I love country fairs. They are one of the few things left from the 'olden days' when a huge percentage of the American population lived in rural areas and fairs were the way that people came together from far-flung places to show their talents, do business, learn the latest agricultural techniques, and socialize. I used to show my horse in my local county fair, and for me it was all about winning ribbons and meeting boys.
This weekend, I went out to Kutztown, Pennsylvania to the Kutztown Fair. I've been going out to this part of Pennsylvania for a few years now, but I really don't know much about the area or Pennsylvania in particular. The area around Kutztown is fairly rural - a lot of big and small farms and active Mennonite communities. The fair offered plenty of country fair highlights - a midway with carnival rides and games, livestock judging, a demolition derby, craft shows and 4-H exhibits, tractor and hit-and-miss engine displays and, of course, plenty of food.
There was the standard fair fare - hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cakes, cotton candy, etc., but there were also several local specialties made and served by surrounding town granges, fire houses and social clubs. I've encountered several local Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies that I have yet to try (scrapple, chipped beef on toast, fried balogna, chow-chow, shoo-fly pie, whoopie pies) but something caught my eye that I hadn't seen before, but was billed as a 'fair favorite:' Corn Pies. While my friends had locally made sausage sandwiches from the Virginvile Grange, I got myself a Corn Pie made by the ladies from the Kutztown Firehouse.
A Corn Pie is exactly what it says it is: sweet corn with some butter and salt, mixed with a hard boiled egg and baked in a double pie crust. Generally, it's served with warm milk poured over the top, but I chose to have it plain (it was so good that my friends went and got one with milk after we all ate the first one). It sounds a little heavy, but because the corn was so sweet, it was a perfect compliment to the flaky crust and the salt & pepper that I added on top.
Fair food isn't really known to be healthy food. And I often hear people complain about the street fairs in NYC - they are essentially all the same vendors that travel from fair to fair during the summer serving lemonade, fruit drinks, roasted corn, Italian sausage and selling socks, bags and t-shirts. To me, a fair is all about local. It's the opposite of what it used to be where people came to the fair to see what was going on in the world outside of their own small town or farm. Even though there are still the traveling fair/carnival vendors that set up at fairs across the country, you can still find local, small town food made to benefit the local organization like the grange or the firehouse. That's what I seek out when I go to country fairs. And that's what I got with the corn pie.
In general though, my experience with food in and around Kutztown hasn't been the best. It's odd to me that in a place surrounded by farms, most of the food you get at restaurants - even locally owned non-chain restaurants - most likely comes frozen in a box, delivered by Sysco. At one diner, we asked the owner why he didn't put granola and yogurt on his menu so that people had a healthy choice for breakfast. After admitting that he didn't actually eat breakfast, so he didn't really think about what was on the menu, he said that he would ask his Sysco representative what he would recommend. He didn't say he'd talk to his chef, his cook or his customers. His Sysco rep. This was an eye opener for me, and something that I'll definitely be writing about in the future.
A few more fair photos:
Blue Ribbon Squash
Shorn Alpaca
4-H and FFA Grain Exhibits
Vintage Farmall
The Zipper
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