Fair Food

In the East (read: New England) there is a big fair type thing called the Big E. It is held in Springfield, MA, and spans about three weeks. There are vendors for crafty type things, and there are animals. There are horse shows. There is a carnival type thing. There are houses dedicated to each state in England And, there is food.

I"m a big fan of all things fairs. I like kettle corn. Allie likes the carnival type stuff. I like animals, and I like crafty type vendors. I like the Big E for the state houses. So, when my company started offering tickets at a discount ($10.00 a ticket (normal price is like 15.00 a ticket)), I ordered my tickets. We planned to go the first of October, which we did. The weather did not cooperate, and it rained (well, drizzled), but ew. But...we went anyway.

We stopped at Denny's in Rocky Hill on our way up, due to our early Saturday morning departure. We were going to do chow on the fly, but I had seen a Denny's commercial the night before, and wanted to try it. Deliciousness. And cheap. I'm all about good food for not a lot of money. They have these fried pancake bites with strawberry that are phenomenal, and I had a 4 cheese omelet with some kind of cheese sauce on top. Yes, cheesy overload, but I was being bad regardless, so who cares. Billy had chicken fried steak and eggs (I so love chicken fried steak...and he shared two little bites with me). Allie had eggies and toast...her new way of liking eggs is over easy. :-)

Anyway, we got to the Big E and got a great parking spot about a half block from the entrance. Parking alone is $10.00, which isnt horrible, considering when we left several hours later, it was $20 to park in our spot. We werent especially hungry when we got there, because we had eaten at Denny's.

We walked around, and inspected the big E house, which had a lot of interesting vendors. They had this cookware set that doesnt require water. They had a salsa mix that was darn tempting to buy....all you do is buy a can of chopped tomatoes, a jalapeno, and add this mix, and you have instant salsa. But, its expensive as heck, and we didnt want to spend $20 on it. They had showers that had blue lighting and multiple jets. Those were cool. Lots of different stuff. We went into the animal house...which had huge clydesdale horses..beautiful animals, but I want to be able to pet noses, and give carrots, and these horses were in stalls that were too small for them, and you couldn't reach. They had goats, and alpacas. They had piglets (so cute). They had the AKC, who had all kinds of dachshunds...They had US customs, who had a wicked cute beagle...

Then we went into the state houses. I was after New Hampshire, because I miss home, and I wanted maple candy, which is crappy when you buy it here. I'm such a sucker for maple candy. My mom bought me one back last time she went north, but I wanted more. I'm horrible. But, it is just SOOOOO good. so good. Expensive, but soooo good. We walked through the houses, and were really interested in a lot of stuff, including the dips in New Hampshire (4 of which came home). :-)

Anyway, by the time we did that, and a lot of walking around, I was hungry. Went into the Maine house SPECIFICALLY for a lobster roll. Now, I love lobster. LOVE IT. Lobstah, as we refer in the NE. Anyway, Deliciousness. However, the way to eat a lobster roll is to slap it on a toasted hot dog bun, and slather it in butter. yup. none of this mayo crap. But, they are expensive here (15.99 for a lobster roll on the CT shore), and I do not want to cook my own lobster. I thought...Maine. They'll make it right. SIKE. Mayo. And CELERY. EWWWWWWWWWWW. No thank you. The price was good, but not what i wanted. Needless to say, we didnt eat in a state house, although Rhode Island had some delicious looking chowder in a bread bowl (hmmm. maybe i'll have that for dinner tomorrow night)

So, we hit up one of the carnival good vendors. Specifically, the BBQ one. We liked the looks of the ginormous slabs of meat roasting earlier, and ordered a steak and cheese with roasted red peppers. WELL. it was good. not great, but good. the cheese was like melted velveeta (scrum), and the peppers were good. Allie wanted cheesy bacon fries from teh next cart over, so we got a bucket of those and shared.Those were PHENOMENAL. Crispy fries, crunchy bacon (real bacon) bits. oh my god. Deliciousness.

 We were really on the hunt for fried butter (Daly wanted to try it), and fried Koolaid, but couldnt find either, and ended up buying Billy and Allie fried oreos, which they both immensely seemed to enjoy. We split a Guiness at the international tent, and I bought tons of maple candy, and tried maple cotton candy....other samplings aroudn too...but we were good once we left.

So, fair food wasnt great, the big E wasnt great....but fun was had by all. The kid slept on the way home. We got starbucks twice in one day, and we watched Transformers 3 when we got in the door. :-)