City Girl Goes to the Fair

On Sunday I performed my annual duty of manning the Wayne College booth for a few hours at the Wayne County Fair. This is a great excuse for this city girl to go an hang with some livestock and eat some very unhealthy food...

Just a quick clarification, though... We are not related in any way to the Lerch's doughnut company. I can't get anyone any free doughnuts :-)

You would be hard-pressed to find anyone walking around the fair without a box of Lerch's doughnuts. In addition to the main Lerch's doughnut stand there are smaller vending trucks placed strategically throughout the fairgrounds.

Of course one of the highlights of the fair are the many animals raised by the 4H kids. You can tell how much love and effort go into raising the animals, but I have to admit that I didn't realize you can walk a chicken (or is this a rooster?) on a leash!

And here's a boy giving his turkey a bath... Or maybe are they sizing him up to see if he'll fit in a pot? The turkey seemed to be enjoying his bath!

These fancy geese were very cute... They seemed to want to be in the cage with the other two very badly.

There's also plenty to do for the kids and this game really cracked me up so I had to take a picture... Yes, those are kids in giant plastic hamster balls floating in a pool of water. I'm certain I've seen something like this on a reality TV show!

These sheep were just chillaxing after having their coats shorn.

And, this sheep is all shorn and ready to to head out to a, um, Klan rally? No, just kidding. Maybe they get a little cold after their wool is shorn? He seemed pretty proud in his fancy outfit.

And of course one of the other highlights of fair is the extremely unhealthy food highlighted by the various vendors. This cart offers the usual elephant ears along with deep-fried s'mores, cookie dough, cheese cake, Captain Crunch (??) and candy bars.

So, my fair companions sacrificed their stomachs and volunteered to sample some of the more unusual confections.

This was Richard's choice of deep-fried cookie dough.

And who doesn't love food on sticks? Here's the deep-fried s'mores...

And strangely enough, the deep-fried cheesecake cubes were the the tamest of the treats... They were small enough to pop one in your mouth and not end up wearing it on your shirt.

As with any large gathering of people one of the best parts of the fair is the people watching. What are the fashion trends of the people in Wayne County? Well, this year we found far fewer mullets (although Jen spotted a baby with a mullet... What???) Most kids were in the usual t-shirts and shorts, but we did see a couple shout-outs to the Jersey shore... Sorry, I wasn't quick enough with my camera!

Tomatillo Salsa Verde

I'll admit that I've been intimidated by the tomatillos I've been receiving in my Working Gardens CSA share... But no more!

This recipe is so easy and wouldn't you know that I had everything I needed on hand from either my garden (the chili pepper), the farmers market (the onion), my CSA share (tomatillos, garlic, cilantro), or my pantry (everything else).

I used a recipe I found online: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Tomatillo-Salsa-Verde/Detail.aspx
Since I never use a recipe as it is, I of course tweaked it a bit. I didn't have a full pound of tomatillos so I reduced the amount of cooking liquid. I also didn't put the cilantro into the cooking liquid. Instead, I saved it until it went into the food processor so it would keep it's fresh taste. I also added the juice of one lime into the food processor. It turned out really yummy and it was very easy... Intimidated by tomatillos no more!

Here are all my ingredients all ready to go:

Bringing the ingredients to a boil:

The finished salsa:

I plan to use the salsa as a regular salsa and also as a topping for enchiladas later this week. Yum!