Eat Local - The Sonoma County Fair

I haven't been to a county or state fair since I was a kid, some...well, some many years ago.
But this is how I think all kids see it in their dreams; I did. Simply hot dogs, popcorn, cotton candy, sno cones, soda. So, it was with a great sense of anticipation that I, all grown up and having had a substantial breakfast, set off for the Sonoma County Fair to explore contemporary fair food.


"Im just here to shoot the food for my blog," I kept telling vendors, which only seemed to fuel their desire to give me free samples of things, if not the whole of things. (Oh, puhleeez! I'm trying to lose 10 pounds and you want me to eat a Funnel Cake? Dream on, pal, I'm not going there. A few mini doughnuts, maybe....)

Within 10 minutes, I resolved not  to rant about fair food/FAT food. And, once past all those colorful stalls, found the better choices at the end of the pieway. Thank god for the Italians, the Greeks and Mexicans -- here was food and drink I would've ingested had I been eating. And lemonade was everywhere, and Agua Fresca and iced teas. I was happy to see that. There was everything to choose from; some good, a lot bad, and a little downright ugly. But, it's recreational  food, I kept reminding myself, back off the rant.

Exhausted, I came home and did a little web research on fairs nationwide, finding interesting regional differences. The Iowa State Fair, for example, has an entire category of foods on a stick. Get this -- hard boiled egg on a stick, salad on a stick, hot bologna on a stick! EEEEUUUU! Pennsylvania's fair isn't a fair at all it turns out, even though it's listed on some sites as such. It's a farm show, period, held in January, and has really wonderful offerings in all categories in its food court -- vegetable soup! "Seasoned slow roasted rotisserie sliced chicken" Red beet and mustard eggs! (Wow, this sounds like Sonoma County!) 
And this MOST astonishing piece of stumbled-upon information -- there is an annual Navajo Nation Fair in Window Rock, Arizona! And, beyond that, it is celebrated in Iraq by some of our Native American sisters and brothers in the Armed Forces, a world away from the neon pastels of fairgrounds across the United States.

(no photographer cited)

And then, after the mornings' shoot and research, sitting at my desk about 3 p.m., I realized I was hungry.