Every Food Booth’s Signature Food at the South Plains Fair
There are a couple days left of the South Plains Fair and tons of food options to choose from. The food booths at the fair are usually non-profit organizations, churches, or schools that are raising money to help their cause.
Everyone has a food that they have to get while going to the fair. I gravitate to the foot-long corn dogs and bring a refillable cup to the Dream Center, but this year I might have had a change of heart. I was able to snap a picture of every single food booth's signature foods that drive people to keep coming back and taste a few things.
The first food I tried was the fried pies booth put on by Oakwood Methodist Church. I got the cherry pie and definitely had an out of body experience when I bit into the freshly fried pie. It was flaky, crispy, and not too sweet like the store bought fruit pies you see at the gas stations. There was some love poured into every pie.
After walking around I sought out air conditioning, and that's when I tried the Philly cheese steak sandwich from Freedom Philly. I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I've never actually had it before, but the steak was seasoned like the fajitas from this hole-in-the-wall restaurant that was located at the Flea Market on Avenue K back when I was a kid. It was like meeting an old friend. And the customer service was like being greet by family.
Next was the one thing I've always wanted to try: the heavily savory food from Heavenly Hair Global Ministries. I didn't try the ox tai (that's Friday's adventure), but I did get the pumpkin cheese cake and tried the collared greens and corn bread. I've never had collared greens, but now I can't remember what life was like without them. The food was so savory and the corn bread made me change my mind about it altogether. I hate corn bread, but it's so airy and has some crunch to it that it's like a work of art. Now it's the only corn bread I will ever eat.
I tried a sample of baklava from St. Andrews Greek Orthodox Church, which was my first time trying it. The pastry was toasty and warm, maybe something I'll have to pair with a hot chocolate or champurrado in the winter time.
Of course I had to stop by my old booth I worked at during my college days, the Associates of LCU corn booth, and got a corn in the cup with the works. Christ the King School had Frito pie and foot-long hot dogs, which were nicely charred and super flavorful with some jalapeños on top to put some pep in my step. I washed that all down with a lemonade from the Lemonade Factory, the best lemonade I've ever had.
Some booths closed at 3 p.m. because of the heat, so I waited out the temperatures until 5 p.m. with a random family who welcomed me like I was one of their own before moving on to some air conditioning. I somehow ended up in the Holy Meatballs building and heard from sister station 94.5 FMX's radio host Chrissy that this was her number one favorite thing to get at the fair. I'm not a meatball person because to me it's too much work, but I can tell that the people who made these meatballs love what they do. The flavors were dancing on my tongue like some sort of Italian angel blessing me.
After getting a watermelon agua fresca from the Ministerios Nueva Vida booth, which had cubes of frozen watermelon in it to not water it down, I could barely move, especially when I got a leg cramp. So much fun. That's when I decided I needed to get one more experience in before I ultimately was greeted at the pearly gates in the sky.
The Faith First House of Hope was something that I had never seen before as they were frying up some kind of chicken nuggets. That's when the pastor invited me to try a chicken gizzard which he stated were better than Pinky's. I shimmied my blob of a body over and gave it a try. He was right. They were so tender and not chewy like the chain store's gizzards. I'll be trying those gizzards at the First Friday Art Trail since they usually move their food truck there so I can get the full experience. I was technically a hamster storing food in my cheek pouches at that point.
I finally left the fair with a barbecue parfait, peach cobbler, and a root beer float from St. John Neumann Catholic Church.
The one thing that all these booths had in common was the love that they shared for volunteering their time to help the community and to give back. The fair would not be possible without all the people who work the booths, the rides, and the fair grounds year round to keep them up to standards for a few times a year. I left happy to be a part of Lubbock and share these experiences with all of you. I connected with Templeton the rat from Charlottes Web, so I played the Rat's Smorgasbord song on the drive home.