carnivores, herbivores and omnivores

My wife and I went to the Feast with the Beasts at the Knoxville Zoo last night. It may not have been such a great idea to go to two food festivals in one day but I wasn't going to miss it. Most of the best restaurants in town were serving their specialties from booths all throughout the zoo.

We were greeted at the gate by an enormous furry (or is it plushy?) mascot, K.C. Beaver:


Then we saw WBIR-TV's Michele Silva:


We spent some time talking with a guy who works in radio sales at a competing station. He told me that as a transplant to the South, I would not be familiar with Muscadine, a sweet wine made from a local berry. He said that he had been drinking it since he was a kid. The Stonehaus Winery was serving Muscadine at their booth. According to their website, the local berry they use is called a "grape." It's as sweet as a fruit juice for kids but if you drink enough, things get out of focus, like in this photo:


One of the bands performing at the event was Blue Mother Tupelo:


At the silent auction they were selling painted ostrich eggshells. The one in the middle was painted by an elephant. I don't know how they kept the elephant from breaking the eggshell:


I'll have to write a separate blog entry about the Mold-A-Rama which brought back some memories from childhood:


Perhaps the highlight of the night for me was seeing what Kid Rock will look like in ten years:


One of the best things I ate all night was an oyster quickly cooked in the half shell on a grill. Does anyone know the name of the restaurant that served those oysters? I would like to go there.

After a couple of hours, we couldn't eat any more even though there were still things we hadn't sampled so we decided to head home. Most of the remaining crowd were there more for the drinks than the food. There are quite a few hangovers around East Tennessee this morning.