What I ate at the fair
June 24, 2007
Friday was the first time I’ve been to the San Diego county fair in over 20 years, sad, I know.
A few weeks ago my stepdaughter asked me if I wanted to go to the fair with her. It has been more than 20 years for her also, what a shame we haven’t taken the time to participate in one of life’s little pleasures, the county fair. So we ditched work on Friday and went.
My main goal was to eat my way from one end of the fair to
the other. I had grandiose ideas as to what I would eat and after all, I needed
something to report to the newsgroup.
I didn’t have breakfast in order to have room for fair food. When we first arrived we walked right past the turkey leg stand, there he was, enticing me with his legs.
How could I pass this up?
It was very tasty; I passed on the BBQ sauce he offered. Parts of one side of the leg were a little dry but the majority of the leg was tender and juicy.
Now this is how I like it. I slather it with mayonnaise and sprinkle with Parmesan cheese or rub with a lime and sprinkle with Tapatio hot sauce.
We walked around for a while and talked with the animals.
It was about time to sit down and have a cool one. We found a nice little beer garden and had a couple of beers. We struck up a conversation with two nice ladies at the table next to us; they were eating the best looking artichoke sandwiches. Come to find out one of the ladies made mole from scratch also, she used Diana Kennedy’s recipe, so needless to say our conversation centered on food and restaurants and recipes. One of the ladies has a friend that owns the Babmu Bistro in Hillcrest, so we have to go check it out.
We walked around and looked at the exhibits but spent most of our time in the commercial buildings. I’m kicking myself for forgetting to go see the exhibits of the food entries.
Well, walking around made us hungry again so we found another beer garden and snacked on some fried chicken. It was really good and not greasy, nice crunchy fried skin. I don’t usually eat the skin but heck, it’s the fair.
After some more walking around it was time for a snack. One
thing I wanted to be sure and eat was a deep fried snickers bar.
Now, the inside is disgusting looking but the batter was great. Nice and fluffy not too thick.
On our way out we had to have just a little more fried food.;-) This guy is like the local dealer, fried everything.
My parting shot was deep fried coca-cola and deep fried asparagus.
It’s batter made with coca-cola or maybe the cola syrup is used because it sure is coca-cola tasting and very crunchy.
The asparagus was really good if you started from the smaller end as it got tougher and stringy toward the end.
I still hadn’t eaten rattlesnake bites, deep fried twinkies, or the chicken sandwich on a Krispy Kreme jelly doughnut. Looks like we have to go again next year, because this is how I felt as we left the fair grounds I couldn’t have eaten another bite. See ya at the fair next year.
If you are interested in a review of the Krispy Kreme and
rattlesnake and other fair food I didn’t eat go to fellow food blogger mmm-yoso for a great time at the fair.