Sara's House

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2011 Iowa Cornucopia Tour

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Where has the time gone?  These past two weeks have been busy.  I was finishing up with a major project at work, attending the 2011 Iowa Cornucopia Tour in Des Moines, cleaned the house, did some yardwork, had a sick kiddo, went to Lincoln for the Husker game last weekend and now it’s October 31st already! 
So, sorry this post is a little late, I had good intentions of getting it posted right after the tour, but life got in the way!  
The Iowa Cornucopia Tour is an annual event held in the fall that is put on by the Iowa Corn Grower’s Association and Farmers Feed US.  During the two-day tour, they brought in food bloggers from around the country to see pieces of Iowa and what the corn industry has to offer.  It’s a really great experience!
Last year, my husband and I were invited to a breakfast to meet the bloggers and to talk about our farm.  This year, I was able to spend both fun-filled days with the bloggers!
The lady’s that attended this year’s tour were Brenda at A Farm Girl’s Dabbles, Christina at Mele Cotte, Emily at Busy-Mommy, Heather at Farm Girl Gourmet, Jyl at The Post-It Place, Kelly at Once a Month Mom, Kristy at The Wicked Noodle and Leslie at The Hungry Housewife.  
We started off the first day by having breakfast at The Machine Shed in Des Moines, IA.  If you have never eaten there or you want home cooked, down-on-the-farm food then this is your place!  Make sure to bring your appetite though, as the cinnamon rolls are about the size of you head!  Their motto has always been:  “Dedicated to the American Farmer.”
After breakfast we then took a tour of a 19th century farm at Living History Farms.  The purpose of Living History Farms is to make the public aware of the significance of agriculture in the development of America.  There Mike showed us a farm for the 19th century and talked to us about the different varieties of corn that they grow there and how they shelled it in the 19th century to feed to their animals.  
Next we headed up to Lincolnway Energy Ethanol Plant for a tour and lunch.  Lincolnway Energy, LLC is a 50-million-gallon-per-year, coal-fired, dry mill ethanol plant.  During the tour we put on our hardhats and safety goggles and we got to see all the different steps that the corn goes through to become ethanol.  It was very informative!  Then we had a delicious steak lunch while Bill Couser, who is a local farmer, talked to us about his farm.  After lunch we headed over to his farm for combine and tractor rides!  Some of the ladies had never been on a farm or ridden in a tractor, so this was quite the experience for them.  Bill was nice enough to answer any questions the ladies had about how he protects the soil, waterways and the environment and how he cares for his cattle.
From there we headed to Iowa State University, where we meet with Dr. Ruth MacDonald who is the Chair of the  Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition at ISU.  There we did a little science experiment where we extracted the DNA from a strawberry and then we had a Q&A session where the ladies could ask her any questions that they had about the food that they eat or don’t eat.  We had a very good discussion about High Fructose Corn Syrup, hormones in meats and other foods, etc.  Dr. MacDonald cleared up a lot of myths and misconceptions that the ladies had!  
Our next stop was a surprise!  We got to tour the test kitchens and photography studios at Meredith Publications.  If you have never heard of Meredith Publications, I bet you recognize some of the magazines that they publish:  Better Homes and Gardens, Family Circle, Ladies’ Home Journal, MORE, Parents, Fitness and American Baby, just to name a few.  Below are a few pictures from our tour.

Meredith Test Kitchens

Meredith Photography Studio

After the tour at Meredith, we had dinner at Jasper Winery that night.  This winery is located in Des Moines and is described as “a hobby that went astray.”  They bottled their first bottles of wine in 2003 in Newton, IA.  They soon outgrew that space and opened up a new winery near downtown Des Moines in 2008.  They strive to produce world-class wines using Iowa grown grapes.  And I can vouch for them, that their wines were very good!

Fermenting grapes

Bottled and cased wine

The next morning after breakfast, we all headed to the Iowa Speedway near Newton, IA.  Iowa Speedway is the nation’s most state-of-the-are motorsports facility.  Racing great, Rusty Wallace, designed the track.  For the past five years, the Iowa Corn Grower’s have sponsored the Iowa Corn Indy 250 race in June where the cars have ran on 100% corn ethanol as their fuel.  We got a tour of the race track and then got to ride in a pace car that got up to 125 mph around the track!

After leaving the speedway, we headed to Ador Kitchens for a chef-guided meal.  The menu for lunch was:
Cider sauced apple, walnut and bacon stuffed Iowa port chops
Three bean with sweet potato chili
Leek, cremini mushroom and roasted corn risotto
Warm spiced apple dumplings with vanilla bean ice cream

Ingredients for the risotto

The finished product!  Yum!

I forgot to take a picture of the apple dumpling dessert
before I dug in and ate it all!  It was delicious!

After our lunch was over, it was the end of the 2011 Iowa Cornucopia Tour.  We all had a fantastic time and learned a lot about Iowa and what it has to offer in regards to agriculture.  I hope all the ladies enjoyed it as much as I did!

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