Amanda Miller
Columnist
Lettuce Eat Local
I’m sure it took many days to clean up just the basics of the 2024 Kansas State Fair, with clusters of workers busy in every building and over the entire grounds — tearing down booths, packing up products, trailering away livestock. I’m sure it took many more weeks after that for most traces of the fair to disappear, although they never quite all do; but eventually, the year’s signs are down, the trash is picked up, the ruts in the parking lot are even almost worn in.
But I know for a fact that it took many months for the state fair’s enchantment to wear off of our son.
The couple times we went apparently marked Benson indelibly, and it was almost beyond his comprehension level to understand that something so massive, so marvelous, could just up and go away, never to return until a year later. The fair coming back featured in his bedtime prayers sometimes, and it was wintertime before he finally let up on asking if it was time to go again.
He doesn’t always enjoy places with large crowds, which this clearly was, but there was enough going on at the fair to make it more than worthwhile. I wouldn’t think a farm boy who is around tractors and skidsteers every day would be so giddy about looking at and clambering into more — well I wouldn’t have originally, but then I guess I did marry one so I shouldn’t have been surprised.
I’d like to say peering at the rows of intriguing poultry and rabbits was what Benson loved so much, or maybe seeing our cows at the birthing barn. He was almost euphoric when the petting zoo goats nibbled out of his palm, probably could have stayed for hours in AgriLand if I let him play with the cotton seeds and corn kernels the “energetic” way he preferred, and basically stole the show helping me give a cottage cheese ice cream demo for the Kansas Dairy Association.
But speaking of ice cream, fair food may be the major reason Benson was so enthusiastic about that week last September. I only got him ice cream once, or twice, but so did his grandparents when they took him, and his aunt when she took him, etc. As evidenced by the crowds swarming around the booths, he obviously isn’t the only one who finds fair food something worth raving about. Some people are planning their eating routes long before the aroma of funnel cakes and fried curds starts wafting through the air, and my sister-in-law even got a Pronto Pup painted on her fingernails.
So I don’t know what all was going through his little head on Friday, but when I told him his aunt was going to take him to the fair that evening, his reaction was exactly as I had expected: an immediate sharp burst of anticipatory screaming. I waited until Kiah woke up from her nap on purpose to share the news, and I also couldn’t tell him too early in the day or there would have been talk of nothing else.
So we’ll see how this week of the fair goes, and how many weeks we’ll be hearing about it afterwards. Ice cream, cotton candy, and turkey legs, here we come.
Basic-Brined Chicken Drumsticks
While I’m not a big fair food connoisseur, there is really something about those turkey legs. Hot, smoky, sticky, greasy, meaty. Benson and his cousins had a communal turkey leg on that first night, which I think was a great way to kick off his fair experience — although he’s telling me now that they had ice cream first, then monster cotton candy, and then turkey. All’s fair in love and the fair I suppose. At any rate, I’m not even going to try to replicate those at home, but little chicken legs are good for some hot, greasy, meaty eating too.
Prep tips: if you eat these outside, while walking around, you can get even more fair vibes.
2 quarts water
½ cup salt
¼ cup sugar
¼ cup lemon juice
1 onion, quartered
2-3 pounds chicken drumsticks
pepper and smoked paprika
Mix water, salt, sugar, and lemon juice in a large glass or metal bowl, then add in onion and chicken — if not submerged, add more water. Brine for 8-10 hours in the fridge, then remove and pat dry; sprinkle with pepper and smoked paprika. Roast in the oven at 400° or throw on the grill, until meat reaches 175°.
