Food at the Fair

It’s Harford Fair time fast approaching!! That means the end of summer, so you might as well blow your diet there at the fair. They say you are what you eat. Does that mean that one guy over there is a beer battered cheese curd, another one is a big turkey leg, while the guy he’s talking to is a corn dog on a stick? Sounds about right. As for me, I’m a Montrose Marching Band Milkshake, strawberry shortcake and several baked goods from the church booth. You know you might be a redneck if you can grab food and have no trouble eating it through the sights, sounds and smells of the cow and pig barns. Very impressive steel stomach right there. Doesn’t even phase the people. Yep, the fair is definitely where good people make bad food choices. People eat until their stomachs hurt, and then just keep eating. I Googled “how do you eat healthy at the fair,” and it seriously said eat before you go! Not kidding. I’m sure there’s healthy options there, but Google doesn’t trust people to make the best decisions when there’s funnel cake and bourbon flavored cheese fries directly in the path they have to take to walk around. You can’t even help it, it’s the only time of year you see a fried version of everything amazing, and it all tastes so good! They even took a beloved Oreo Cookie and fried it! Which made it warm and even more amazing! Food is a huge part of the reason people go. The only thing about dinner time is that I wish kids nowadays understood what it was like for us as little kids at the fair before cell phones when you were supposed to meet back up with your family at a designated time to eat at the fair. If your plan was to meet up at the vegetable building, as a small kid you got a sinking feeling pretty quickly when you realized there’s vegetables in 20 out of the 40 buildings on the grounds, and you start second guessing exactly where you were supposed to be. As time passed by, you suddenly realized you might be an orphan now and this could be your new home. Your family quite possibly gave you the slip. Your address has become Vegetable Hall, Harford PA. You have to live here among the vegetable harvest, artwork and animals until someone recognizes you and helps out! Which, at a local fair, might not actually take that long to happen because eventually you will see everybody you know, sometimes before you even make it out of their super steep parking lot filled with mud and stuck cars. Enjoy the fair where you can buy a pig, a painting and pierogies! Make good choices!!