Taste of the Valley

This is food from just two vendors!!  TWO!!

Taste of the Valley.  That's what we did this past Saturday.  We've never done this before.  Apparently, this has been going on in our town for 20 years!  We had no idea!  This was our first year and let me tell you, had we known, we'd have been doing this for the past 20 years.  Guess what? Guess what will become a new tradition??  Taste of the Valley.  Yup!

So, what is, "Taste of the Valley"?  I'll tell you from our perspective.  We show up at the appointed time when this shindig starts and are given a cardboard box/tray to put our food in.  We are also given a red piece of card stock with all of the vendors who are participating in said, Taste of the Valley. We had no idea what we were doing so we just picked a red tent and got in line.  I'll be honest.  When I first heard about this, I had visions of Cost-Co samples at Christmas time on steroids.  Seriously.  I don't love crowds.  I had visions of all of these vendors handing out samples and people pushing their way to the front of the line to get their sample ignoring those who are trying to be polite that have been standing there for ages dying to taste their frozen re-heated pretzel/bagel bites.  Only thing missing.  Grocery carts used as bumper cars to shove people out of the way or to block said people from getting samples.

Dear Cost-Co,

Please send a representative from your company to the next, Taste of the Valley to see how sample tasting can and should be done.  Thank you and Amen.

Sincerely,
Marge

We get in line and wait our turn chatting with people in line in front of us and behind us.  It's quite social.  As we get to where the samples are, volunteers take our red card stock from us and mark off the restaurant we are sampling from.  Umm, and can I just say that these are Paul Bunyan size samples??  Learned real quick, but not quick enough just how much of each sample to eat.  I'm getting ahead of myself.......

We get our first sample and move to the next line in front of the next restaurant.  Now, mind you, these are restaurants that are competing for our votes.  Our votes that give them the bragging rites to say they are THEE best tasting restaurant in the valley.  They are bringing their A game!  We are tasting the best of the best!  We stand in line at the next vendor snarfing away the samples from the last, moaning and groaning and wondering how in the world we're going to choose which is the best. Get more samples and with our cardboard trays laden with food we move onto the next!  This goes on and on.

Finally, I am miserable.  My buttons are popping and I suggest that we sit down in some shade and could we please allow some of this amazing delectableness to head a bit south before we plunge more into our traps!  I'm sitting there, looking at my red card stock and I am counting how many vendors we still have yet to go to.  Yes, HAVE to go to because we're voting here!!  I am taking this seriously, man!  How can I in good faith vote for the best tasting restaurant in the valley if I've not tasted every morsel????  Can't be done I tell ya!  I believe in being honest so with that thought in mind, I hauled my big caboose up off my chair and off we went getting in line for more deliciousness.

I am proud to say, we tasted them all.  When we voted at the end, we could honestly say, we'd tasted the best in the valley.  It was a fun event.  For four hours!!! we walked from vendor to vendor stuffing our faces!  At the end, while we waited to hear the final results as to who had won, Levi bounced himself silly in the bounce houses.  Mr. M joined him with Mr. J.  How they could bounce after all that food and not have it show up again is beyond me!  The SM had to literally roll me to our truck and I think we broke the weight limit when we crossed over the bridge.

This being our first year, we didn't have a game plan.  Next year!!  We've got a game plan.  We've got it all figured out how we're going to attack this sucker!  What?  What did you say?  What's our game plan?!  Pffft!  That, my friend, is a secret.  I'll give you a hint though!  It involves a wheel barrow and a trough!