Three words: Akron. Beer. Festival. That's right. On Saturday, the same day that Lebron James was riding amidst the 1,000 bikes he gave to children in need at an annual charity event across town, we were volunteering at the Akron Blues & Brews Festival at beautiful Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens. The setting was stunning:

Stan Hywet is a national historic landmark which was originally a turn-of-the-century estate home to J.A. Seiberling, the founder of the Goodyear Tire Company. The estate itself is gorgeous, as you can see, and the gardens are spectacular. But I wonder if Seiberling would appreciate a mob of fat dudes jockeying for their next microbrew or spot in line to the port-o-john on the grass near his beloved apple orchards?

In all seriousness, the event was a lot of fun--even for those of us from Lucky Penny, who were there to talk the beer guzzlers through several beer-and-cheese pairings. We were promoting Lucky Penny's fresh chevre and feta coupled with Thirsty Dog Brewery's Hefeweizen, but we were also offering another local cheese with the wheat beer: Provouda, a provolone-gouda hybrid style cheese made from goat's milk at Capella Cheese Company in Stark County, Ohio. We were also offering up another pairing with two cows' milk cheeses made at a dairy in Western Ohio: Thirsty Dog's Twisted Kilt Lager with a Swiss-Style Cheese and an original recipe cheese called Lock 21, both handmade at Canal Junction Farmstead Cheeses in Defiance. Twisted Kilt is a "Scottish Export Style" lager, and its peetey, smoky taste really brought out the mushroomy earthiness of Lock 21, which is basically a 3-4 month-aged brie.

While I'm sure this all sounds great to you at the moment, it seemed that most customers, three or four pints deep, just saw chunks of yellow and white cheese and gobbled them up thanklessly en route to their next pour. But whatever. We toasted with Abbe and Lauren (respectively in the photo below) to what we hoped was a successful promotional event for the creamery.

Today we went to breakfast in Peninsula, Ohio, which is a small town nestled in the heart of Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Since Bill Clinton upped the Valley's status from a National Recreation Area to a National Park in the late 90's, the government has been slowly buying out privately owned land within its boundaries. But down the road in Boston, Ohio, Szalay's farm benefits from a clause which protects the private interests of working farms within the park. And that's a good thing, because Szalay's, I've learned, is a Northeast Ohio institution.

As you turn off one of the main north-south arteries through the Park onto the farm's road, you see barns and tractors and fields of corn in one direction, like in the backdrop here...

...and on the other side of the road is Szalay's Market:

August is prime time to shop there, especially if you like sweet corn. While you're inside perusing the fresh fruits, vegetables, and unbelievably plump tomatoes--

--a tractor pulls up just outside the entryway and farmhands rush the edges of the flatbed in tow to unload fresh ears of the sweetest corn you've ever tasted:

Seriously. We had some of the corn with dinner tonight, and the kernels taste like they're packed with sugar. Now I can't wait for leftovers tomorrow, or for more of August's bounty on sale at the farmer's market next Saturday...