I smiled big.
Despite all the weirdness, it’s FAIR!!
Goating around with Fair Friends
One of my most favorite parts of Fairing is seeing friends. Some friends only attend the Fair once per year (I like them anyway despite their lack of Fair enthusiasm); others show up every day (my people!).
The daily attenders – mostly 4-H friends – are friends year round. But the Fair is really our coveted time to slow down, relax, pull up bleacher or a rickety wooden picnic bench and catch up over milkshakes and elephant ears.
Key among those friends are Kristin and Alex (and Xander but he didn’t want to play today). Mom and sons are goat people. They did the 4-H thing for several years, including Kristin heading up her own club. The boys decided to pull back from 4-H last year; my money is on mom finding a way to sneak back in. She adores goats and has waaaaay too much knowledge and passion not to share and teach.
Disappointed I won’t do a daily pass through the Goat Barn this year in search of my favorite Goat Friends, I asked Kristin if the family would be up for a socially distanced visit on their tucked-in-the-boonies-just-past-the-banjos farm. I was thrilled when she said yes and that 4-H-Emeritus Alex was willing to try to answer my pressing Goat Questions.
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| Goats! In their natural habitat! |
The three of us spent about an hour talking goats and cats and chickens and 4-H and quarantine. I learned about meat goats vs. dairy goats; the unfortunate but inevitable aging ailment of going down on pasterns (basically weak ankles…if I ever face that personally, I am going to lobby for “down on her pasterns” as my official diagnosis); the health benefits of goat milk; the lengthy process for officially testing goat milk and achieving a star rating; and the importance of a dairy goat’s private area (the escutcheon) in judging her capacity for milk production.
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| The Escutcheon (sounds less intrusive than "her nether regions") |
Alex demonstrated showing me his goat, with mom serving as judge. Critical is keeping the goat in front of you, so the judge always has a view of your animal and not of you. Watching Alex walk around the pasture, spinning and twirling to stay behind the goat and deftly switching which hand was holding the goat’s collar made me laugh.
“Have you ever square danced?”
“Maybe in grade school. Why?”
“Because it looks like you are do-si-doing with your goat!” (Do-si-doe-ing?? HA!)
Somehow, years of watching 4-Hers in the goat ring never looked like a dance party before. But Alex likely forever changed that for me today. I can’t wait for next year! I’ll be the one giggling in the bleachers imagining the goat judge is really a dance caller.
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| Setting up for an Allemande left |
As much as I enjoyed learning more about goats today, it was the time spent chatting with friends and the music of the family’s dozen goats bleating and chickens cackling that filled my spirit with Fair. When I returned to Woodhaven, I immediately washed my hands, as is my new habit. But instead of washing them for fear of COVID, I washed them because I had been petting goats!!! YAY!!! Thank you SO much for Fairing with me today, Kristin and Alex! You rock and I’ve missed you.
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| Kristin demonstrating how a judge might test the conformation of a goat. Rosie is just happy for the massage. |
A whole TV show about my Fair family
We had dinner while watching a 30 minute special aired on Portland's CW Channel 32. Listed as "Paid Programming," the show was aired as part of the Clark County Fair's "Best of Fair" event this weekend.
As much as I know about the Fair and have snatched up as much history as possible over the years, the special had new info, new photos, behind-the-scenes perspectives, and interviews with people I know and know of.
I especially loved the interview with Adam the Great (a magician we met at PDX once when we were all flying to Las Vegas to attend a Fair Convention -- he for work and us for fanaticism). Adam talked about the camaraderie among the Fair performers and how the Clark County Fair feels like a family reunion for them. That made me love my Fair even more -- that even the performers know it is extra special.
As Rob and I watched, I smiled over and over as I recognized fiddlers and animals and performers and volunteers and Tuff Truck crashes and concert headliners. I saw photos of friends and neighbors and favorite llamas.
Although I am missing my beloved Fair terribly this year, the show tonight felt like family. My Fair Family. And it filled my heart and spirit with so much happy and gratitude for being a part of it.
Well done, Fine Fair Folks. Very well done.
(Check out the special on the host's Facebook page here!)
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| It makes my heart SO HAPPY that Rojo and Shannon were included. Meeting both of these Forever Friends at the Clark County Fair in 2007 changed my life. |
FAIR AT HOME STATS!
