Sunsphere

Dylan and Harper made their first trip to the sunsphere on Saturday. For those of you not from Knoxville, the sunsphere was built for the 1982 Worlds Fair (it's not a wig shop, for those of you that are Simpsons fans!)

German Queen

Can you guess what at German Queen is?


It's not a Queen that lives in Germany


or


A German drag queen


it's a

Tomato!

That's right, it's a type of tomato plant! I also bought a Celebrity tomato plant, which brings us up to 8 tomato plants. I planted the German Queen and Celebrity about a month after I planted the other plants in the hopes of having a later season tomato crop. We shall see how my experiment goes.

The zucchini plant is growing like a weed.



And I had to stake up my container tomato plants after our storm the other night.



How is your garden doing this summer?

UT Gardens

I had some time before my photography class on Tuesday night (the night the storm hit) so I stopped by the University of Tennessee Gardens. We  have driven past there countless times, but had not stopped before. There were excellent photo opportunities everywhere! Here are a few of my pictures:

Branches down!

Knoxville had a huge storm go through on Tuesday night. I was in my photography class at UT and the power went out about 8:30pm. As I was driving home most traffic signals were out and there were branches down everywhere. We had branches down in our yard too, luckily we didn't loose power like the other 170k people in the area!

Holy rainy day Batman!

I had a training class this afternoon at the Knoxville Association of Realtors. After driving in a torrential downpour to the class, this is what we came out to after the class! There is a creek that runs right by their offices and it was overflowing. All over Knoxville roads were closed, including Cedar Bluff Road, right by the interstate, the main way we get to our house. They are saying on the news that this is the worst flooding in 18 years! Cars have been stuck in parking lots that have flash flooded and people have gotten stranded driving through the deep water. One school couldn't dismiss the students because the school was surrounded with water.

Ice

We actually got the ice that was predicted; Weatherman 1, Knoxville 0

March of Dimes Signature Chef's Auction

Last night Dave and I had the privilege to attend the Knoxville March of Dimes Signature Chef's Auction along with a few of our co-workers from Tennessee National. We had a wonderful time looking at all the silent auction items and enjoying cocktails before being let into the main part of the convention center where the food was located.

There were 20 different food stations at this event! It was rather difficult to figure out where to start, luckily the program listed what each restaurant/chef's signature dish was so that helped us narrow down the options. We started at Carrabbas and while the book said they would have lobster ravioli, chicken Marsala and penne pomodoro I can't say we had any of that. We had

what I think was beef marsla (very good) and something fried and as I am sure you know, fried food is usually good and this was no exception. Our next stop was at The Orangery and it was by far our favorite of the night, their menu was also a little different from the book, but the roasted pork, sweet corn johnny cake, & roasted apples were a wonderful combination. The Partridge & Pear Restaurant was a spot I was looking forward toas well and they did not disappoint with their Beef Short Rib Ravioli, this was our #2 favorite.

We also stopped by Latitude 35 for the southern style shrimp and grits (ok); Chandler's Deli for mac & cheese, green beans and pulled pork (huge portions, but we still like M&M's better); Marble Slab Creamery had ice cream martinis, pumpkin ginger and chocolate amaretto, the pumpkin was the best in our book and excellent; Pelanchos for avocado stuffed with grilled steak wrapped in Monterrey Jack Cheese, lightly breaded and fried, also excellent; Regas Restaurant had braised Niman Ranch Pork Cheek marbella over morel mushroom mashed potatoes with a port wine, balsamic fig and olive reduction (this was good, but they only gave us one plate, so we were not very happy about that!); The Crown & Goose featured porcini dusted pork tenderloin on top of a pumpkin and butternut squash puree with pecan and walnut brittle, really good.

It was fun to walk around the convention center and check out the different restaurant booths and see what everyone had to offer. This event was a lot of fun, it's nice to go to an event and not just be served the same old food.  I am glad we had the opportunity to go and support the March of Dimes as well!

Anniversary dinner

To celebrate our 6 year anniversary Dave and I headed downtown Knoxville to the Crown & Goose pub to watch the Kentucky Derby and have dinner. We have both been to the Crown & Goose a few times and really liked it. Last night was no exception, the food was excellent, so was the service and atmosphere. We started off with a 1/2 dozen oysters for Dave and the Frenchman's cheese platter for me. The cheese platter came with Stilton (good, but definitely not my favorite), a triple creme (my favorite, perfect on crusty bread with walnuts, dried cranberries and honey) a sheep's milk cheese, Gruyere and Manchango. Unfortunately we didn't get photos of our appetizers because we were starving and dived right in! For dinner we split the sausage of the day, venison and blueberry which came with roasted sweet potatoes and Swiss chard. All excellent, the sausage was the perfect combination of sweet and spicy. We also had a few adult beverages to round out our evening!

Ham Towne

Well it's here, the blog you've all been wating for, Ham Towne. Dave thought that Ham Towne would be the perfect name for my blog and since I couldn't think of anything else more exciting Ham Towne it will be.
It's pretty tough writing the first post for your blog, especially if it's something you want people to read and come back to, which I do. So maybe I'll just start with posting a photo of Dylan (of which this site will have a lot of because he could be the cutest kid on the face of the Earth and since I am his mom I am not bias at all...) and a story from this weekend.
We had beautiful weather this weekend in Knoxville, sunny, blue skies and no rain. Dylan loves to play outside and Sunday afternoon we were outside playing, he was having a great time going down his slide when out of the corner of my eye I see Kobe walking down by the fence line. Then I see something in her mouth. I ran inside as quickly as I could so I could close the sliding glass door because I didn't want her to bring whatever she had in her mouth into the house. She come strolling up on the deck with nothing in her mouth so I figured she ate or dropped whatever she had cought. I decided to go down to the fence line to see if I could see any remenants of what she had in her mouth, and thats when I saw a silver, severed tail and a severed midsection of a...snake!! If you know me you know I am deathly afraid of snakes, even parts of snakes, the tail was still twitching...gross!

So that's what you are going to get on Ham Towne, stories about cats, Dylan, Dave & I and food. Hopefully my food photography will get better and I'll be able to post some photos.