Fremont Solstice Celebration 2011!

The Fremont Solstice Parade and Street Fair was absolutely fantastic! My mom was in town, and we caught a bit of the parade (although a large, angry man called anyone and everyone a b*#@h when they tried to climb up on the wall next to him to get a better view of the naked paraders). The only good views we got were of bikers who stood up on their pedals. I'm sure it's illegal for me to post the picture above but I don't think the woman is identifiable because she's pretty far away. Right? 

We did some fantastic shopping with the street venders - Mom got a ton of Christmas/birthday shopping done and I got the most lovely mini-skirt made of recycled Guatemalan "cortes" (skirts), each piece of fabric from a different village. The sale of the skirts benefits the women who sell their used garments, the man and his daughter who sew the refashioned skirts and the local Seattle woman who sells them. Everyone wins including me! 

One of my favorite parts of the day was the collaborative art tent. There were several canvases set up for community painting as well as various supplies for children's art projects. I added the yellow flower in the hair of the lovely painted woman.  So much fun!

We ate some enormously overpriced food, all of which was delicious enough to wipe away our guilt. You can't beat a freshly deep-fried piroshki stuffed with salmon and molten-hot cream cheese,  roasted corn with mayo, lime, chili and salt, falafel and crepes with lemon and powdered sugar! So what if it costs like $30! 

Another awesome display was the "Cartists" and their fabulous art cars! I loved this one of found cigarette butts:

And this one with an Avatar-like figurehead:

My only regret is that I hardly took any photos. These are most of what I took. We were too lazy to push our way through the crowds so I didn't get any good shots of the parade, and I was too busy shopping and licking my fingers to remember to pull out my camera.

Roasted Figs and Feta

The title says it all: Roasted Figs and Feta. There's really not too much else to say, except to drool a little, try to mop it up off your chin, and squeeze another one into your already overflowing mouth. I got the idea from my friend Nate who casually mentioned that someone at a dinner party had stuffed figs with feta cheese and brought them for an appetizer. Enough said. That is, it was enough for me. I think we probably kept chatting about something or other, but my attention was busy swimming in gooey, sweet and salty dreams and planning my evening's meal. 

This tasty treat is so simple that there is really no recipe needed. I bought about 1/4 lb dried figs from the bulk section of my local grocer and a small container of crumbled feta. I went for the stuff that was on sale because its main purpose was to add saltiness and it didn't seem like the time to splurge. I then sliced each fig lengthwise, stuffed in as much feta as would fit, and roasted them on a baking sheet in a 375F pre-heated oven for about 6 minutes. 

The photo above is from this first batch. They were VERY good. Something was missing though... the sweet was there, the salty was there, but something elusive kept flitting through my mind. A second batch was made a few days later upon my mother's arrival from Chicago. In all the excitement of getting back from the airport, the figs were forgotten in the oven and stayed in there for about 15 minutes. Now I'm not necessarily saying that you want to purposely leave them in that long, but the resulting caramelization of the fig's sugars and the slightly toasted feta was amazing! I'd say that 10-11 minutes would be just perfect.