Mirepoix: The Past Few Weeks and Fried Butter

I must have been crazy thinking that things with the house would only take a couple of weeks. A month later and I am still working every day on various things with very little down time. While the days are more consistent now, we are still dealing with little things like getting our new computer all proper. (I really wish we had the other computer still.... But it is lost and most likely destroyed by the side of some road on Camp Lejeune.)

One of our breaks from the house included the Wilson County Fair. Which is apparently a crazy awesome place and has won several awards for being so kick ass. We watched pig races; I was excited about the redneck-ness surrounding this event but it was one of the cutest damn things I have ever seen. Piglets and mini pot belly pigs racing for cheese doodles? Yes please. The "art" of crawling was also brought to my attention; it is an oddly addictive spectator sport.

Now, I don't know about the county fairs around you but in the Southeast and Midwest, fried butter has been boasted as this year's most unique fair-treat. Naturally, that was the first food we hunted down. I was picturing some tempura-ed stick of butter. I was hoping it would be a little hunk of butter wrapped in pizza dough and fried, like fried dough buttered from the inside. In actuality it was a mere tablespoon of butter, dipped in funnel cake batter and deep fried. It was too much, as I thought it would be, but I can say that it happened in my life.

Then we had to move onto real food. And what better to soak up the coating of butter in your mouth than pork? BBQ pulled pork to be exact. We are in Tennessee so there was no shortage of BBQ trucks. Burr's BBQ is the one we ended up at. Mostly because we got turned around and didn't know where we were on the map. But there was good sized line which is always a good sign and if anything it was operated by the Vietnam Vet chapter of Lebanon. They are usually good people and do some awesome charity work. It ended up being some of the best pulled pork I've ever had. Not too saucy, just enough to hold it together. A little sweet, a touch spicy, and perfectly smokey, tender, melt-in-your-mouth meaty shreds of pork shoulder on the traditional soft white bun. (The sides were ok, nothing special, a little subpar. But it was out of a truck and they were focusing on the proteins, I'd expect the sides to be much better from the restaurant location. )