As a little girl, my dream was to travel and see the world. My first plane ride was a flight to Disney World at age ten. My second flight was over a decade later.
My mom used to tell the story that even as a preschooler, I would navigate while she drove. “How do we get to Westgate Mall again?” I was born with a great sense of direction and a desire to use it for nonstop exploration.
This sign was my landmark for Westgate Mall when I was a kid. I loved seeing what movies were showing at the mall cinema.
I feel like I spent a significant amount of time begging to go to places as a kid. I heard “no” a lot. With plenty of excuses. We don’t have the money. We don’t have vacation time. We don’t have the money.
If there was travel, it was in a car on a road trip.
We went to amusement parks in Ohio, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. We went to Ontario to see the Falls. In fifth grade, my parents drove us to Washington, D.C. for Easter vacation to introduce me to live and in-person American history like the Smithsonian, the Capitol, and the Mall. (They kept referring to the Mall. I was excited to see the Mall. Then, I found out they just meant a grassy promenade and I was highly disappointed.)
When the scenery lost my interest, I entertained myself on road trips with this:
Otherwise, we stayed close to home. Sometimes, we’d drive to Amish country. This was not my favorite. When I was little I had no use for the countryside or farms. BORING. Also, I didn’t particularly care for the animal smells.
We’d drive to the East Side of Cleveland to go to a different mall. The East Side might as well have been Mars. “You want to go over there? It’s so far away.” My dad loved when we went there because that was the only place in town where he could get an Orange Julius.
Once in a while, they’d take me to Put-in-Bay, an island in Lake Erie. We’d take a slow ferry ride and spend the day touring the islands. Probably to shut me up from saying, “We never go anywhere.”
As a teen, I had dreams of going to the Big Apple, New York City. In high school, I found out that membership in the Model UN Club included a trip to New York City each year. I applied only to be able to go on that field trip. I hardly did any of the work required for the club. I had my eyes on the prize of seeing NYC and I made it happen.
Funnily enough, the only way I experienced anything global was by going to fairs and festivals. I feel like Northeastern Ohio had a lot of festivals. Probably because any good weather was short lived. We had to whoop it up as much as possible before lake effect weather spoiled the party.
So it was festival food that introduced me to global cultures and meals.
Because my grandparents owned cottages on Lake Erie, I spent a lot of time in Vermilion, Ohio, a sleepy little town halfway between Cleveland and Toledo. Vermilion had two big festivals every year, the Fish Festival in June and the Woolly Bear Festival in October.
I remember going to the festivals with my dad and my grandpa. The women stayed home. I always thought that was lame. You don’t want to go have fun at the festival? Later on I realized they were happy to get a break from their husbands.
We lived on Lake Erie, so at the fish festival, the guys enjoyed the fish sandwiches, walleye or perch.
They had Greek gyros on pita bread. Vertical rotisseries rotated with stacks and stacks of tender lamb slices. So many aromas floated in the air from the spices that I later learned were cumin, oregano, and rosemary.
I split German soft pretzels with my dad. I loved the chewy texture and the coarse grains of salt that popped in my mouth.
We shared fresh cut fries, with the skins still on them, splashed with sour malt vinegar, straight out of Great Britain. The four of us stood in a circle around a giant trash can and ate corn on the cob, roasted in its husks, shucked and then dipped in butter.
Dad bought me freshly squeezed lemonade, with real lemons floating in the plastic cup. I thought it was the most delicious beverage ever. The only lemonade I’d had was from a frozen can of Minute Maid concentrate.
Then it was onto dessert. Funnel cakes first! (Thank you Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants.) The guys took me to the funnel cake stall, everyone in line had big smiles on their faces once they’d been handed a paper plate with that deep fried circle of dough, snow-topped with powdered sugar. The hot oil made the paper plate a bit soggy so you had to be careful not to fumble it and cry over spilled funnel cake.
The last stop was for a snow cone. I loved anything icy: snow cones, slushes, Icees. Little did I know at the time that shaved ice was another global treat.
When we returned home, the powdered sugar all over our faces provided the evidence that fun was had. I most likely had blue lips as well from my blue raspberry snow cone.
We came bearing gifts from the festival. Cotton candy for Grandma. Mom requested elephant ears, her favorite. Elephant ears were a gateway to learning that almost all cultures have fried dough treats. As they should. My fellow food friend writers recorded their feelings about fried dough and festivals in Italy and Spain.
Throughout childhood, I learned about cannoli, eggplant parmesan, sausage and peppers at an Italian street festival. Dad introduced me to brats, sauerkraut, and schnitzel at an Oktoberfest. At a Greek festival, I learned about spanakopita and baklava. Here’s another gem of an article I loved about Greek festival memories.
As the pickiest eater ever, I didn’t taste most of these festival foods. I loved accompanying my dad and grandpa on those special days away from everyone else and away from the responsibility of working at the cottages. They let me eat whatever I wanted and didn’t give me a hard time about what I didn’t want to eat.
I may not have been able to travel much, but those festival days taught me a lot about cultures and I soaked it all in. Not only did they help me to answer future Jeopardy questions, but when I finally did like to eat and then to cook, all that knowledge was ready to be plumbed.
Thanks again for reading. I care about you. Please don’t forget to eat your greens.
***Written to Cold Heart (PNAU Remix) by Elton John and Dua Lipa on repeat.
Festival Food
Fried dough team 💪🏼 thank you for mentioning me Kim, I hope one day we can roam together around stalls of fried dough somewhere in the world.
It’s funny that your newsletter’s topic this week is festival food because David just told me a couple of days ago that he was craving a funnel cake! It is cool that people all over the world know that fried dough is a yummy treat. Thank you for the shoutout by the way- I feel so honored! ☺️
I love reading about your childhood experiences; I always find little nuggets in your stories that remind me of my own. It’s awesome that you were able to go to so many festivals and that you were able to bank all the food knowledge you learned for later inspiration!