man at our table shared beer from his small craft brewery with all of us-- great chocolate and cherry oatmeal porters, peanut butter and jelly sandwich beer, etc.  Fabulous!  A three-hour long dinner in America with bijou servings and no doggy bags!