Thirty-Seven Foods I Sampled at the Nutcracker Market
Wendy and I spent most of yesterday at the Nutcracker Market, an annual “holiday shopping jamboree”/fundraiser for the Houston Ballet. If you’ve never been, it’s hard to describe. Intense? Enormous? Hilarious?
For an idea of the scale of this thing, take a look at this map of the market. That section of tables at the top is about the size of an average auditorium. Hundreds of shops, and we hit at least ninety percent of them (the only section I remember not getting to was the aisle next to the pewterware, top right).
I can think of few more entertaining ways to spend six hours than wandering up and down aisles of Christmas-y crap (and some non-crap), stuffing my face with free food samples, getting slightly sloshed on overpriced wine, and making snarky comments about other people’s outfits. If I’d thought to bring my camera phone, I would have taken many, many pictures of these malfunctions to share with you. The most common offenses were impractical footwear selection, dressing inappropriately for one’s age (whether that age be 12 or 50) and sparkle abuse (*any* sparkle on ordinary walking-around clothes is too much sparkle, IMO.)
The booths themselves ran the gamut from classy to tacky to scrumptious to ridiculous. One of my favorites was a shop from Nashville selling “holiday fashions for ladies and European gifts.” Hats and cloaks and shawls and skirts, all of it cheap cheap cheap, with friendly salesfolks to boot. I bought this adorable hat ($15!)
and we both bought shawls/cloaks/wearable blanket things. Were we a wee bit tipsy at that point? Yes. Do I regret buying a hat and cloak, when I’ve never in my life worn either? Hell no. Forty bucks well spent.
Because we’re nerds, we spent a good bit of time translating the Latin on the manuscripts these folks were selling. The lady running the booth kept pulling manuscripts from the stack we were reading to give to people who actually showed an interest in buying them. I guess she didn’t want our help fixing the incomplete (and occasionally incorrect) translations attached to the pieces. Whatever, lady. This was two stops after the wine booth, so I didn’t much care.
Another highlight was the cherry people’s booth. I like cherries as much as the next person, but oh. my. god. these cherries were phenomenal. Not only were the cherries themselves delicious, but they’d managed to add them to just about any foodstuff you can imagine, and none of it bombed. Dried cherries? Been there. Cherry preserves? Done that. Cherry salsa? Weird, but conceivable. Cherry mustard? Cherry pepper jelly? Cherry BBQ sauce? Knocked ‘em all out of the park. Un-frickin-believable. They probably had twenty different products out for sampling, and we tried them all. We said we’d swing back by before we left and buy something, but we forgot. I feel bad about freeloading on their cherry-infused generosity, but I’m going to absolve myself of guilt by telling you to go right now and buy all their stuff. Here’s another link to the site if you don’t want to bother scrolling up. Quality cherry goo, I promise.
As for losers, there wasn’t any one booth I can single out as being particularly awful; many were tacky, kitschy, or way too pink, but not horrifyingly so. The worst part about many of them were the names. It’s a Girl Thing!, Funke Flopz (flip-flopz, that is), Scribbles ‘n Doodles, MIS-TEE-V-US, Bunnies and Bows, Patchwork ‘N Petals, Klassy Kidz, Swankie Blankie…ok, I actually like “Swankie Blankie.” I think that’s adorable. But the rest? Gag me.
One phenomenon I found myself unexpectedly offended by was the abundance of Christian paraphernalia, much of it utterly tasteless. I know that Texas lies deep in the heart of Jesus country, and I’m not offended by the *presence* of so many crosses, but I do feel that a religious symbol should be treated with more respect than, say, a drawing of a reindeer, or a picture of your cat. In particular, a crucifix should not be fashioned into a throw pillow, a yard sign, a birthday-candle holder, a light switch, a cutting board, or a fist-sized necklace slide, nor should it sparkle, flash, or light up in any way. Gross.
Does this sort of thing offend Christians, or do they just avert their eyes whenever they drive past that house with the light-up plastic Jesus in the front yard and the crucifx wind chime?
In a similar vein, I thought it went without saying that nativity scenes should consist only of people (and possibly sheep). Baby Jesus as a moose? NOT CUTE. Tacky tacky tacky.
But on to the main event: the food. According to the program there were forty-five food booths, and all of them offered free samples. Most were delicious. Apart from a single Twizzler pull-n-peel for breakfast, I ate *nothing* yesterday that wasn’t a free food booth sample (except for the wine, which, sadly, cost money). No lunch, no dinner, just a six-hour-long gourmet snack. Mmmmmmm.
I present, to inspire jealousy, a partial list, in approximate order of ingestion, of the things vendors were throwing at me yesterday. I bought none of them. (I did buy a jar of olive-something spread for my parents, but I relied on Wendy’s taste-testing in that case, as I can’t stand olives.)
- Honey, served on an apple slice with feta cheese and a blueberry. Yummy except for the wax, which we were still picking out of our teeth five booths later.
- Lemon-pesto spread
- Artichoke & garlic spread
- Cherry candy
- Dried cherries
- Cherry mustard
- Cherry BBQ sauce
- Cherry salsa
- Cherry almond preserves
- Plain cherry preserves
- A chocolate-covered dried cherry (I’m not kidding about this cherry shit. Go order one of everything right now, while you’re thinking about it.)
- Tortilla soup
- Cranberry turkey
- Summer sausage
- Pinto bean soup
- Chicken alfredo
- Chili
- White wine
- Chocolate truffle cake
- “Bumbleberry” pie
- Popcorn something something
- Whole roasted garlic
- Tomatillo white chocolate sauce
- Tomato-something soup
- “Spinach Finach” dip
- “Veggie Weggie” dip (This place had several other dips with similarly ridiculous names, all of which I tasted.)
- “Double Dutch” hot chocolate
- More wine
- “SXUL” chocolate
- Apple cider
- Cream cheese with nutty slime on top (Several booths featured similar dishes. None of them were any good.)
- White chocolate bark
- Key lime white chocolate bark
- Peach salsa
- Garlic-onion dip
- Shrimp-something dip
- Amaretto pecan honeybutter, on a warm biscuit
Not bad for an entry fee of nine bucks, eh? Some of the free samples were duds, but there were enough amazing ones to keep me going all day. I have Thai food in my refrigerator, but I haven’t felt like eating any of it until just now.
You bet your ass I’m going back next year. I hope the cherry people feel the same way.
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Let me know if you see the pictures doing weird things, like appearing off-center or extending beyond the text. I’ve wrestled them into submission as they appear on my computer, but I’m bad at doing the internets.
Tags: 37 Things