Chagrin Falls - June 2011

This past Saturday a couple of friends and I ventured to Chagrin Falls to visit the 28th annual Art by the Falls. More than 100 artists presented their work at the juried fine arts and contemporary craft festival, presented by the Valley Art Center in Riverside Park.

A co-worker mentioned this show on Friday telling me that his wife, the gallery director for the Valley Art Center, is the woman that organizes this show each year, which is the Center’s largest fundraiser. There were artists showing textiles, paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, jewelry, weaving, ceramics and more.

Art by the Falls began 28 years ago in Triangle Park when a small group of artists wanted a venue to show their wares and raise money for the art center. It has since grown into an annual community event that attracts artists and visitors from across the region, and even across the country.

Many artists showing at the festival are local, though some traveled from as far away as Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Florida. The free two-day festival also featured live music, entertainment, food and drinks and raffles.

UPDATE: Joey's burned down and closed permanently in 2011.

We wandered the booths and then headed onto the Main Street for some lunch at Joey’s. Joey’s is a quaint tiny space serving up pretty terrific Italian food. My fried Perch sandwich was very good, Lynn had the Portabella Grill, and Nancy had the Turkey Reuben (mostly minus sauerkraut since they’d just run out) and both enjoyed their lunches. The service was a bit slow but I think it was mostly due to the overly large crowd piling in from the Art Show so I’ll give them some leeway on that.

White Magnolia Window Shopping

After lunch, we set out to tour some of the little shops along Main. My favorite by far was the White Magnolia. This shop is a combination boutique and cupcake shop – by far the most interesting combination I’ve seen in one location. The shop is filled with beautiful antiques, replicas, china, candles, lawn art and just plain loveliness it was hard to say which items we liked best. Artfully put together, this shop is well worth spending an hour browsing in. Then comes the best part – decadent cupcakes arranged in a case by the door where I ooed and ahhed over them trying to decide which to bring home.

Beautiful displays at White Magnolia

The Cherry Cheesecake cupcake won by a slight edge over the Chocolate Mint. This pretty little cupcake had a cherry cheesecake filling and was piled high with icing and covered with cherry sprinkles all topped off by a Marciano cherry. This was well worth carrying home with me. Realistically, I think I'd have room for two cupcakes next trip up.

This pretty little cupcake gives me the urge to bake some of my own versions up but since we're smack in the middle of the Biggest Looser at work these will have to wait a while.  I thought of perhaps baking some and giving them out to all the other contestants, but then figured they'd find a way to pay me back somehow.  So stay tuned, I'm working on a couple of recipes that sound pretty good for sometime AFTER the contest is over.  Maybe a treat for all of us Loosers!

GOLFERS, DOG HOUSES AND ORGANIC FARMING

Well, it was an eclectic weekend I’ll say that. Thursday evening found this old biddy back over at 750ml introducing another good friend to the place. This weekend they were serving up PGA Wines. Who knew the PGA had their own label? Once again the flight was 2 whites and 2 reds and again I found the whites just so-so, but the reds were quite good. I bought a bottle of each to give as holiday gifts this year to some co-workers whom I imagine may appreciate the mingling of decent wine and golfing. While we were there a thunderstorm hit and the power went out for a few minutes. It was so quiet and cozy watching the rain beating down on the windows and pavement outside while we were tucked in with a great glass or two of wine and appetizers. What better location to ride out a storm?

BARKITECTURE AND ONE OF A KIND PETS

Friday evening I volunteered to help out at Barkitecture – a fund raising project on the grounds of Stan Hywet Hall and Gardens. Local architects had designed oversized dog houses and they’ve been on display over the summer. Friday they were auctioned off for charity. My task was to sit with a shelter dog at one of the houses and help direct people as they made their way around the exhibit. My goodness….talk about a mismatched couple! Jackie (my assigned Jack Russel mix pup) was very anxious since it was his first day out after being in quarantine for a month. He was a friendly dog with lots of energy and very vocal. And not accustomed to being on a leash either. He barked and lunged at every dog that came by and constantly pulled at his leash as is evidenced by all the bruising on my arms and legs today. This cat person should have known better than to be matched with a dog for the evening. Lessons learned and all that. Meanwhile, it was hard to turn down an opportunity to do something good for One of a Kind Pets, they are a great group of people with a heart-felt mission.

CROWN POINT ECOLOGY CENTER FUND RAISER
Saturday evening was a volunteer gig out at Crown Point Ecology Center. If you’re not familiar, CP is an organic farm run mostly by the Sisters of St. Dominic of Akron. In 1997, Crown Point began to grow produce for distribution to the Akron-Canton Regional Foodbank. Over the last 8 years, Crown Point has donated more than 140,000 lbs of organic produce to the Foodbank. Crown Point also began a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in 1998. This program has grown from 20 families in 1998 to more than 70 families this growing season.

The fund raising event this weekend was to help financially sustain the farm in it’s current mission. About 300 people attended and our volunteer group provided check-in and auction checkout services as we have for the past 5 years. The food served to the guests was all from the farm – beet salad, bbq chicken and ratatouille. Thanks to the energy of Sr. Marguerite who helped keep us on track when issues turned up, the task went fairly smoothly.

GOOD END TO A BUSY WEEKED

So it was a busy weekend hitting a variety of fun things. By Sunday evening I was very tired and decided to relax by spending some quality time in the kitchen. Last week while perusing my favorite baking web site (King Arthur Flour) I found a recipe for these decadent looking brownies with a browned butter caramel frosting. This had been an experiment for them after discovering smoked salt in their kitchen and playing with it. While the brownies are really very good – the only interesting part came with the topping made of chocolate and almonds sprinkled with a pinch of smoked salt. The salt lends a bit of a twist to an otherwise regular (albeit very good) brownie bar but I don’t think there’s enough of it to really get the flavor they were going for. Next time I’d like to add the smoked salt to the caramel process to further incorporate the flavor into the frosting. Here is a link to the recipe if anyone else would like to try these out. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/PrintRecipe?RID=1100&radio=1