Busy as a beaver

Today was a very busy day... I woke up early (6:30 uuuhg!) I friend had agreed to teach me some of the finer points of making bread at his bakery in Hendersonville. As it turns out the Herb Society of Nashville (not 420 friendly herb but the stuff you can cook with, and yes I know you can cook with the other... tangent...) had their 2008 Herb & Plant Sale. I wanted to head out to acquire tarragon and a new mint plant or two. Some how I managed to kill mint... more tangents... Timing was critical at this juncture as the ad for the sale said it started at 9am and ran until the plants ran out or 2pm, whichever came first... Copy like that leads me to believe it would be prudent to get there right when they are opening the doors. I was justified in my desire to get there early. Luckily, Rick, my baker friend, was very understanding about me not making it at 8. Giving him almost an 40 minute heads-up probably made him more inclined to extend the invitation to reschedule for next weekend. So I headed to the fairgrounds and got there at about 9:10 and was astounded to see a line at the already opened doors, nearly 100 yards long. The venue was packed with both people and plants.
The picture above is a poorly shot and constructed panorama of the show floor. It was like Macy's on Black Friday.

Once I had my mint, tarragon, English and French thyme, and a mature lemon grass plant, plus a few tips from the "Answer Ladies" I was on my way.

So due to the location of the sale (at the fairgrounds close to downtown) I decided to have a coffee at my favorite little place downtown, Crema. After about an hour hanging out with the fine staff and interesting patrons, hunger set in and I decided to migrate over to Hot Diggity Dog and had a sublime lunch of Chicago Dog and extra crispy fries. I didn't take a picture, though I should have. As an apology I am linking another blogger's post from 2006. He has great photos and an interesting story.

After lunch, the busy picks up a little. On the advice of my mother, I headed to the Habitat for Humanities store to look at reclaimed refrigerators for a project I am working on. I struck out and on secondary advice from mom I headed to the Sears Outlet (read as Scratch and Dent) Store in where else but Hendersonville. I found many many models that please-id me but only chose one. Since the original plan for the day did not include purchasing a fridge, I was not prepared with measurements of the fridge hole at the casa. So I ran home, measured, headed to Mom's for a minute to raid her potting shed, dropped off the purloined pots and purchased plants then returned to the fridge store. With measurements in hand, the pleasant sales dude, "Fred", confirmed that the chosen model would indeed fit in the afore mentioned and measured fridge hole... Earlier when heading home to measure, my father had called to invite me to lunch on Sunday and had offered to help install the fridge upon arrival at my abode. I had also procured a rented appliance dolly after the potting shed raid in an effort to reduce the stress of getting the stainless steel monster into the house. Store staff loaded the my truck and I gallivanted back to the house to meet up with dad.... Struggle and stain ensued, fridge door removal was preformed and after considerable internalized swearing we made it into the kitchen. Reassembly and door alterations (handle moved from right side to left and the hinge move left to right) completed, I threw some asparagus in a saute pan with a little butter, same as in this post, and quartered some fingerling potatoes long ways and nuked them for 5 minutes. A quick sauté with a bit of butter and a nice chunk of the smoked leg of lamb, sliced made a tasty dinner if I do say so. Dad seemed to agree saying that he got the best end of the fridge moving deal being fed after not doing much helping. I never could have gotten the Stainless Monster out of the truck without his help. (heh, I just named my fridge. How geeky is that?)
Expect action photos at later date... I just too tuckered out.

So that was my day... Busy eh?

Cheers

Chris