New England nostalgia

I'm going to let the photos mostly speak for themselves in this post. I gave myself an out of town weekend to visit sissy in Beantown. It's the end of her 7th week in dental school and she took her first exam on Friday (and aced it, might I proudly add!!), so we decided a catch-up weekend was in order. 

There's something so charming about the northeast in the late summer/early fall. The leaves on the maple trees (those early birds) are already starting to turn and fall, giving the still mostly green expanses of trees along the highways a few vibrant hints that autumn is coming. As New Englanders we always cling to these tiny moments of perfectly balanced autumn days (temperature: a dry, clear 65-70 degrees and sunny; landscape: a firey blaze of warm colors; air smelling like crispy earth, burning wood, and somehow like pumpkins...) because we know that a single frosty night or a particularly heavy, unseasonal rainfall can destroy that balance and eliminate autumn from existence entirely, shooting us straight from balmy summer to lifeless, icy winter before we even have time to dig our sweaters out of the cedar chests in our attics.  

With all the nostalgia that this transition from summer to autumn tends to bring, we naturally decided to honor it with a trip to the Big E (Eastern States Exposition). This fair is something that we would do yearly as a family when we were growing up and have the fondest memories of. As adults, our lives having taken us a bit farther away from the Springfield area, yearly trips turned into more like once every 3-4 years... Needless to say, this visit was long overdue.

Each state in New England is represented with it's own separate house, each filled with stands and kiosks that feature the famous things about each state...mostly food items! (Connecticut is seriously the biggest disappointment that ever was...boasting stands with Legos, Timex watches, and insurance carriers... Seriously, Connecticut?! sigh...) So, in keeping with our natures, Jus and I decided to make our trip to the Big E a food tour of the state houses.  We strategically planned out our eating so that we would be sure to have room for everything and not have to miss out on a single thing!  In order, this was our journey:

Maine: baked potato with fresh churned butter, sour cream, and Massachusetts: vegan chili

Maine: lobster roll woman really selling it! 

Maine: lobster roll (HOLY MOLY) and Vermont: fresh pressed apple cider 

Henry's Kettle Korn from the "Craft Common" (where they feature the late 1700s farm houses)

We sampled from 8-10 of the kettle corn stands before deciding that Henry's was the best!

The perfect balance of crunchy, salty and sweet! Mmmm, piping hot kettle corn!

Maine: wild blueberry crisp

no caption needed for this...mmm

In between the kettle corn and the wild blueberry crisp we saw some people with these glistening skewers of something incredible... On closer examination (and after "interviewing" some people who were munching on them) we discovered they were smoked, wild salmon fillets on a stick. It may have tied the lobster rolls for the best food of the night. It was moist, chewy, smokey, peppery, just delightful on so many levels. So fresh. Great impulse purchase--definitely wasn't on our "food plan" for the day, but a fabulous surprise find! 


We also bought a couple of loaves of the MOST delicious (oat, dill, onion, seedy, sweet, savory, etc etc etc) bread from the Massachusetts house, and some jars of lemony Maple Pumpkin butter from Sidehill Farms in the Vermont house. We passed up the gorgeous, butter ears of corn that New Hampshire offers, figuring we would be OD'ed on corn at that point, and also (perhaps it's the dental school influence?) passed up the famous maple sugar candy from Vermont. I skipped the famous Big E bakery that has the most fabulous, gigantic cream puffs and eclairs...but not on purpose, only because I forgot that I wanted it until it was too late!  


New Englanders everywhere were in their element at the fair this weekend--drinking pumpkin spiced and miscellaneous other fall-inspired beers from local breweries, watching woodcarving demonstrations, staring in awe at the giant, half-ton pumpkins--and we couldn't have been happier to end the day than we were as we came around one of the farm buildings, side-stepped some steaming piles of horse poop (live, county fair-esque music floating through the air at us from off the nearby stage) and looked up to see one of the most brilliant sunsets this northeast sky has seen in a long while.