The Phantom

Do you love the state fair but hate children and the sound of their laughter? Think agricultural equipment is unworthy of looking at? Believe quilting and jam making should be simply appreciated and that to judge them cheapens their respective art forms? Think butter is for eating and not sculpting? Hate rides that spin? Think adults who walk around with giant stuffed animals are idiots? If you answered yes to more than three of these questions, you may not in fact be a fan of the fair and simply like overeating. If this is the case, man, does Boston have the thing for you. The Phantom Gourmet is a local TV show where a guy goes around to New England restaurants and tells you what's good. It's food porn at its finest, and every year the show hosts the Phantom Food Festival outside Fenway featuring the best of the best dishes from his favorite eateries. So get this--40 bucks gets you in the door and it's all you can eat from there. Yesterday, the neighbors Chris and Mandy and I went there to do battle against crowds and moderation.

I hesitate to even post this since we strive for truthfulness on this blog and I'd hate to have people start accusing me of exaggeration, but here is an alphabetized list of the things I ate:

Ahi Tuna (pictured below)
Arancini
Beer (Budweiser, born on May 9th. Unacceptable.)
Beer (Michelob)
Beer Cookie (don't ask, it was full of fennel and disgusting)
Calamari (sauced in the buffalo style)
Cheesesteak
Chicken pot pie
Chicken wing (Asian, pictured)
Chili
Chowder (clam)
Clam (drunken, possibly the best thing I ate although it's tough to say for sure)
Conch fritter (pictured)
Cupcake (Kick Ass brand)
Fries (French)
Hoagie (Italian)
Hot dog (with bacon, cheese, and BBQ sauce)
Ice cream (coffee and oreo)
Meatball (regular)
Meatball (veal)
Mess, the (a disappointing pasta dish)
Peanut butter cup
Pickle (spicy)
Pizza (two (2) slices from different pizzerias)
Pop (blueberry)
Rib (BBQ)
Ricotta Gnocchi
Root beer
Sherbet (rainbow)
Steak tip
Sushi
Taco (mini)
Truffle (had some fruit B.S. in the middle instead of chocolate, I nearly spit it in the woman's face)
Whoopie pie (smuggled home in Mandy's purse and eaten post-nap)

That is all. I'm not one to use the term hero lightly, but I ate heroically. After Liz got off work, we reconvened with the neighbors for some much needed exercise in the form of bowling. And nachos, we had nachos. My first Massachusetts bowling score was a respectable 123, Liz's a paltry 130.

Acadia (North Shore East)

Over labor day, the wife and I threw the tent, a rasher of bacon, and a length of stout rope into the car and drove up to Bar Harbor, Maine, the location of Acadia National Park. The scenery on the drive up was straight out of northern MN, a mixture of pine and birch forests. When we got to the park, we were immediately struck by how much it resembled the North Shore's rocky islands. You'd have to taste the water to tell that it was ocean instead of Superior. The ocean was dotted every 20 yards or so with markers for lobster pots, which make lobsters:




When they wash up on shore they make good tripods:



The scurrying rocks were not very challenging. The mountains were a bit higher than in MN, with Cadillac mountain being the highest. Here's us at the top:


One day we rented bikes to take out on the park's extensive system of carriage roads, built for horse drawn carriages by John D. Rockefeller('s money) in the early 1900's. It was about as nice a bike ride as you could want:

There's a very old restaurant in the park that is famous for their popovers. We stopped and had a few while we looked at these boob hills.

We did not see any moose, which is probably for the best since the language barrier between us, who only speak the MN dialect, and the locals might have resulted in a diplomatic, even life threatening disaster, as anyone familiar with how similar "It is an honor for us to visit your lands," and "The ticks on your mother are thick and engorged and smell of alewives," are in the moose language family, along with the moose's propensity towards goring, knows.

In summary, Acadia is nice, but if you want the same scenery without the cost of a flight, go to Tettegouche. Also, here is a carving of an Indian with a ladder in his nose: