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no, i do not mean food that is neither good nor bad, but merely fair.

i mean that which is served at county fairs.

i love going to these fairs, every year around this time farmers bring in their produce and livestock to be graded, in hopes of winning a ribbon.
there are beauteous squashes, enormous pumpkins, cute lambs, amazing handwork

one little fair i used to go to in Bear Lake PA had one whole room full of shelves all crammed with jars of pickled pigs knuckles!
how could the judges decide which knuckles were best? i have no idea.

then they have concerts, usually country western, and demolition derbies and stock car races and a carnival with games of chance

and food.

one whole category is reserved for dough; fried dough (too lumpy for me), funnel cakes (full of little holes, like a pizelle cookie) and elephant ears (which look like giant lily pads, no holes, my favorite).
these are of course fried and then dusted with powdered or granular sugar and sometimes cinnamon.

everything is meant to be eaten without utensils.
you can get a fried battered peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a stick, with powdered sugar.

you can get a zucchini weenie, which is a hollowed out zucchini stuffed with a hot dog and then breaded and fried.

for more sugar, there is cotton candy (up here they make it with maple syrup! yum) and candy apples

and more fried stuff, fried ice cream, fried pepsi (yuk), fried beer!

they have a unique fair version of an ice cream sandwich, with two huge crispy waffles and a slab of ice cream in between them

i once had a chili cone, which was like a flatbread waffle crossover made into a cone and stuffed with hot chili and shredded cheese.
you had to eat it quick or it would sog and sag and go all over the place.

so have you tried fair food?

would you rate it bad, good, or...fair?

I'm a big fan of funnel cakes, too. 3nodding
Our last fair had hand-pulled salt-water taffy of many flavors. Mountain Dew flavor was good. I can't remember all of them I had; this was almost a year ago.

Everything in the beginning is a staple at our fairs; I'll have to look for some of the other fried foods at the next one (I think it's in October here).

but of course!

we are just now getting into our loverly leaf watching season, too.

we are only 40 miles west of leafily famous Vermont, but when you get out of the piney woods there is lots of fine color out our way too.