Drat! Missed it

One of my favorite things to do at this time of year when I was a kid was to go with my family to the Circleville (Ohio) Pumpkin Show. I haven't been for years, but I can still remember the feeling of walking through the dark night from the parking area towards the fairway in the center of town.

Fall has a delightful smell to it . . . crisp, dead leaves crunching underfoot bring a mixture of odors and sounds. The smell of burning leaves (back then that is how they were disposed of - big burn piles) hung low in the air . . . Children's squeals as they jumped into freshly raked piles . . . the smell of the wind as it plucked at your too-thin coat . . .

And, then there was the Pumpkin Show. The closer we would get to the fairway, the more intense the odors would become. We could find just about anything we could think of made of pumpkin. There was pumpkin pie, of course . . . including the "World's Largest Pumpkin Pie", which this year is touted as being "Bigger than ever!!!" You might ask what goes into such a pie and what comes out . . . well, according to the site it weighs 400 pounds and is 6 feet in diameter. The ingredients are: 100 lbs. cooked pumpkin, 40 pounds of sugar, 15 dozen eggs, 26 gallons of milk, 42 lbs. of pie dough. Yumm! And cooking time? 6 hours to bake.

I'm just wondering who in the world has a pie tin that big, huh?

Other treats available were pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin cotton candy, pumpkin candy, pumpkin fudge, pumpkin burgers, pumpkin, pumpkin, pumpkin! Yumm!

ooh - hey, there be recipes there, too.

As with any fair, there were midway games, parades, queen pageants, music, rides, etc. Much great fun.

Sorry I missed it - but glad I remember it.

'night, friends.
>..<

Posted by Purplemoose at October 26, 2004 10:06 PM