B-town Fair, 2015

[asakiyume]

Today I made it my mission to get ahold of a taco salad at the fair. The Congregational Church makes them each year, and people come every year just to have one--line up to buy one--but I've never had one. Here is the sign announcing their presence:



(That church, by the way, is very beautiful. It's from the 1700s. Here is its steeple clock tower--you can't quite see the steeple.)



They created it assembly-line style. I asked for everything. (By the way, the pictures are going to get smaller now, but if you want to see them bigger, just click through to Flickr)



Behold the finished product!




Then I went to find a curb to sit on to eat it, like these folks are doing:



For my drink, I went to the 4-H tent. When we first arrived in town, with four tiny children, the 4-H tent was a lifesaver: affordable food, animals to admire and pet, and low-key activities and crafts to do.

See? Affordable.



It's literally just whipped-up milk, with some vanilla flavoring. Very simple and good. You can get it in chocolate too.



One woman in the 4-H tent was enjoying the taco salad :-)



I need to lure my brother and his family, especially my three-year-old niece, up to the 4-H tent. Baby goats! And beautiful chickens!



I always have to visit the exhibit hall (also known as the Old Town Hall, now used mainly for Rec Department activities, like basketball games and yoga.) The town's signature water tower is in the background. (My bicycle is also back there.)



Inside were some nice 4-H displays on various educational topics--like bees (thematic) and pigeons:





Also there were wildflower arrangements...



And this New-England-To-The-Max headstone, which won best in department.



I always take bunches of photos at the fair. If you'd like to see more from the exhibit hall, more random booths, and some shots from the draft horse pull, you can click here.

Comments

[xjenavivex.livejournal.com]

Thank you

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

So very happy to share with you!

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Y'all run a tombstone department?

Thank you for sharing! I love county fairs! And 4-H!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think the department might be something much more general, like "adult crafts"--but it's fun thinking it might be tombstones (though this is the first tombstone I've ever seen in the exhibit hall).

4-H is THE BEST.

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's my comment, word for word!

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

That taco salad looks really tasty.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was quite tasty! Could have been a little more spicy, but all the same, quite tasty.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Sheeyun puts Frank's Red Hot on salads.

While I am also very fond of spicy food, I find that strange.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Hmm, yes, it might make it hard to taste the flavors of the vegetables. As someone who's been known to put sriracha sauce on Many Things, I understand the Sheeyun instinct, but in my role as cook, I like the notion of giving a thing's actual flavor a chance.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

I think that, for me, it's primarily a matter of feeling that Frank's Is Not Salad Dressing. Which is certainly doctrinaire of me.

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Speaking of sriracha, do you know the name of the spicy relish stuff in Vietnamese restaurants?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No--what is it?

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

I have no idea what it's called. Might be Nam phrik or sambal, but those aren't from Vietnam.

I had some last Tuesday.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

If it was a thin dipping sauce with chilli in it, it was probably nước chấm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nước_chấm)...

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Lovely!

Is that the church we went to explore that time?

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

No; what we saw was a meeting house in the next town. But we should glance in this one next time you're here. Even better would be if we could get permission to go up into the bell tower. I'm not sure if there's a bell in there, but I'd love to check.

[queenoftheskies.livejournal.com]

That looks like so much fun! And that taco salad looks amazing!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is a very, very fun fair. Something for everyone. And the salad was great!

That is one mega salad!

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

A fair!!! So cool that you posted about this when I was hit by a bit of fair nostalgia last night, while riding on a scooter behind J on our way home from a concert at the opera of all times and places. We were zipping along the Corniche, which follows the Nile and we passed an intersection near the old slaughterhouse, which may or may not still be in use. The smell of animals and manure melded with the humidity coming off the water and the odor of still-hot tarmac and BAM! I was walking out of one of the livestock barns at the New Mexico State Fair in Albuquerque, where mist-sprayers keep the air cool and the dust down.

