More From The OC Fair...

Before I forget, a few more pics from the Orange County Fair, now gone for another year...

This we found just plain amusing, some wag had set up the Gideon Bible folks directly across from a tarot/palm reader:

I felt kind of sorry for the bible people, their booth was empty while the tarot reader was pipin'.

We visited the show chickens the day they were there, and ran across this unlikely duo:

While the Polish rooster on the right is obviously smitten and very much in love, the Antwerpener Bartswerge hen is having none of it, she is all fluffed up and flared out, and by her repeated growls we could tell she would like nothing better than to have a go at this nervy fellow.

I do believe she was guarding the egg she'd laid.  Those Antwerpener bantams DID have damned cute, fluffy faces though, and now I have ANOTHER breed to add to my 'want' list:

She looks like a stuffed toy, I swear.

Rocket Girl, Away!

N. rode this cute little rocket ship roller coaster at the OC fair today:

She ran right to the front car, I think she already had this scenario in mind...

Quick, off to SparkleyShip One! LAUNCH!

Now, Rocket Girl, AWAY!!!

It's County Fair Time! And That Can Only Mean ONE Thing...

...vomitous, deep-fried fair food!

Every year over the last few years, the Orange Country Fair in Costa Mesa, CA has introduced some new, weird, deep-fried food.

It's a bare-faced, shameless celebration of FOOD THAT IS BAD FOR YOU. First they take some commonly known junk food such as Twinkies, Oreos, and Coke--and then just to twist the knife a little they deep fry that sucker. Top it off with oh, say, chocolate sauce and powdered sugar and you're good to go. And if they can ram that sucker on a stick, and even better!

The problem is, now every year they have to come up with some new exotic treat, eternally forced to one-up themselves. So we've done the deep fried Oreos...Snickers bars...Twinkies...cheesecake...heck, even Coke, last year. What could POSSIBLY BE LEFT?

Here ya go.

Yeah, baby,
A Chicken & Krispy Kreme Doughnut sandwich!!!

But wait, stop those dry heaves, because that's not all!

Naturally, simply a hunk of chicken on a glazed doughnut isn't vile enough. We need MORE. Add raspberry jelly AND honey!!! Perfection!

As you can see from Chicken Charlie's menu, sadly, health food is not their forte.

Hell, even the promised 'Fresh Veggie Combo' on the far right, initially seeming an oasis of sane food in a freakish sea of grease...has the words, 'Deep Fried!' under it, cruelly yanking away any chance of escaping your arteries hardening. Under that, they laughingly list the innocent vegetables being tortured: asparagus, artichoke hearts, mushrooms and zucchini (Ok, I can actually get behind torturing zucchini). It's scary that the broasted chicken is the healthiest thing on the menu.

At any rate, J. decided to try one. Here it is, in all it's nasty glory.

They missed the 'deep frying' step here, but still, a more unholy union of foods I cannot imagine.

Here he is, trying gamely to swallow the bite he took.

All in all, J.'s verdict was, 'it wasn't bad'. N. opted for the deep fried cheese balls, but we took one look at this one and tried to convince her they were really deep fried slugs. Antennae, ahoy!

I just watched in horrified fascination.

This Week...

Another trip to the fair, and this time we got brave enough to actually enter the avocado fudge booth....sadly, no free samples, and it turns out the fudge is NOT avocado flavored--it's chocolate--and the avocado merely performs the dull and somewhat lackluster duty of 'moistening' the fudge. Humorless signs in bold print told us so. I guess the people working the booth had had enough of people who had juuuust enough beer in 'em to be 'Sparklingly Brilliant' stopping by to make witty comments.

Dang. Missed out again.

N. did score a huge stuffed cobra colored a bright blue with, oddly enough, red flames. She rode rides to her heart's content and we ran into our friend John, the hairdresser who had disappeared about a year ago. To our surprise he told us that he was now owner of the salon and had two more opening up. He had his fiance and her daughter with her, and they looked happy and healthy. It's nice to run into old friends and find them content and successful.

Also on the plus side, tonight I went to a different supermarket, Ralph's. I got fed up with the local Stater Brothers. On a recent trip there the whole market smelled. I mean, it smelled BAD. A friend of mine, whose ex-hubby was in the supermarket management biz, told us that this particular smell is the scent of maggots. Oh, joy. To make matters worse, when I opened the milk cooler I was actually assualted by the smell of sour milk. Double joy. The place was also so picked over, non-stocked or stocked with 100 boxes of the same item, that I asked the two teenage girls lounging behind the deli counter if the store was closing. No, they said, blinking at me dully. The shelves looked like shoppers had stripped them in preparation for a natural disaster. To top it off, we found a block of cheese that had expired FIVE YEARS AGO. So when I went through the checkout I gifted the cashier with the fossilized cheese and informed her of the horrible smells, to which she said offhandedly, "Oh yeah, we need to hire a new janitor." I told her if I was the manager and MY store smelled that bad, I would grab a mop myself and have a go at it.

