The Ravinia Goat Rodeo Picnic Contest and More

As many of you who've been following my blog or my facebook feeds know, we've spent a lot of time at the Ravinia Festival this summer.  I think when all's been said and done we went to 12 concerts this summer. Perhaps our busiest week was the last one when we had six of the twelve events.

Well, as I mentioned in my previous post, we went to see Yo Yo Ma and the Goat Rodeo Sessions. That was the evening that we were selected as one of 50 entrants into the Ultimate Picnic Contest. This joint event was co-sponsored by Terlato Wines so part of the judging had to include some Terlato Wines.

The good news is that Terlato has a wide variety of different wines ranging from rally nice Napa Valley and California wines to those found in France and in Italy.  While I had not had one of their wines before, there was enough to choose from that I didn't think we'd have much of a problem.

As it turns out we didn't.  As you may know if you have followed this blog for some time our trip to Paris a couple of years ago was the launching point for this blog (the background photo is a cafe along the Rue Cler in the 7th arrondissement of Paris). It was during that trip that my partner in these adventures developed a love for the wines of the Cotes-du-Rhone.

As it turns out Terlato has a couple of wines from a well-regarded winemaker in the region Michel Chapoutier.  His Belleruche wines are imported by Terlato.  We found these to be very consistently good in our pre-picnic planning.  At the same time I wanted to do something that I thought would be unique -- turn one of the bottles into a candle.  (As it turned out, it wasn't so much of a unique concept.)

Our original plan was to feature a theme of East meets West with the clever use of some Bento boxes.  Unfortunately, Amazon let us down and didn't deliver the boxes in time.  That left us scrambling a bit.

I had ordered a cheese from IGourmet.com that was a selection of Goat Cheeses.  This concert is a unique mix of talents from across many musical genres as Yo Yo Ma has blurred the lines many times. The name of this album -- the Goat Rodeo Sessions -- refers to a situation where the chaotic cannot seemingly be controlled with each person having their personal agenda and direction.  This certainly reflects the nature of this effort.

A cross between bluegrass and classical, elements of jazz with each musician playing elements together in what could be called controlled chaos.

Perhaps that's what my selection of cheeses could be called -- controlled chaos.  I ordered Aracena, Beemster, Midnight Mood and Buenalba for the event.  The Aracena by Dona Manuela is a raw goat's milk cheese from the Andalusia region of Spain. It's a full-flavored cheese full of herb and citrus flavors. It reminds me a little of a nice stinky cheese from France.

The Beemster is a Gouda made entirely of goat's milk.  Apparently there are a number of farmers who keep goats for the locals' enjoyment and so they also produce a goat's milk gouda.  I found this cheese to be a clean, sweet flavored cheese that was very easy to eat.

The Midnight Moon is a relatively new cheese coming from Cypress Grove Chevre. This is a very different cheese both in texture as well as flavor.  It has a nuttiness to it that makes it great to eat on bread or all by itself.

We finished the cheese with a Buenalba with Pimenton.  This cheese is similar to the Spanish Ibores but different in that the Pimenton de la Vera is infused into the goat's milk before setting it in curds.  This is another raw milk cheese.

These cheeses added nicely to the rest of the spread which included an unbelievable fruit tray with champagne grapes, blueberries, strawberries and our new favorite fruit, figs.

There were also olives, chicken salad on baby romaine leaves (really great for picnics) and a rice salad with some of our homegrown tomatoes and a heavenly lemon vinaigrette.

While we didn't win, show or even place, it was a lot of fun.  We really had a lot of people commenting on the quality of the spread and how it was something that they could reproduce themselves pretty easily.

That, I thought, was one of the best parts. I forgot to mention that we also had saucisson, a French dry cured sausage.  It was intriguing enough that one of the judges -- who views himself as mostly vegan -- had to try a bit of it.

Not surprisingly he found it to be quite good!

Perhaps the most difficult part of the whole affair was that we had to wait until after the judging was completed in order to dig into the delicious picnic fair. We certainly learned a lot about this for next year so plans are already in the works.

I'll leave you with some pictures of some of the other entries in the picnic contest. While there were a lot that were amazing entries, very few seemed like they were something to replicate.

I was astounded by the sound of Yo Yo Ma and the other musicians.  While at times it seemed as though they were all headed for a train wreck somewhere through the music, they ended up pulling every piece together. All in all a very enjoyable evening.

Picnics are always fun. What was your favorite picnic this summer?