The Blackeye Pea Festival

This weekend Joe, Hana and I woke up extra early Saturday morning and headed to the Black eye Pea Festival where Joe and Mom, aka Neeny, were entered in the cook off. Mom won the title of grand champion the past two years so the competition was fierce. Well, it was about as fierce as it could get in a friendly small town. ;-) Joe's recipe was Black eyed Pea-to Pie, which was essentially a Frito pie with black eye pea-infused chili and a scoop of peas on it. It was yummy, and I should know, we've eaten quite a bit of it lately as he perfected the recipe!

Mom, aka Neeny, made Black eyed Chicken Pea-chiladas, which was chicken enchiladas with mashed black eye peas inside and smothered with a black eye pea sour cream sauce. YUM!

They worked diligently to impress the judges and the people.

Rumor has it Joe even made the local newspaper. LOL! Hopefully someone grabbed us a copy of that...

While they worked their tails off serving over 150 people their black eyed creations, Hana and I got to enjoy the festivities. Dian and Nana even stopped by long enough to be entertained by Hana Grace. Hana danced solo

and with a partner.

She went "fishing"

and she got her face painted like a...

RABBIT! She specifically asked to look like a pink and white rabbit but every time the lady would finish Hana would say, "But it's not finished yet!" So the lady would just keep going! I finally caught on to the shenanigans and thanked the lady for being so kind but assured her that if she kept it up we would be there all day. There was so much "extra" on her face that it stopped looking like a rabbit, if it ever really did look like one... Throughout the day people would approach her and say, "Oh, what a cute (insert random animal here)!" The most common were mouse and cat and this infuriated Hana Grace. "I'm a bunny rabbit!" she would exclaim.

We heard them announcing the winners so Hana and I hurried back to the pavilion to cheer on Joe and Neeny. In the "main dish" category, Neeny won 1st place and Joe won 2nd! Another lady won the title of grand champion, but they put up a good fight with some delicious creations. Way to go guys!