MARK MY WORD: FAIR OFFERS EVERYTHING FROM FISH TO FELLOWSHIP

Fairs are full of food. It's the main entree for many fairgoers who look forward all year to chowing down on corn dogs and cotton candy.

While culinary purists might turn away, fair food is down right appetizing unless you've just been on one of those stomach-churning rides on the Midway.

Cooking is an art at the SEMO District Fair.

Of course, I don't profess to be a cook. Rather, I'm an expert eater. Still, every year I join my Sunday School buddies in the kitchen at our church fair stand.

They have faith in me. They let me fry fish. It's fun to spend an evening in the kitchen as fairgoers walk past the screened windows of the trailer and fellow church members, serving as waiters and waitresses, hand us their orders to fill.

Actually, it takes more than just a Sunday School class to run the fair stand for the whole week of the fair. It takes a ton of church members.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes a whole church to run a fair stand.

For our hearty troop, the kitchen is a place to cook burgers, fish and fries. We're not talking about a food court here. This is good, old American food.

If you go away hungry, it's your own fault.

As I said, I'm not a cook. But it's tough to mess up fair fish. Besides, as with most journalists, I'm math challenged.

At least in the kitchen, I don't have to make change.

Fair-stand kitchens are more than just places to cook food. Cut through the grease and there's plenty of fellowship there.

It's amazing what you can do with a spatula.

Joni is amazed that I like to stay in the kitchen at the fair stand. At home, I avoid cooking anything more complicated than macaroni and cheese, and the occasional meat loaf.

But fair cooking is just more fun than home cooking. It's more like an assembly line. Once you get up and running, it's hard to slow down.

At home, our kitchen is crowded at times with everything from Becca's homework to Bailey's assorted clothes.

The kitchen often is more an art gallery of our children's creations than a place for cooking.

If there were a couch in the kitchen, the kids would camp out there.

The advantage of working in the fair-stand kitchen is I don't have to clean up. Someone else does the dishes.

There's a variety of food at the fair. Why, there's more variety than Becca's third-grade spelling tests.

From spies to fireflies, Becca's been learning how to spell her share of words.

It's a lot like cooking. You have to start small and work your way up to the bigger stuff.

Becca has been working hard to make the "grades." The word was on her spelling test.

She also has had her share of screams, pools, flakes, skies, crutches and coaches, all words that she is learning to spell. So far, the screams have only been on paper.

Fair food didn't make the spelling test, although Becca's clearly well versed in funnel cakes.

I still haven't gotten her to try the fish. Becca has little use for most food. She survives largely on chocolate milk and chicken nuggets, two things not offered at our church fair stand.

Politicians might want to stay out of the kitchen during fair week, but our church group couldn't be happier.

This year's SEMO District Fair is now a memory, but the aroma lives on, at least in the fair-stand kitchen.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.