Not quite red, white and blue but you can tell it's summer!
Our holiday weekend turned into three days of food, fun and feasting. Friday night was an al fresco dinner to celebrate a friend’s birthday with delicious treats from Zingerman’s Deli in Ann Arbor, spicy capicola from Thurn’s, foie gras pate from France, smoked oat cakes from Ireland, local tomatoes with basil and Blue Jacket Dairy Mozzarella and french rose. It was a ‘picnic’ beyond compare!
Zingerman's treat number one, acorn fed coppa.
Treat number two: Kunik cheese
Kunik cheese from Warrensburg NY (via Zingerman’s) is a wonderful uber creamy cheese made from a mix of goat milk and jersey cream. It is a white mold ripened cheese with a buttery interior and I hope that it is available somewhere in Columbus.
Thus fortified it was time for Red, White and Boom fireworks and our al fresco evening continued with Dark and Stormies (ginger beer and dark rum), my favorite firework watching drink, on a warehouse roof downtown.
Thurns - various meats including capicola
Saturday we were hosting a post doo-dah parade cookout. We had purchased the meat the day before at Thurn’s and chosen a range of burgers, brats (smoked and garlic) and frankfurters. Once you are in Thurn’s how can you resist the bacon?
Saturday morning saw my usual trip to the farmers market but I rather unwisely rode my bike. Bikes are fine when shopping for one or two, not for twenty and not when you can’t resist buying 13 ears of corn. I had a wobbly ride home with bags hanging off each handle bar. You really can tell that the growing season here is in full swing, with so much more variety than a month ago. Blueberries, raspberries, apples, tomatoes, snow peas, cucumbers, beets, carrots and all sorts of greens. My highlights were red skinned pontiac potatoes, orange cherry tomatoes and the first corn of the season!
Somehow I was too busy at the cook out to take any photos. I made the veganomicon quinoa salad with black beans and mango that I made a lot last summer, a potato salad with a mustardy dressing and a blueberry cake (a favorite recipe from the Lompoc Cafe Cookbook). We also made a roasted tomato salsa from 101 cookbooks that was a huge hit. It disappeared before everyone had even arrived.
Lompoc cafe blueberry cake with lemon frosting
Sunday was some more taco trucking – and after one failed lead, we found a new truck in Hilliard (great chorizo tacos) and took a trip to Potosinos, which was busy with Latinos in their sunday best but as welcoming as always. I had some wonderful barbacoa sopes and horchata.
Tacos at Nayarit
The finale of the weekend was an opening party at Kogen’s restaurant in Powell. Kogen’s is a Pan-Asian restaurant owned by the Mark Pi family with a mixture of sushi and other Asian dishes. 
We stuck to the sushi menu and tried some of the interesting sushi appetizers such as Asian poke, seafood sunomono, spicy octopus with kimchi sauce and Asian ceviche. We also had some sushi a la carte and not surprisingly ran out of space for any entrees. The Asian poke and the octopus were our favorite appetizers.
Asian ceviche was a refreshing mixture of marinated fish with cucumber, fish roe and seaweed salad.
We also really enjoyed some of the interesting mixed drinks. The favorite at our table was the Cappa martini, sake shaken with cucumber and sour mix. A perfect drink for a hot summer evening and a great accompaniment to the sushi. Isn’t one of the signs of a good cocktail that it is way too easy to drink?
Photos of Red White and Boom and the Doo Dah Parade are up on Flickr.
