Free cooking demonstrations, you say? I’m there!

This was the first year I had heard of the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival, but as soon as I learned there would be free cooking demonstrations, I was on a train to our nation’s capital with my friends K and L. The featured regions included Texas, Bhutan, and NASA (as in outer space). Though I lost interest in NASA’s freeze-dried ice cream shortly after a fourth-grade field trip, Texas and Bhutan had me at, “Dig in, y’all!”

After seeing how to properly prepare Texan barbeque, we blindly sniffed Texas wine infused with spices or fruit to heighten our sense of smell. That’s me above trying to figure out what the heck I was smelling. I wasn’t very good at that game.

We ate TexMex out of Styrofoam on a bench, and listened to a few Texas musicians talk about their heritage of music.

Then came Bhutan–it’s a small country with delicious food and exquisite textiles situated between India and China and next to Nepal. I never knew it existed, but I’m very glad I learned!

After perusing all the tents and watching a butter-making demonstration, K, L, and I made our way to the food tent and decided on the pork dumplings. Unappetizing to the eye but pleasing to the belly:

That’s K, above, trying a dumpling. After unsuccessfully attempting to cut them in half, we discovered that eating them whole is the best tactic.

Bellies full and feet tired, we boarded the train back to Annapolis … but not before buying a bag of Bhutanese red rice! Recipe and photo of a single-serving Bhutanese dish tomorrow.

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.