Goettafest

Have you ever had goetta?! {ged-da} Eh, chances are a lot of you out there haven’t. Unless you’ve spent anytime living around Cincinnati. We love our goetta. Seriously. We even have multiple festivals for it.

For those of you not in the know I’ll explain what it is. Basically it’s a breakfast meat. Yes, seriously. It’s sort of like a sausage, and typically sold in plastic wrapped link like sausage and you can slice it and fry it up or sort of brown it like hamburger meat. It has a little bit of a spice to it like sausage but it’s its own sort of taste. The two biggest ingredients are ground pork (or a combination of pork/beef) and steel cut oats. It’s super popular around Cincinnati where we have a lot of german roots and was a peasant dish made to help meat stretch further.

It might not sound like the most appetizing thing even just hearing about it but I admit it pretty good! It’s actually the only breakfast meat I’ll eat, I’m not a fan of the others. 

This past weekend there was a local Goettafest down on the Ohio River. Some how my adorable husband has made it his entire life without going to a single Goettafest. Unbelievable. So we remedied that this weekend and went. 

As we strolled into the festival we past by dinky carnival and bounce rides for kidos, a caricature artist, booths and booths of food where the “typical” ingredient has been replaced with goetta instead, lots of people and a live cover-band. 

After scooping out the options (which included goetta nachos, hot brown with turkey goetta, goetta burrito, goetta corn dog, deep fried goetta balls, goetta {not crap} rangoon, goetta sushi, goetta hoagie, goetta cheese coney and more!) we got a goetta calzone from Papa Johns. I’ve gotten it before and informed John that it was good so that’s why he wanted to try it, and it was very good. 

Then we got a little more adventurous. They also have goetta desserts but I’ve never been brave enough to try one, but the husband was! So we went the the local bakery booth and got the goetta brownie. The goetta was only in the chocolate ganache on top and it just gave it a little sweet and salty taste but you honestly hardly knew it was there. And it was a pretty darn good brownie!

Quick update on Mr. Pit! The pit is cracking and i noticed when changing and refilling his water that there is a white sprout growing, all tucked up inside it! yay!! 

Mr. Pit (growing an avocado tree part 1)

Meet Mr. Pit. He came from an avocado. He’s been all wrapped up in his mother for a while now. Most recently they’ve lived in the bowl we keep on our kitchen table. They’ve had friends. The Banana Crew of course, then there’s the Lemon family, Mr. Orange, and Miss Honeydew.

But now he’s one his own. (Shhh don’t tell him but his mom will be very instrumental in tonight dinner...)

Look how pretty he is!!

This week I came across how to grow an avocado tree! Now obviously living in Kentucky is not the best atmosphere for harvesting avocados but you can grow a tree indoors. Kinda fun huh? The hubs has been wanting a larger indoor plant for the apartment so I’m gonna give it a whirl! 

First you gotta get an avocado. Then once you eat it (or if you just let it sit and get ripe and don’t eat it. You’re loss.) take the pit out. I would scoop it out and not whack it with the chefs knife and take it out so you don’t mess it up. 

Then you give it a bath. Just wash all the slimy goodness off and dry it.

Then you figure out the top and bottom. The bottom is a little flatter and the top comes to a small point. If you remember to pay attention when taking it out you can’t get it wrong cause it’s the same as the top of the avocado itself. The top of the pit will be on top with the top of the fruit (aka where you can see where it was connected to it’s tree). Mine looked like the roots already want to come out the bottom so it was super easy. 

See!!

Ok then you stick a few toothpicks in it! It’s actually really easy to stick them in. You do this because the bottom of the pit has to stay in water 24/7 while the top needs to say out of water 24/7. This way you can place it in a cup suspended over water. After I did mine I realized I should have put the toothpick in at an angle and not straight on that way they would rest it a little lower in the cup and I wouldn’t have to have it filled to the brim all the time. Oh well. 

Then in about 2-4 (I think, relying on memory) it should have roots come out the bottom and a little plant pop out the top! 

Here’s hoping first times a charm!! I will keep you updated on Mr. Pit’s progress and (hopefully) when he makes it to the second part (potting) I will share how to do it!