Personal - David Carr

Weekend Cooking Adventure

April 29, 2018/in Personal/by David Carr

Earlier this month, Jen’s best friend, Meagan, and her husband, Graham, along with their two daughters, came to stay with us for a weekend visit. They brought their sous vide immersion cooker on their last visit (back in July) and converted me from someone who enjoyed ridiculing people who “sous vide” their food into a true believer. I got one for Christmas and have had a blast exploring new foods (and continually making a few family favorites) since.

During planning discussions for this trip, Megan and I talked about how great it would be to just have a weekend of amazing menus with two cookers going simultaneously. The concept continued to evolve and a weekend cooking adventure was born. Read more

N.C. State Farmer’s Market

November 12, 2017/in Personal/by David Carr

Since moving to the area, we’ve noticed that Farmer’s Markets are a big thing around here. We have the Holly Springs Farmer’s Market, which is open weekly during the spring and summer; they’re open during winter, but it’s bi-weekly. The town of Apex (just down the road) has the Apex Farmer’s Market during the summer. Fuquay Varina, a town in the other direction, has their Grower’s Market.

None of these compare to Raleigh’s State Farmer’s Market. They’re not even close.

The State Farmer’s Market offers building and market space, as well as open air spots for North Carolina farmers to sell fresh produce, plants, and other specialty items produced on local farms.

The Raleigh Farmers Market is one of four regional Farmers Markets owned by the State of North Carolina and operated by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. These Farmers Markets are strategically located across the state to serve North Carolina farmers, both large and small.

The Farmer’s Building alone has 30,000 square feet and is filled with freshly baked goods, produce, flowers and plants. It smells amazing! We bought a couple of air plants in decorative pots for the house and some produce.

The market space is indoors (read as: warm break from the winter breeze!) and offers seafood, ice cream, canned goods and crafts. We scooped up some amazing Blackberry jam from The Berry Patch there.

This was our second trip (we went a couple weeks earlier with my Aunt and Uncle while they were in town) and it was only about 40° while we were there. We had a great time and it was an excellent place to get outdoors, walk around and enjoy time with friends or family, and also pick up some produce or other items that support local farmers and other businesses.

North Carolina State Fair

October 20, 2017/in Personal/by David Carr

The North Carolina State Fair was first held in 1853 and has been at its present site since 1928. It draws a pretty significant crowd each year — last year reaching its second highest ever attendance with 1,028,364 visitors. The record was in 2010 when it saw 1,091,887 people attend. It’s held at the State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, about 20 minutes from our home.

Judging by the map, we only saw about 25% of what’s there. We went after our son woke from his nap, which means we didn’t get there until 3:30 or so, entering the park around 4:00. We left when he started getting punchy a little after 8:00, giving us four hours to explore and check out what’s there. We watched a BMX/Motocross stunt show by King BMX (you may have seen them on the X Games, Dew Tour & America’s Got Talent). We got some fair food (tator tots with ranch and bacon, gyro) and my son rode several of the rides in Kiddie Land.

In general, we didn’t see any of the exhibits or contents, or take in any of the adult rides. There was a ton there that we didn’t get to see, so if you have a little person in tow, you may want to play to do this in two trips, or maybe even get a babysitter for one of them.

Overall, we had a blast. The people-watching can’t be overstated. There were definitely some characters there. I never went to the fair in Jacksonville, but I assume it was very similar, albeit smaller in size.

More information about the fair can be found on their web site: http://www.ncstatefair.org/2017/index.htm

Solar Eclipse

August 21, 2017/in Personal/by David Carr

In addition to being my son’s third birthday, there was was also a solar eclipse today. Here in central NC, we were expecting about 94% totality, which I mistakenly assumed that meant it would get fairly dark. Apparently 6% of unobstructed light from a star is still pretty significant.

My son is currently home sick from school (we were going to keep him out anyway to see the eclipse) with croup, having interpreted his birthday party the previous evening for an emergency room visit when he started to having trouble breathing. His fever of 102 has now broken and we spent 20-30 minutes outside during the peak of the eclipse watching the sun through our eclipse glasses.

If I learned anything today (other than that a non-totality eclipse doesn’t make it very dark outside) it’s that we would be more than willing to drive to the path of totality for the next one.