Asian in a Strange Land

Friday the 16th was the last weekday of the State Fair (parking and admission free before 2 p.m. on weekdays), so despite the sky still being overcast and temps in the 50s we gave the Fair another go.  As you can see above, a lot of other people felt the same way.  The crowd was much better, and thankfully the clouds blew away harmlessly.

This is going to be the biggest post I’ve done in terms of pictures–35 in all.  This particular post is why I retroactively went back and added a “Click for more” link to all long-ish posts.  What can I say?  The Fair was fascinating to me, so I took tons of shots.  Lots of it will be old news to those who visit the Fair every year, but it was all brand new for this foreigner.

In my post about our first trip to the Fair this year, I mentioned that we had Philly cheese steak and Saratoga chips for lunch, but I didn’t take a pic because it was pouring down rain.  Well here’s the stand we got the food from.  To recap: Philly steak was good and voluminous, Saratoga chips are just potato chips, and their steak-on-a-stick is serviceable but not great and not a great amount of food.

This “Bonker Burgers” stand is locally owned by Mississippians.  While it is the Mississippi State Fair, many of the big vendors are from elsewhere, so it’s good to see the local guys too.  If I hadn’t had my heart set on something-on-a-stick I would’ve given these guys a look.  I should’ve at least asked what makes it a “Bonker” burger.  Next year.

Stuffed animals–of course.  Sports jerseys–ok, I can go along with that.  Guitars?  That’s a new one on me.

This represents how I think of the Fair in very broad strokes–games and prizes, funnel cakes, food on sticks, various other eat-with-your-hands food, the Coliseum, and American flags.  I don’t know if there’s some kind of social commentary in here.  I’ll let you sort that out for yourself.

Here we go.  Now this is fair food.  You can walk around with a giant turkey leg like jolly fat kings in those old cartoons you grew up with, or you can try your hand at some rib-tips-on-a-stick.  The latter seems to defeat the purpose of putting food on a stick.  Isn’t the point to make it easier to eat?  With rib tips you still have bones, so you have to pull them off the stick with your other hand to work around the bone.  To be honest I was still tempted though.  I’m not one to turn down ribs or rib tips.

The cajun seafood pistolettes sound like a bad idea to me.  Seafood under a heating lamp?  But yet again, I was still tempted.  It’s like my better judgment shuts down in the face of such extravagant dining options.  Next year!  Maybe.

Does it get much more southern than this?  Roasted corn and boiled peanuts.  The corn was roasting on some kind of rotating grill contraption, and man did they smell good.  By the time we finished walking the strip and doubled back for lunch, there was a considerable line at this stand.

Aha!  Oldee Timee–our inside joke strikes again.

Ok, so misspelling is obviously a gimmick at this stand, possibly trying to seem more country.  I get it.  But some of it makes me doubt if it was on purpose after all.  I mean really–”tenderlion”?  Nice one.

Sofia has it good.  The kids behind her (Preschool?  Kindergarten?) had to walk all over the Fair.  Sofia did some walking too but was free to retire to her carriage whenever she felt like it.  Sofia, remember these times one day when you have to drive your old parents around because they can’t drive over 50 on the Interstate.

You’ll recall that one of my personal goals for this Fair trip was to eat some unusual deep-fried fare.  I was looking for some deep-fried candy bars, or maybe some ice cream–stuff like that.  Oreos?  Yeah, weird I guess, but it wasn’t really grabbing me.  Neither were brownies.  I love me some fried pickles, but having lived in the South for 15 years now that’s not really weird–just plain good.  So it was with heavy heart that I passed on the fried freak foods.  Next time I might just bite the bullet and grab some fried oreos if nobody else shows up with anything more interesting.

These guys are probably at the Fair every year, but half of their stuff isn’t what I think of when I think of Fair food.  The rib and barbeque chicken plates as well as the pork chops are things that seem out of place.  I bet they do a good job, but to my thinking I reckon I can get a rib plate at various other places, so if I’m gonna make my trip to the Fair count I’m gonna eat me something Fair-ish.

Oh ho.  Now we’re talking nutty.  Asian food at the Fair–that’s weird.  Not weird in a makes-me-want-to-try-it way, but rather in a that-really-doesn’t-belong kind of way.  Not to mention that sushi rolls from a stand at the Fair sounds like the worst kind of idea in every conceivable way.  Almost makes me want to dare myself to try it.  Mental note: don’t listen to yourself if you dare yourself to eat sushi at the Fair.

The “Beef Barn” was run by folks from the Mississippi Cattlemen’s Association.  Somehow in my small mind, a group of Mississippi ranchers and a psychedelic cow statue don’t quite go together.  But hey, what do I know?  Regardless of the jarring juxtaposition of straight-laced cattlemen and hallucinogenic-inspired artwork, the smell of meat on the grill was enough to convince me that these gentlemen were in fact of sound mind and body.

This gentleman only had burgers and hotdogs on the grill, but they also offered more upscale fair like ribeye sandwiches.  Other places advertised ribeye sandwiches too, but since I don’t personally know anybody selling food at the fair I’d be more inclined to trust cattlemen to serve real ribeye over other vendors.

That Hot Beef Sundae looks, uhm… yeah.  I believe it consists of a shredded beef foundation with various potato products piled on and a cherry tomato on top.  So, ribeye sandwich, anybody?  To be honest, I wouldn’t mind trying the Hot Beef Sundae.  I guess I’m crazy like that.

Good to see the freak show genre is still alive and well at the Fair.  I wonder if they had an anaconda or such in there.  I wasn’t going to pay to find out though.

