Fran In a normal year, right about now the Fabrizios would be in our final planning for many visits to the Minnesota State Fair, which would have been our 10th in a row since I first discovered my love of/obsession for the Fair in 2011. Highlighted maps would be made, new food lists would be perused, vacation requests would be submitted, some of you would be following along from afar while the rest of you would be getting ready to block my ridiculous posts for the next two weeks… ð
There’s no avoiding how much having no Fair this year sucks, but there are a few silver linings, including one this morning: we were among the lucky few to get tickets, so this morning we’re heading down to the Fairgrounds for the State Fair Food Parade! Twelve of the food vendors are participating in a drive-through event where we can get some of our Fair favorite foods and even one or two ones we haven’t tried before. It’s going to be super weird, but at least it’s some small shadow of the Fair experience, and it’ll be nice to be on the grounds for a while even though it’ll also be a sad reminder of how not-normal things are right now. I’ll follow up with a review post, of course!
We’ve also done a few other things to try to connect with the Fair this year. Lots of breweries are making their normally-Fair-only beers available this summer, and I scored tickets for a couple of growlers worth of my all-time favorite Lift Bridge Mini Donut beer, pickup in a couple of weeks. And I’ll be drinking that beer out of some official State Fair cups because earlier this summer, they sold off all of this year’s Fair cups as a fundraiser. Maybe I’ll enjoy that mini donut beer in a Fair cup on some of our RV adventures this fall (that’s a whole other story that needs its own post someday). And I actually scored two Food Parade tickets so we can head back to the Fairgrounds one last time this year on Labor Day, too.
The Fair and others did a good job of finding ways to keep Minnesota connected to the Fair this year. Aside from the Food Parade, there’s an online vendor marketplace, and there were (now sold out) DIY Crop Art and Party in a Box kits. People even got really excited to buy the cups! The newspaper and social media has been publishing how else you can find your favorite Fair foods around town, and there have been special socially-distanced Fair food truck events. Anything to help Minnesotans feel connected to their Great Minnesota Get-Together.
