We celebrated our anniversary on Saturday night by going to the Washington Artisan Cheesemakers Festival. The festival featured endless cheese tasting, local beer, wine and cider. We had a great time, such a great time in fact, that I spaced on taking photos. I did snap a few but most importantly, I remembered to photograph the cheeses we purchased. I have to stress that there were a ton of delicious cheeses and we chose to buy the ones that really struck our fancy. If we could buy them all, we would have. We LOVE cheese.

I am so excited to use the queso jalapeno in tamales! The gouda is almost completely gone already, and the blue cheese won’t last much longer. The cheesecake served us well on Sunday morning as breakfast, and I must say, with a cup of coffee, absolute perfection. Cheese fest, thank you for showing us such a good time! We can’t wait for next year!

Happy Monday!

xo

We started my husband’s birthday weekend off by enjoying a date night. I heard from friends that The Station was really yummy,  and then I read an article about it in Sunset Magazine and I was sold!

The Station boasts a huge wood-fired pizza oven, a fantastic menu, local brews on tap and great atmosphere with a super friendly staff.  The restaurant was packed so we had a beer on the adorable patio while we waited. Christmas lights and cool, brisk autumn air are essential for a good date night in October. While snuggling on the patio, we got a really good look at the menu and although there were not many vegetarian options (I’m a pescatarian, have been for 12 years), I had my eye on a pizza called Boss Lady and intended to order it without chicken. It has Maytag blue cheese, basil chiffonade, fresh eight vegetable medley, and Serrano pepper…hello there, Boss Lady, yes please. Allow me to digress for a moment and share my disappointment about NOT trying the Boss Lady pizza. It is so popular that they ran out of vegetable medley! I was so sad. I asked the waiter if it would be worth it without it and he said no way, so I’ll just have to go back and try it another time. *Sigh* Okay, so my back up order was the classic Margherita Fresca, always a good choice. My hubby had the Albatross, pictured below, which has house-smoked pork belly, Serrano pepper, grana, and a sunny-side up egg. He was over the moon with his selection, and I enjoyed the freshness of the ingredients and the fantastic crust. It was hand tossed and perfectly crispy, not overly seasoned . On to drinks! My first beer, not pictured, was a Fort George Sunrise Oatmeal Pale Ale and my hubby tried the Triple Horn Irish Red. Both were delish and we would definitely order them again. For dessert they had a pretty tempting menu, cannoli, panna cotta, fresh baked cookies, gelato…aye yi yi! After pizza and beer, we had to go a little on the lighter side, so we went with gelato. We tried 3 flavors, lemon, chocolate peanut butter and spicy chocolate. The clear winner was chocolate peanut butter because of the ridiculously gigantic peanut butter chunks. It was a great meal and a great time with my hubby.

If you’re in Woodinville, taste some beer and/or wine, and stop by The Station for some seriously good pizza. I can’t wait to go back and try more items off the menu!

Have a great Tuesday!

Ahhhh, the fair. Dreams of eating funnel cake in the sunshine and going on rides all afternoon. What’s that you say? It’s going to be cold and rainy? That doesn’t scare us one bit! I’m too old for roller-coasters? No way!

Here it is, the real deal:

We knew going in that it would be cold, and I believe there was an 80% chance of rain. When we arrived, it was not raining, just a bit chilly, and we had high hopes. We made our way to most important thing of the day, the Washington State Fair Amateur Beer Competition booth. It was a glorious moment to see that my hubby and our dear friend, Mel, had done so well. They placed 2nd and 3rd for some of the beers they entered, and I couldn’t be prouder of them. They’re pretty awesome at what they do. With that checked off the list, we were ready for some adventure! We went full steam ahead towards one of those rides that takes you up really, really high and then drops you, and you feel like your stomach is in your throat. It was exhilarating, and with that ride under our belts, we went straight for the next ride, a steel roller-coaster that had many loops and appeared like child’s play after what we had seen. With my arms stretched straight out over my head, the ride takes off, and I’m thinking to myself, “why don’t we go on rides more often??” Yeah, that was short-lived. We hit a serious dip, and I smacked my head way too hard on the head rest. Just like that, arms are down, and I want off. I felt old. You may be wondering how to recover from such a realization…baby farm animals, of course!

It’s a little embarrassing to see how crazy I went over the baby farm animals. That’s a lie, they’re adorable and I’m owning this obsession. After the farm animals, we ate some fried food, played some games, got soaking wet in the rain, and won this guy.

Keroppi

That’s the Washington State Fair in a nutshell. It was good times. Did you go to your state fair this year?