At first glance, I read the "NJF" in the pigeon poster as WTF. :P

In all my years of fair-going and fair-participating, I've never seen a category for gravestone competition. :P

Re: That is one mega salad!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm imagining being on the back of a scooter, having been to an opera, going along roads in Egypt, smelling those smells--and remembering another time and place, so far away.

Life is pretty amazing, huh! (Almost as amazing as pigeons.)

Also, I feel bad about leading everyone--even my husband--to (I think?) the wrong conclusion about the gravestone--I suspect "best in department" doesn't mean there's a gravestone department (cool though that would be) but something more mundane, like that it won best in adult crafts or stonework or something like that. On the other hand, there are all sorts of departments that never get any entries, so maybe there really is one for gravestones, and this year it had an entry!

[purplefigtree.livejournal.com]

Your town fair is so much like ours, except bigger! I've never seen anyone else's fair before. The tacos look great, and the food is so cheap! That clock tower is really gorgeous too, it looks like it's been well-maintained, considering how old it is.

The town hall our little fair is held in is pale yellow and very plain. It looks like it was built in the late 19th century (although really it's much too big for that, considering the population at the time), but i looked it up and it was actually built in the late 1990s. Idk where they held the fair before that, the Legion isn't big enough. Maybe in a school gymnasium.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

How neat that when your town did build that town hall, they chose a traditional style that could look as if it came from the 19th century--it sounds pretty!

And small fairs can be as nice as large ones--I like them when they feel, somehow, genuine: like people in the community and neighboring communities are truly involved.

Not all the food is so cheap! Only in the 4-H tent. The taco salad was $8.00.

[puddleshark.livejournal.com]

Those are some lovely pictures... Thank you!

I love that there is a gravestone competition! And that people are still creating those wonderful New England headstones. It's an important art and one that seems to have been largely lost here, even in the old quarry villages.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that the department was actually a gravestone department--it might have been something more generic, like adult crafts. I wonder, though!

This stone is ... not sure, maybe granite? But I know of a woman who does similar in slate, really terrific work. (Now I'm looking and can't find her page, but am finding others... the woman did them in this same traditional style...)

[pameladean]

That is one scary salad! Really a work of art.

Thanks for the virtual tour of your fair. I like reading about such things and looking at photos more than I like actually going. I love the idea of them. But we have the famed Minnesota State Fair right here and I might go once a decade.

P.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Maybe your one in Minnesota is a very big one? Those can be daunting. All this happens on one town common, plus the exhibit hall, so it's pretty small. Meanwhile, in a nearby town, there's "the Big E"--the Eastern States Exhibition--which is a much more ambitious and overwhelming affair. I still haven't been to it, and I've been living here for 18 years!

[pameladean]

Yes, the Minnesota State Fair is a big one. There are large swathes that I don't care about, like the midway and the rides, and when I've gone with friends it's been with people who go two or three times and have offered me a subset of their must-have experiences that they think I'd like -- used bookstore, 19th-century newspaper office, crop art, quilts, butter sculptures, rabbits and chickens, llama costumes, fireworks, good music; whatever. But there are a lot of people, it's usually hot, and everybody who is dedicated likes to go very early, which does not suit Pamelas. A small fair sounds like fun.

P.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Looks like a great day out! I've never had a taco salad before, but I'll have to watch for one if the chance ever comes up...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Keep an eye over your shoulder--you never know when one's sneaking up on you.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I am excited for the local fair (Durham, one of the larger ones, which I did not attend last year because they had elepahnts) this year. I am also excited for fall.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I enjoy fall but with a sense of existential dread around the edges.

Enjoy the Durham fair!

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

It's existential dread that makes fall great. Maybe.

Hm...

[genarti]

Yay for fairs! This all makes me so happy. What a great 4H tent, too, and I love all the pictures of the town.

Also, what a gloriously New England gravestone. I love it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It is *such* a fun fair. Wish I could magic people there to enjoy it.