Hawaii State Farm Fair

I've been to county fairs as a kid, but never had as much fun as I did this past weekend. Just goes to show grown-ups (if I can call myself that...that's me on the right shoving watermelon in my face) can have just as much fun as kids. I didn't win the contest, but at least I didn't throw it all up like the guy next to me. That's him, just as he's about to blow.

Then, judging the cook-off between the firefighters and Councilman Dela Cruz. The firefighters, calm, serious and composed. The day before, in a face-off with Mufi, they won with a fried rice topped with a red hot dog cut to look like an octopus. 

Dela Cruz, more light-hearted, using every last second. 

Dela Cruz's fried rice slippah, plus extra Big Island portuguese sausage. Because we can always use a little extra!

The fire fighters' pineapple, mac nut fried rice. I have to confess, though I try to fight the kitsch, I have a weakness for hollowed-out pineapples and cocktail umbrellas. The firefighters won by just a hair, or perhaps I should say, by a grain of rice.

One of the judges offered this advice for cooking competitions: use extra sugar because it makes the flavors explode. Not so much for regular cooking because it would make you sick, but for competitions when judges take only a few bites, he says it's a guaranteed winner. Personally, I prefer spices and textures over sugar.


An egg scale. What looks like an antique just for display is actually Peterson Farm's actual egg scale. Sharon Peterson Cheape, manager of the egg farm, wasn't kidding when she said a lot of their equipment was as old as her grandparents.

During the livestock auction, I got swept up in the moment and desperately wanted a hog. Ben set up a spreadsheet as I fed him hog weights and bid prices, calculating price per pound of actual usable weight from the live weight. Usually the voice of reason, suddenly, he had no limits. We lost out by 10 cents. When we came to our senses we realized we had come too close to writing a $1100 check in exchange for a 200 pound hog. The star of the night was a red Duroc hog, bid up to $13/lb for a 250-lb hog by Roy's Restaurants.

If not a hog, then maybe a chick? Not this time...

In the midst of all the fun, the difference between going to a farm fair as a kid and as an adult is having a keen awareness of the sponsors and their presence at the fair. As a kid, it's just about rides, cotton candy and corn-on-the-cob; as an adult, it's contemplating the state of Hawaii agriculture, in which growing food for our island loses out to Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta fields. There's also the irony of Aloha Air Cargo's banner at a farm fair that promotes eating locally: "If it's grown, it should be flown." No doubt, to neighbor islands in addition to mainland, but the slogan has the sensitivity of Chevy's marketing of "Nova" in Mexico (i.e. "no va" or "doesn't run" in Spanish)