Today’s t-shirt: Today’s shirt is the very first piece of Clark County Fair Swag in my ever-growing collection. I purchased it in 2009 in the little American Red Cross gazebo west of the milkshake barn. They offered a variety of colors and my plan was to get a different color each year. Alas, they didn't have my size in 2010 and I never saw t-shirts for sale in the gazebo again. So this shirt is very dear to me. Even if it is a yellow that does not rock with my no-longer-dyed-brown hair.
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| Like the background?? Woodhaven has been undergoing some repairs that come accessorized with a port-o-potty. Closest thing we've got to replicating a public potty at the Fair! And no, I haven't used it. Rob on the other hand... |
Today’s earrings: Inspired by our trip to the Iowa State Fair last year, I decided ears of corn were a must-add to my collection. I also had thoughts of maybe having some corn on the cob today.
Today’s hand sticker: I have no idea what “short” and “sherbert” have to do with each other. Rob pointed out that if you read the sticker aloud correctly, it sounds like “Hey, Shorty, it’s your birthday!” Which is adorable but still doesn’t explain the diminutive insult.
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| It reads, "Hey Shorty, It's Sherbert Day!" My spell check keeps insisting I...and the sticker...spell it "sherbet" |
Time today’s hand sticker finally bit it: Barely hanging on by a sticky thread at 9:34pm
Number of steps walked: A measly and embarrassing 724. Yikes.
Unfair food consumed: Today’s “other” food was pretty typical. I had a Kind Bar for breakfast as I was driving to play with goats (Dark Chocolate Cherry Cashew). Lunch was a Cheese Ravioli Lean Cuisine with a bottle of Bai Antioxidant Infusion Zambia Bing Cherry flavored water. Dinner was “Saucy Steak Burrito Bowls” from Hello Fresh served with a rather fruity and enjoyable Mourvedre from Columbia Valley (Washington).
FAIR FOOD FEAST TREATS!
I had plans for some corn today but non-Fair life got in the way. Boo! But yay for Deep Fried Experiments!
Rob and I dedicated our afternoon to trying a new recipe (Oreo-Stuff Crescents) and playing around with an alternative to the batter we used on last night’s surprisingly delicious Homemade Deep Fried Oreos.
The Oreo-Stuffed Crescents involved using a tube of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, wrapping a crescent around an Oreo, sprinkling with mini chocolate chips, and baking in the oven for 12 minutes. With this as inspiration, we decided to try a few additional items. Our experiments were:
- Baked Oreo-Stuffed Crescents as prescribed above by the recipe
- Deep fry the Oreo-Stuffed Crescents instead of baking them
- Deep fry a puck of chocolate chip cookie dough in the refrigerated and therefore thicker batter from last night
- Deep fry a puck of chocolate chip cookie dough wrapped in a crescent roll
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| All doughed up and ready to fry! |
To be thorough, we could have also baked a puck of chocolate chip cookie dough wrapped in a crescent roll….but this is FAIR so we are trying to minimize baking in favor of dropping goodies in a small vat of hot bubbling oil. Mmmmm, Fair.
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| Complete with mini funnel cakes! |
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| The definition of Food Porn |
Verdict: The fried crescents looked amazing and were a much better approximation of what we expect to get at the Deep Fried Heaven Truck at the Fair. They were bigger and chewier and had more of the texture of deep fried fair foods. However, taste-wise, they just didn’t work. They weren’t sweet enough and the salt of the crescent dough sort of cancelled out some of the sweetness of both the Oreo and the cookie dough. I tried adding powdered sugar on top and that helped some, but Rob and I both agreed the Bisquik-based batter from last night is much better.
We weren’t all that jazzed about the cookie dough. We used refrigerated pucks from Nestle’s – usually very serviceable dough. But warmed up as semi-cookies, it was just not the sweet gooey indulgence we were hoping for. The crescent wrapped version was better texture-wise – the Bisquik-battered puck was a little too crunchy. We might try a different cookie dough later in the week (Papa Murphy’s Pizza makes a fantastic cookie dough; so good we have no idea what the baked cookies taste like). But we have a lot of other things to try in the fryer first.
Our focus now is to figure out how to get the Bisquik batter to produce a thicker shell. Refrigerating it helped. Next will be reducing the liquid content. I love that our greatest worry this week is finding the best batter for deep fried junk food. FAIR!!
Oh, and the oven baked Oreo-Stuffed Crescents? They were BAKED. ‘nough said.
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| The Cookie Dough |
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| The proper response to anything baked instead of fried during Fair |
1 comment:
Fantastic!
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