Sean and I went up to the Kennett Square Mushroom Festival on 9/7. It  was very crowded and also hard to look at the booths and to try to get food. I went up to one place to get my ‘must have’ acquisition of homemade mushroom soup and they were all out at 3 pm! What? Said they were making more, but we moved on to a place where Brian and I had a dinner salad a month or so ago. We asked to look at the food and it looked appealing, so we  brought home two kinds of risottos and butternut squash mushroom soup (yes!) We went down to a new marketplace and I got some mushroom salad, a specialty around these parts. We had enough for side dishes with our grilled burgers. Also the fire was good enough to start our steaks for tonight. And let me tell you, they were good!

I saved the soup for the next day with crusty bread-yummy!

I usually get pumpkin mushroom ice cream too from the Woodside Creamy booth.

So it seemed a little different this year. I think the mushroom were frozen in little dots of liquid as to me they tasted like icy pumpkin seeds.

A lady cooking in a booth next to us saw Sean taking the photo of me and offered to take a shot of us. So nice of her. Sean is drinking lemonade from Applebee’s booth where they were sponsoring Alex’s Lemonade stand for childhood cancer. Alex was a suburban Philly girl who started making lemonade to help sick kids like herself.  I bought that blue t-shirt from them.

We walked the full length of the festival and I bought a wrought iron globe before we left. We had aced a good parking spot and this booth was close to it. Will find a good spot for it and show you later.

So today, both guys were working their retail jobs and I saw that Chef Carla Hall was going to do a cooking demo. I rounded up the moola I needed to see her and went up about 45 minutes before the demo. I wasn’t sure if I could even get in! I went parking hopping and got stuck at the bank drive-thru, but eventually found a good spot when someone was leaving the orthodontist office a few blocks away! I lucked out.

I then went to the tent and there were indeed tickets left, so I bought one and waited in line for about 10 minutes. When we were allowed in, I headed to the front and saw my pal Mary Ann sitting in the first row! I say ‘hi’ and she said to join her there! Wow! Never expected that.

Carla came bounding out-she has a ton of energy along with her big personality!

We were right near the tv and I got some shots off of that. Classic Carla face here:

Carla made a ‘Rustic Mushroom tart’ and lo and behold, it’s on her cookbook website.

She’s talking about salt here and that you need it while you are cooking.

She had a 12 yr old boy from the audience add the white wine to the mushrooms. He wasn’t sure how much to add and Carla said ‘enough’ after he started to pour. She told him that when he is older she wants him to remember her saying that about alcohol in his head-ha ha.

Then a man who happened to be a personal chef from Hockessin, DE was invited up to roll out the dough. She said she felt the vibes he was a chef like herself when she picked him out of the audience.

Then only one audience member got to sample the tart and she liked it.

Another angle of Carla on the tv.

Then she came out front and asked who wanted photos and Mar took this awesome shot.

Too bad she is so mean, not! I may have to photo shop my glasses. Carla must have special no glare ones!

And here are a few random Instragram shots from Saturday

The beginning of the festival

The mascot ‘Fun Gus’ and ‘her’ dad maybe?

Cute hats!

I really enjoy coming up here to the festival, It’s a tradition now, but I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say I was disappointed in how expensive most of the food was! I was happy to find the food we did, but I remember in the festival’s early years there was so much more of a selection. There were plenty of merchant booths and I wasn’t really seeing people buying a lot of things. I think it needs to be about the food again.