So, much as I hate learning the new layout, new store. Clean! Bright! Well-stocked! Absence of weird/funky/dead thing smells and creepy science project petrified foodstuffs! I'm happy. What gave me a giggle today was the sign over one of the aisles....yes, it's true..."New Age Soda"! A WHOLE AISLE! Only in California, I snickered. By the way, 'New Age soda' is apparantly anything made by Sobe, Powerade or any variation of flavored/carbonated water.

The other fun thing is the new song my five year old daughter is singing....a la K.C. and the Sunshine Band, that immortal hit from the '70's--(in ohsocute young child voice) "Shake, shake, shake...shake, shake, shake...shake your buddha...shake your buddha..."

Hell NO, I'm not going to correct her! Just as I'm not going to correct her calling her belly button a 'bee butt'.

The mental imagery is just beyond wonderful.

County Fair Time Again!

One of our favorite times of the year is county fair season. Today we went to the Orange County Fair in Costa Mesa, California. Every year the fair has a theme, and this year's is 'Come Out And Play', and they are spotlighting the avocado...which I love and J. is deathly allergic to, so he hates. As soon as J., N. and I walked through the Blue Gate (they have them color coded in the hopes that people can find their way out, even through a beer and sunburn induced glaze) I burst out laughing when I saw this sign:

'Avocado Fudge'.  I took a picture of it (who would believe it, otherwise?) while J. mimed leaning over and retching--N. looked on in puzzlement. Now, don't get me wrong--I like fudge...Hell, I LOVE avocados--but Avocado Fudge is just a severe perversion of nature. The other thing that gave me a smile was this bit of artwork:

That's an avocado in that nest of eggs, presumably an escapee from the kitchen where another tasty batch of avocado fudge was being whipped up.

At any rate, N. had a good time. She went down the giant slide 4 times, rode a couple of other rides and batted her eyelashes and bestowed a smile on one of the carnies who then almost fell over himself giving her a large stuffed dog. We had some of that killer giant roasted corn and tons of fresh sqeezed lemonade, visited the animals, watched the charming little three person circus show, got N. some Magic Rocks which we'll grow tomorrow and came home with a new goldfish and sore feet.

*whew*

But of course, this is just the first trip, we'll be going back!

New Additions To The Family...

Making a simple trip to the feed store can be dangerous.

Pictured here are three of the newest additions to the group of Garden Destructors we have living in the back yard:

These are two small--but incredibly heavy and solid--Dark India Cornish Rock Bantam hens that so far have the unflattering name of "The Tank Girls".  Cornish Rocks are the game hens you see mostly wrapped in plastic at the grocery store.  They are extremely sweet and have that so-ugly-you-love-it quality to their faces--they remind me of the extinct Dodo bird. They are wider than they are tall and have a definite waddle when they walk. They can't climb up the ladder to roost, so we'll need to build a lower perch for them. With their gravely voices, they don't cluck so much as burble.  Their feathers are small yet incredibly soft, and their feathering is tight with little to no fluff.  Think a shot put with feathers.

Here's the other new one--a young White Crested Black Bearded Polish hen, so hungry for attention that she runs up to us and jumps in our lap, or pecks your shoes to get you to pick her up. This behaviour led to the people at the feed store labeling her as not only a rooster, but 'mean' as well. This bird was obviously someone's lap pet before she came to us and doesn't have a mean bone in her body. Also with that huge poof of feathers on her head, she can't see worth a darn.

The new birds are settling in well, and our other birds are taking the new additions in stride. Of course, we have been doing some major league sucking up to the new and old birds with the help of a bag of mealworms--the equivilant of candy (or Crack!) to chickens.

We went to the Orange County Fair yesterday for the last time this year--it'll be gone soon. I'm trying to give our daughter N. classic childhood memories whenever possible and the county fair is an important part of that. Our daughter had a great time; played some games and won a large stuffed red dog (which was actually mostly a 'give' from the carny who ran the booth, she can sucker in adults and wrap them around her little finger like no one's business), rode several rides all by herself which she proudly told anyone about who would stand still long enough to listen, J. had a turkey leg and I had deep fried zucchini (strangely, it wasn't on a stick like everything else) which we shared with N. We stopped by the small animal barn and admired the many chickens and rabbits that were on display. I'm not a fan of the cloven hoofed animals-- when I was a kid we lived a few doors down from a LARGE smelly pen of goats and I still can't get past the smell.

At the end of the evening we loaded the stuffed animal prizes, leftover zucchini, the remains of a cinnamon roll and a black pearl that N. had gotten out an oyster she had chosen, into the car. We had ended up with one lone ride ticket at the end of it all--all of the rides take at least three tickets--which we left on one of the tables of a food booth for someone to find and use.

Today my main job is to search IKEA online to see if they have a decent twin bedstead for N.--she has outgrown her crib so it's 'Big Girl Bed' time--great excitement over that. So it's computer and soak my aching feet time.

Beyond that I'm incapable today. Besides, the Los Angeles county fair opens in a few weeks, can't miss that!