This is Marie, contributing an article about cheesy goodness. It makes for a change from desserts, and is nearly as dear to my heart.
We had beautiful sunny weather, perfect for being outdoors, and decided to lunch at the food truck park. Specifically, I wanted to check out the Mac the Cheese truck, as I had a yen for cheesy noodles. The yen didn’t exist until Grant mentioned wanting to get the jalapeno mac n’ cheese from the soul food truck The Blaxican, pulled up a list of the trucks scheduled for that day to see whether anyone else saw something they liked, and the option just leaped out at me.
The girlchild wound up getting something from The Pickle and I have not a single recollection of what it was except that she got a free sample having something to do with sausage, and fell in love. Her meal was finished before my food was ready so I never even saw her portion. It must have been good. If there is a better review than food being eaten lickety-split when you’re not on deadline, it’s notable mainly for having more words.
However, we both got a berry lemonade from The Pickle and that was quite good. The baby also approved and wanted rather more than was good for him (he also tends to treat cups like bottles and they don’t do nearly as well when upended), which led me to bring the cup to our picnic table to be guarded by Grant, and that’s when I saw that there was no chance of getting a taste of the girlchild’s portion.
I actually had to wait a few minutes for my food as we’d gotten there early in the day and the truck hadn’t quite finished setting up yet. The staff at Mac the Cheese were quite unnecessarily apologetic, possibly because they could see I was trying to entertain a toddler while waiting. I guess that under some circumstances I might not have been able to wait and gone to another food truck, but it wasn’t necessary. They offered a taste of the fontina mac noodles and gave the baby a rice crispie treat.
I ordered the pear and butternut squash noodles and shared with the baby. I could have eaten twice as much. It was amazing. The noodles were hot and covered in generous quantities of white cheese, the pears and squash tasted great, and the whole was sprinkled with a generous quantity of parmesan. Heavenly. They claim locally-sourced seasonal ingredients “so fresh it’ll make you say “even better than when grandma made it,” (but we won’t tell her you said that!)” and they succeed.
So now I want to go back and get some more…some other weekend will have to do! Unfortunately, we probably won’t get to enjoy the wonderful lunchtime performance by the Mercury Orkestar, a big brass band that plays Balkan-styled music, while we eat the next time, unless the Food Truck Park asks them to come back regularly. We all really enjoyed the music, and videoed the baby shaking his butt and slapping a picnic table to the beat. The girlchild got a slightly disturbing picture of a unicorn for her wall from an artist, and Grant, shaking his head in amazement of his meal from the Blaxican and insisting that his was the better basket of mac and cheese, considered scrubbing every hesitant or skeptical word that he’d ever written about food trucks from our blog. For accuracy and honesty’s sake, we’re not allowing that, but we had such a good afternoon, again, that I think he’s embarrassed by anything other than the most positive possible words in the past.
Did you know? We have a fantastic Facebook page, where you’ll be able to follow along with much more than just links to chapters here, but additional information, local media PR, links when our friends-in-blogging review our favorite places, and other follow-up news about the places we’ve been. Give us a like !
Marie, Let's Eat! 