event review: PA bloomsburg fair;

This past weekend was our annual trip to Bloomsburg Fair!  For those of you wondering what’s so cool about the Bloomsburg fair and why it’s an annual trip, let me explain. My sister went to Lafayette college in PA, and I went to Bucknell university, also in PA. One of her friends grew up in Bloomsburg, and so they started going every year with their group of college friends. Once I got to college, they invited me along, and so I try to join them every year now!  It’s a blast. I don’t know that it’s the biggest fair, or even the best fair. But it’s always amazing to me because it’s a good group of people, involved looooots of food, and also brings back some pretty nostalgic memories.

So…onto the food!  I can never actually list all the things we collectively eat…and since it’s an annual thing I’m sure there’s room for more posts in the future!  So here’s a sampling of the food that’s available to you at the fair!  First things first, I’ve been craving a blooming onion for like 3 months, so the solution to this clearly was to get it first at 11am for breakfast.

If you’re into less greasy foods for breakfast, a lot of the others go for apple dumplings with cinnamon ice cream. Note that after 4 or 5 years of doing this, and having veteran Bloomsburg Fair goers around, we typically know exactly where to go for some of the best stuff.  Unfortunately for you all, I can’t exactly tell you the cross streets where they are, because we mostly recognize by sight and typical location, though locations of vendors can change.  Nothing you get will be BAD, just over the years we’ve established some regulars that we love.

That said, there are always some new things to try too!  T looooved this rum bread pudding that we happened to see while standing around waiting for other food.

Some of the traditions do always stand though: cinnamon rolls, potato pancakes, Grotto pizza, fried things (oreos, funnel cake, PB&J sandwiches, pop tarts, pickles, you name it), apple cider, pierogies, and a whole host more!  This was the first year that we’ve tried fried ice cream and it was a huuuge hit.  J got one and then T liked it enough that he got a second one!

The theme of the fair is “food sharing”.  We always do the courtesy of asking, but since we all want to try so many more things than our stomachs can handle, the best thing to do is share!  We all just take bites and pass things around.

The other interesting thing we tried this year was rabbit sausage!  H likes trying to find the most interesting thing to eat at the fair, and we found a stand that had “gater bites”, “rabbit sausage”, “elk burgers”, etc.  We actually kinda wanted to try gater bites, but it was right after a round of fried foods, and we didn’t think we could stomach more fried foods right away.  So clearly the oily sausage was so much different.  It was surprisingly tasty.  I don’t know what I expected, but it was seasoned well, and not quite as strange as I thought it might be.

We do always finish the fair with a stop at the old fashioned churned ice cream!  They make it right there at the fair, and it’s deeeelicious.  I love their raspberry, though they have vanilla, chocolate, peanut butter, and a few other flavors that are all equally yummy.  It’s definitely not as creamy as your average store-bought ice cream, and a little more icy, but it’s still delicious.  And you can watch the machines making it right at the fair!

Overall 5/5 chips (read: stars).  I will admit that it might not be 5/5 for the everyday person.  It’s a fun state fair, but it’s not the biggest and doesn’t have the most stuff.  It does however, have a ton of amazing food, a ton of amazing friends, and just makes me relaxed and happy to spend time with my sister and her friends.  =)

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