Are you going to....

The question is whether to try to serve you a complete meal, or do it by courses.  I guess in the interest of time we’ll adopt a course approach, giving you many small plates hopefully in good serving time. 

First course:

The next day, after the great meal of brisket, MFO and I decided to go take a look at the County Fair which was just opening in town.  Besides TY’s wife was fond of salt water taffy which was available there.  Both “kids” were working so we were on our own and figured we’d take a look.  The nice thing about a smaller town is that you can be almost anywhere in minutes.  It was kind of early in the day, so parking was no issue and we gave the nice ladies at the gate five bucks each, and got direction to the taffy stand.  One of them said that she had to get a box because her sister in California was also addicted to the little sweet and would have to get a box for her.

The first thing we found out was that it was NOT the “county Fair”, but the

(SEMO stands for South East Missouri..)

I’m sure there is a whole culture surrounding these “little” fairs and most likely the same folks go to them all.  Of course there are the requisite foods

I think it is a Federal (or at least State) law you have to have traditional cheese fries, funnel cakes, corn dogs, and curly fries, but not sure how those tenderloins got in there.  However, things do move with the times and now you can also get deep fried Twinkies (and Oreos)

Along with other (new?)things like

or 

And speaking of “on a stick” this caught my eye

It sure is a colorful place

And we were able to get some taffy 

(actually there was another stand, so we got some there for a taste off…the other one won)

You will notice that there are no patrons in the pictures.  That’s because there were, well, no patrons.  I suppose it’s jumping at night.

By this time it was getting a bit warm so we decided to get some shade (and rest) by ducking into one of the livestock pavilions, where “cow judging” (as opposed to tipping) was in progress. The ones we saw were all Holsteins (the typical “dairy cows”).

One (at least us) could not help but compare it with the Westminster Dog show, except there were no sequined garbed ladies leading various breeds of canines around the a ring.  Leading around the ring was the same, but the beasts on the end of the rope were hundreds of pounds and the “handlers” were dressed in boots, Levis, ball caps, and generally very faded flannel shirts.  And unlike the dog shows they didn’t have treats in their mouths to buy off the critters.  Actually i'm not sure what a "treat" would be for a cow.  The animals seemed quite unfazed by the proceedings. As near as we could tell, they were kind of broken into age groups as some were remarkably larger than others.  The “judge” was exactly what you would hope for, looking like he had spent many a year on a farm.  The cows were taken to “mooing” to each other, and I suppose if you spoke cow you would understand.  They all looked good to us, but the phrase most used to distinguish the winner was “better angularity” as viewed from behind the animal.  On some the gentleman commented on the fullness of the “upper udder”.  As I said, a brand new world.

On our way out we gave the gate lady a piece of Taffy for which she was quite grateful.

That evening FOJTY and I spread ourselves out on the couch to see the inaugural MNF game.   Didn’t last long, but we did enjoy the last of the Brisket.  The ladies gathered Stanley and went up the road toward St. Louis to attend the first in a series of “classes” to teach you how to train your pet for one of those shows.  How to walk, pose, etc.  There are about six sessions I think.\

Hope you enjoyed your first course, another will be served tomorrow.. tonight you can prepare by being

DFD