The Alcorn State University Extension Program folks were there demonstrating the cane sugar production process.  Well, maybe just the initial cane juice extraction.  The sugar can goes through the squeeze-a-ma-jig where the juice gets squeezed out and routed into the blue barrel.  They put some material over the top of the barrel to strain out stray fibers, etc.

On Monday we bought some taffy on our way out.  Malone’s Taffy are the folks who make it.  Denise was hoping for an assortment of flavors, but they only have vanilla flavor for the fair.  Vanilla?  I think that’s right.  It’s white anyway.  Watching the taffy pulling machine is mesmerizing.

I didn’t remember what the Wordless Book was until Denise reminded me, even though I had received one as a child.  It’s a small book with various colors in it that represent various aspects of the plan of salvation.  It’s not obvious from the picture, but the tent was packed with little kids and their guardians.

Here’s where we spent quite a bit of time–the petting farm.  It’s free to walk around and pet the animals, and you can buy a bag of carrot slices up front for $2 to feed them.  Sofia had to be encouraged to actually feed the animals instead of just dangling carrot slices a few inches away from their reach.  Nervous about them biting her I guess.  After a while she warmed to the task and did it less reluctantly.  She seemed to enjoy petting them more though.  The further from their mouths the better probably.

Sofia is a very gentle child.  She’s always had a soft and gentle touch ever since she gained enough motion control to purposefully move her limbs.  If we ever got a pet dog, I doubt she’d be the type to try and ride it, yank its ears, etc.  She’d definitely tell it what to do though.

So enough animal feeding.  I was starving!  A couple friends of ours and their new baby boy met us at the Fair for lunch.  They got stuff from Penn’s (Denise and Sofia shared some fried catfish I believe, and our friends shared some turkey-on-a-stick), but I wanted another shot at some steak-on-a-stick after the so-so experience on Monday.  The owner of Dan’s K-bobs (Mr. Dan?) is a local Clintonian and was featured in the local paper, so I had to give his stuff a try.  His less-than-snazzy booth did nothing to dissuade me.  I’m from Indonesia.  I’ve seen and eaten at much worse.

Now that’s looking a lot more promising!  The one from Monday was scrawny in comparison.  These guys have nice chunky pieces of meat on them, and grilled onions add a nice flavor too.  When you order, they put a kabob on the grill to heat it through–they’re already mostly cooked before you order.  The gentleman who took my order even asked me how I wanted mine done (medium), although I’m not sure how effective that was.  Regardless of actual doneness, when I bit into mine it was nice and tender with great flavor.  And the cherry on top is that this was $6 while the one on Monday was $7.  No brainer.  If Dan is back next year and I’m in the mood for steak-on-a-stick, Dan gets my business.

What are all these people in line for?  It’s a mystery!  Our guess was that they were in line for cinnamon rolls the size of your head, since there was another stand further down selling cinnamon rolls with a similarly long line.  Cinnamon rolls must be a popular and/or traditional food at the Mississippi State Fair.  Didn’t know that.  I probably won’t bother myself since I can get cinnamon rolls all year long, but one day a cinnamon roll craving might coincide with a trip to the Fair.

Elephant ears or funnel cake?  Elephant ears?  Funnel cake?  Tough choice, but since neither of us had heard of elephant ears before our Monday excursion we decided to try it.  By the way, is it plural or singular?  Pedantic minds want to know!

Quite the generous portion, although since it has the general consistency of a beignet it’s probably mostly air with sugar sprinkled on top.  Giant beignet with sugar on top?  How can you possibly go wrong with that?  And indeed it was quite tasty.

The wide angle of the camera is exaggerating the proportions a bit, but the elephant ear really was bigger than Sofia’s torso.

Heh, nice sugar mustache, Sofia.  Or as Sofia has taken to calling it: “mustachio”.

Having filled our bellies, we slowly meandered toward the exit, watching various rides.  And Denise bagged her some cotton candy, as you can see.

Almost better than the cotton candy itself is watching people make it.  It’s like magic.  You sprinkle liquid sugar into the tub and it pulls and hardens the liquid into cotton candy threads.  Really cool stuff–the kind of thing that always makes me wonder how the inventor thought it up.

So I’m still no closer to having experienced the famous funnel cake, but at least now I know their history.  Definitely next time.

And Sofia got to ride on her first carousel.  Twice.  I believe the first horse she rode on was “Princess”, while the second was… er… some other stranger name that I can’t remember.  This is what happens when I don’t post right away.  It was kid’s day, which meant she got to ride for a ticket less than she usually would.  If I recall correctly it’s usually 3 tickets, so that day it was 2.  The smallest packet of tickets you can buy is 4, so that worked out perfectly.

We went home and enjoyed some cotton candy in the comfort and warmth of our house.  Sofia doesn’t look too thrilled here, but trust me when I say she loved it.  She was just making a funny face to be silly.  We had to ration the cotton candy over the next couple days, otherwise she’d probably eat it all in one sitting.

Our second trip to the Fair was super awesome.  I’ve never been big on the Fair, but now that we have Sofia I don’t mind going at all.  Sofia can go on the rides and Denise can munch on cotton candy while I shovel various unhealthy foods into my belly.  If you can go early in the day while parking and admission are free, it’s really a fun family outing.  Not the cheapest thing in the world with food and ride prices being what they are, but getting in free softens the blow somewhat.  Very fun trip.

Phew… that was one heck of a long post.  If you made it to the end, go get a job.