#GoettaLife

A culinary opening salvo.

The Mt. Washington Creamy Whip is as good as advertised.

Well, we got here, and our JK Moving 18 wheeler was the talk of the street. But the street rallied together (thank you!) and inconvenience was kept to a minimum.

We picked JK movers because they’re the best that Virginia has to offer, and we damn near filled that thing. Loading it up was not an issue with our old street, and we did not consider relative street sizes differ, having only been on our new street once before moving here.

Whoops.

It’s been a whirlwind two days, but we’ve accomplished a lot! Still in the process of meeting the neighbors, all of whom have been wonderful, and very slowly unpacking.

It’s hard to unpack when you still have to plan things like carpet, paint, etc., but the infrastructure of the house is already solid, and it’s nice to have furniture again. It really is disconcerting to be in an empty house with nowhere to sit, which was the last day or so in Virginia. Free advice: don’t move out of the house with nothing to sit on. Steps do not cut it. Something. Anything. Save a $5 Home Depot bucket. My back still hurts.

We knocked out some chores for school this morning. Unlike my sisters, I have no memory of Schoolbelles as a kid, since Catholic school uniforms in my day, as a guy, I wore a shirt and tie. None of the branded polos or sweaters.

Before we moved here, I read Cincinnati Goetta: A Delectable History (American Palate) by Dann Woellert. It was a wonderful read, along with his book about chili.

So when I realized that it was Goettafest this weekend, we had to go.

There are now two Goettafests! They added a second one in 2019 due to its popularity. My joke code name for the move was “The Big Goetta Project”, lifted from Dann’s book.

My wife very kindly obliged me, going to a festival centered around a regional breakfast meat neither of us had tried. Scrapple, its cousin popular on the east coast, is ok. In reading Dann’s book, I figured I would like goetta more than scrapple, which never really did it for me. My aunt, who has lived here for 50 years, has never tried it.

So of course, meeting Dan Glier, Mr. Goetta himself, was like meeting the Abe Froman of Cincinnati on our first day as Queen City residents. Pretty cool.

It was hot, so we limited our activity there to a ferris wheel ride (for the pics), and some goetta pizza. It is confirmed. Goetta > scrapple. Not even close. Now, to learn how to cook it.

I did not get any goetta swag, but there will be time for that later.

We did also make our first trip to Gold Star Chili, which I’ve had in packets and cans, but never in person at a restaurant. I have had enough of both to recognize the differences, and while Skyline might be the “Band Aid” of branding for Cincinnati-style chili, I do prefer Gold Star. And not just because it got its start here. Store #32, whose manager was amazing to our girls, is across the street from the original store, where a Chipotle now stands.

I’ve always believed in the french fry test. You can judge a restaurant’s totality solely on whether or not it cooks good french fries. Gold Star passed that test, and then some, but I was there for the chili. I haven’t gotten the sense that the Gold Star / Skyline rivalry is Hatfields and McCoys, people are happy to eat both, and perhaps it’s just a cold war that they’d like to keep cold, since a hot war between the two benefits nobody.

It was nice to have family from both sides come over to hang out and have a dinner of a gifted pan of lasagna from a neighbor. More visits are coming soon.

And Monday, I return back to normal at work for what will be a very busy newsweek. But it’s a Cincinnati normal, as soon as we begin to figure out exactly what that means.