Weekend Foodie Warriors- Take 29!
Hello hello, again, Foodie Friends 🙂 Hope you had a fantastic weekend! In this edition of Foodie Adventures, I decorated for Halloween, checked out a Turkish Food Festival, and visited the AutumnFest at the Market (Greenville State Farmers Market)!
Halloween Decorating 🍁🎃
Greenville, SC
As soon as it started getting marginally cooler outside, I knew it was time to break out the decorations!! Gone was the summery watermelon doormat and out came the autumn leaf version 🍁🍂
I made Max come on an adventure with me to one of my favorite places, The Christmas Tree Shop (very much a New England store, I was amazed they had one this far south), to get a new wreath for the front door and some super festive napkins for our (slightly winter-y) napkin holder.
I’m really proud of and love my wall of paintings, and coincidentally, two of my four paintings happen to be autumn themed, so easy effort there on my part 😂 My birthday is in the fall so if fall themed things stay up all year, so be it, I love it either way.
The Winnie the Pooh pumpkin that lights up I’ve had since I was about 2 years old, and I hand carved that hard styrofoam pumpkin you see on top of my leaning tower of bookcase about 5-6 years ago with one of my best friends since middle school, Jen. The cute little fabric pumpkin was a gift I believe, its really soft and it has these cute little leaves sticking out of the top!
I won’t be here the month of October so I didn’t want to go too crazy on decorations, but Max’s favorite holiday is Halloween, so I had to make it at look festive!
If you all didn’t see my big announcement on Instagram/Facebook, I’m so excited to introduce you all to Jonathan, our new Editor-in-Chief, and have him write a few blogs and take over social media for me while I’m out of the country next month! You guys are gonna love him, he loves traveling, going on foodie adventures, and detailing his cooking through videos, so stay tuned for that 🙌 😁
Turkish Food Festival
Greenville Tech. College, Greenville, SC
Max and I stumbled upon this food festival by accident last year when we saw a sign sticking out of the ground for a Turkish Food festival at Greenville Tech. College about 15 mins away from where we lived at the time. We LOVE Mediterranean food, so any excuse to get some homemade food from the east is a great time for us.
Max unfortunately had to work this Saturday, so I grabbed my friend Jamie and we ventured out to the food festival. They were definitely more organized than last year, with maps labeling out which tents were selling what food and a big covered area with tables and chairs for folks to sit
We tried to go early as we didn’t want our favorites to sell out, and scoped out what was there food wise before making any decisions.
I got to pick the first dish and I went straight for the gyros, as that’s one of my favorites I don’t get very often. Below you’ll see a picture of the guy cutting the meat off the spit, but we were so hungry I forgot to take pictures of the gyro itself 🤣
Pretend the picture of the kebabs from last year are a gyro and we’ll leave it at that.
As we walked around more, we saw vendors selling Turkish coffee and teas, side dishes, and much more!
After the gyro, we moved onto snacks/appetizers, these were called “Borek” – a crispy pastry stuffed with mashed potatoes (left) and spinach and potatoes (middle). The pita bread on the right was akin to a potato and cheese quesadilla and was called a”Gozleme”.
These were some of our favorites right here, I’ve saved the best for last for you all. I love love love stuffed grape leaves, which are an acquired taste for many, seeing as they’re tangy, very savory, and citrus-y. They are typically stuffed with a spiced rice, lemon juice, onions or other vegetables, and sometimes beef. These were vegetarian though. The stuffed peppers were delish, and shared similar spices to the rice in the stuffed grape leaves.
Jamie and I couldn’t have left without getting dessert of course! They went all out this year, even creating a specialty baklava with fresh pumpkin, loving placed between the honey soaked phyllo dough layers.
We ended up eating (starting at the top, counter clockwise):
- Baklava ( layers of phyllo dough filled with chopped pine nuts and held together w/honey)
- Pumpkin baklava
- Islak Kurabiye – I can only describe these as super soft chocolate cake-y cookies topped with crushed pistachios
- Not pictured here but we also got to try the Revani cake, probably the most moist and delicious coconut cake I’ve ever had, it was on the verge of being a pudding cake.
It was a lot of fun getting to share a food festival with a new person who loves foodie adventures too, and of course I brought grape leaves and baklava home for Max (awesome roommate of the year right here!). Looking forward to what they have next year!
AutumnFest at the (Greenville State Farmers) Market
Greenville, SC
Besides the TD Bank Saturday Market that shuts down downtown Greenville on Saturdays, the Greenville State Farmers Market is one of my favorite places to buy local produce. When I saw they were having an AutumnFest, I had to go check it out for you all!
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen so many different types of gourds and pumpkins in my life. Out of curiosity, I started looking up names of some of the cooler looking ones, see those below:
The minty colored ones on the left are called “Kabocha” pumpkins, which are actually squashes masquerading as green pumpkins, and have a firm texture and a sweet flavor. The sunset orange pumpkins (no color correction on those, they look exactly how I saw them on Saturday) are called “Rouge Vif d’Etampes”, or “Cinderella” pumpkins, because of their fat and squat nature. These pumpkins are semi-sweet and great for pies! (Side note, thank you to The Spruce for the lesson in how to identify pumpkin types!)
There were also some really cool purple veggies called Crowder peas, which I will find some way to use in a recipe. if only for the color! 💜
See more pictures of the festival and awesome pumpkins below:
If I was here longer, I would have loved to have tried out a couple different gourds or pumpkins to use in recipes, but it’ll have to wait to closer to Halloween. The event was a lot of fun and I’d love to go back next time I need a pie pumpkin! 💜
So how was your weekend Foodie Friends? What is your favorite autumn food – apples, pumpkins, or something else? Sound out in the comments below or let me know your suggestions of what dishes or places we should visit next. As always, feel free to like, comment, & share 🤗
2 Comments
Great blog. Jonathan will have his work cut out to top Tuurkish food festival and pumpkins!
Food here?Look at my wall. People saw my story pic and asked for recipes.
The roasted red pepper and tomato soup with veggies is outstanding. When you get back from across the pond, a cooler night one pot meal. I made it in the crock pot while I showed real estate Sunday.
A two bowler!
Travel mercies. Take roomie pants and eats lots!
Thank you so much, love a good soup recipe, I’ll have to check it out!