Monday, September 05, 2005

A Cheese Festival!

For our fun activity on Labor Day, JT and I went to the Arthur, IL Cheese Festival. It was a good time spent with a good friend.

Arthur, IL is home to what seems like about half amish people, and is thus self-titled the home of the Amish. In order to get to downtown Arthur, you have to drive through miles and miles of corn and soybean fields. This made me a bit uncomfortable because I'm so not used to driving through such an expanse of farmland. There are plenty of farms in Maryland, but you couldn't find an area like there is in Central Illinois.

The cheese festival was comprised of a bunch of small tents lining the downtown area of Arthur, and the main source of the cheese was two bakery-type places, specializing in fresh cheese and bread and dessert pastries. They looked verrry good. We walked by all the tents, looking at the mostly-not-cheese vendors. In fact, we should've brought along a couple of girls because they would better appreciate a lot of the decorative arts and crafts/jewelry being sold by most of the people. There were also the standard expensive food vendors. However, there was a "cheese tent" in which a few people were handing out two large slices of excellent cheddar cheese on a sesame seed flatbread.

We chose to eat at a quaint restaurant called The Dutch Oven. I got a fried cod fish sandwich which fried mushrooms, and JT got a tenderloin sandwich with fries. The food was alright, although not overly impressive, just like the restaurant. But the people were friendly, and the prices were right, so it was nice.

We ended up buying some smoked gouda and some muenster(my favorite) after sampling a variety of cheeses available for sale. So we had a novel experience today and we have some good cheese to eat(while it lasts).

>>>I hope I can get all my work done :-P

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Mmm I wish I could have come. I love cheese, especially fresh under the tents of Amish country. Interesting you use the word "uncomfortable" when driving through corn...usually people say it's "boring" or "beautiful" or relaxed is how I feel. It can get kind of eerie though, especially if no cars are around either.
Boys can appreciate jewelry too. The reason they don't is a pure gender barrier. Boys like shiny attractive things like knives, wristwatches, cars, speakers, computers, etc..and these have similar elements that jewelry does.
My question is, how did they keep all the cheese cold all day?