BY SUZANNE KEENE
STRASBURG For many, the
words “county fair” mean rows of
fruits and vegetables in shining
canning jars, intricate crafts sewn
with loving hands, and farm
animals parading around a show
ring. But for culinary con
noisseurs, county fairs mean
generous servings of the best
homemade food available.
The women who prepare that
delicious food spend many hours in
a hot kitchen, cooking and stewing
until all menu selections are
prepared to perfection. Margaret
Lefever and Edna Beiler, the two
women who are primarily
responsibile for cooking the corn
soup, chicken pot pie and other
menu items at the West Lampeter
Fair, say preparing food for a fair
is a lot of hard work, but quickly
add that it’s a lot of fun too.
Margaret and Edna split the
cooking responsiblitly for the
three-day event, with Margaret
preparing the lunches and Edna in
charge of suppers.
While they carry much of the
responsiblity for seeing that
everything gets done on time, they
mixer that was recently added to the fire hall's kitchen
ia ai jgaret review Edna’s recoi an im
portant resource when deciding what and how much to make.
do not work alone. Many people
from the community offer their
time and talents to make the fair
food a success.
“It’s a community effort,”
Margaret said. Many senior
citizens donate a few hours to the
project, helping to pick off chicken,
grate cabbage for cole slaw or peel
apples. Other community mem
bers, including men, lend a helping
hand.
The preparation really begins at
the end of July when the restaurant
committee gets together to freeze
about 120 quarts of corn for
chicken corn soup and for use as a
vegetable at Friday night’s sup
per. The men husk and the women
blanche and cut off, Margaret said.
Then, toward the end of August,
the restaurant committee meets to
decide on prices and what items
will be offered on the menu. Last
year, they added iced tea to the
menu, but for the most part,
Margaret said, the menu stays the
same.
About two or three weeks before
the fair committee chairman Elsie
Houser orders the food. “She sees
Peeling apples isn't an overwhelming chore when you have lot's of help - even when
you have to peel six bushels. From left are Elsie Houser, Edna Beiler and Margaret
Lefever
that everything’s there for us,”
Edna explained.
Among other things, the order
includes 600 pounds of chicken, 200
pounds of cabbage, and six bushels
of apples. Elsie says she looks over
her record book that she keeps
from year to year to determine
how much to order.
“I kind of go from the year
before,” she says. If they ran out of
something last year, Elsie is sure
to order a little extra the next year.
One year they used all the roast
beef for supper and had none left
for lunch the next day. “There was
no beef for my beef stew,” Edna
recalled.
To make sure that lunch would
be ready for the next day, she
spent the whole night roasting beef
from her own freezer. However,
she says, that doesn’t happen very
often, because Elsie is an excellent
planner who has years of ex
perience to rely on.
The actual food preparation
begins at 6 a.m. on the Tuesday
before the fair, when Edna and
Margaret can be found in the
kitchen at the Lampeter Fire
Company, putting the chickens on
to boil, and preparing cole slaw
and applesauce. By 8:30 a.m. other
volunteers will start arriving to
debone the chickens and help with
other chores.
Early Wednesday morning
Margaret is back in the kitchen,
making the popular chicken com
soup that is traditionally served for
Wednesday’s lunch. She says she
makes seven 20 to 24-quart kettles
of the steaming soup. Later in the
morning Edna shows up to make
the stuffing and put the chicken in
the ovens for the evening meal.
The number of women in the
kitchen at one time varies
throughout the day. “It seems like
it’s really a beehive,” Edna said.
Working together, the volunteers
manage to feed about 250 to 300
people at lunch time and about 525
to 625 people at the evening meal.
“That varies depending on the
weather,” Margaret pointed out.
With that many people coming to
eat during two-hour time span that
the meals are served, it is
inevitable that customers have to
wait in line. Sometimes, they wait
as long as 45 minutes to sink their
teeth into the luscious food that
awaits them in the cafeteria-style
food line.
“The food must be all right or I
gusess they wouldn’t stand in
line,” Edna chuckled.
From time to time, one of the
cooks will poke her head out of the
kitchen to see how long the line is
and to decide if more food will be
needed. “You have a big line to
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Margaret Lefever takes a pan out of one of the kitchen's
three large ovens.
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