Well, we made it to the Fair. Technically, it’s the DeKalb County Fair, but it’s in Sandwich, IL and is known as The Sandwich Fair. Craig has been there every year since he was 5. I’ve been there every year since 1992. It’s a tradition that we never miss. It’s always held the week of Labor Day – Tuesday through the next Sunday.
The Sandwich Fair is HUGE. There are animals (bunnies, horses, cows, pigs, chickens, goats and sheep), tons of buildings with quilts, cakes, jellies, vegetables & flowers, photographs, handmade crafts, and lots of slick dudes selling rubber brooms. There are carny rides for the kids, tons of carny games, lots of rv’s to walk in and out of, old steam machinery that runs all day shucking corn and whatnot, vintage tractors, horseshoe contests, all kinds of diggers….lots of stuff. But what’s one of the most important things to me at the Fair?
THE FOOD.
Oh yes, folks. That’s right. I have my FAVORITE places and I go to them every year without fail. Some years I might stray and get something different, but I always go to the following places:
First, we begin by stopping at this Pronto Pup stand (yellow one on the left, I was a little too far away) to get corndogs and lemon shakeups for Craig and Cole. Ketchup only, please! Lainie and I get popcorn from the stand to the right of it. 2 older ladies run the stand and they also sell doughnuts.
For lunch, we always (and I mean always) get Fay’s B-B-Q. It’s not the Sandwich Fair unless we have Fay’s:
This is just the tent everyone eats in. Here’s where you stand in line in the next tent behind this one:
You can get either chicken or pork chops (both are awesome) and then you dish yourself up cottage cheese, coleslaw, baked beans, applesauce and bread with butter. You get a cup of lemonade or iced tea. We are strictly a baked bean/applesauce/bread/lemonade kind of family. Next to this tent is where they cook the meat over charcoal on these open pits that are as big as a trailer you’d pull behind your car. Their chicken is to die for.
Cole, however, wanted another corn dog from (gasp) a different stand:
After that we get S&W popcorn when we take our train ride (there’s a replica steam engine but on a smaller scale), I get a coke from the Sandwich Rotary Club (as a fellow Rotarian, of course I have to go there!) and for dessert we get cotton candy and:
That’s right….an elephant ear. Craig’s favorite. These aren’t quite as greasy as a funnel cake, but delicious all the same.
**I will admit that the first year I went to the Fair, I got beef stew for lunch. Craig still brings that up – 16 years later! I will never live it down.**
On a knitting sidenote: I finished hat #2 for Lainie and the orange stripe on the Log Cabin Blanket. Hat #3 has been started for Cole (he’s getting gray wool this time— lucky child). Pictures to follow!
