It seems that every small town in
Ohio holds a yearly festival to celebrate
something. We have the
Milan Melon Festival, the
Fish Festival, among others.
One of the biggest and most popular festivals is the
Circleville Pumpkin Show.
The Circleville Pumpkin Festival is one of the largest pumpkin festivals in the
country.
These people really
love their pumpkin.
Curious people that we are, as well as lovers of all food
pumpkin, Husband and I spent a day at the Circleville Pumpkin Show to see what
the hoo ha is about and hopefully full our tummies with pumpkiny treats.
The festival takes up almost every block in tiny downtown
Circleville. The big draw is the display of giant pumpkins entered in the
pumpkin growing contest that has more categories than I knew there were types
of gourds and pumpkins.
Believe it or not, these are the small giant pumpkins!
Just about every other festival booth was a food booth. Surprisingly,
there weren’t as many pumpkin flavored goodies as news reports led us to
believe. However, with a little determined hunting, we found a few pumpkin
flavored gems among the funnel cakes. Hmmmm…funnel cakes…
Sadly, there weren’t any pumpkin spice flavored funnel cakes
for sale. Instead, we found pumpkin mini doughnuts. They were the perfect companion
to a cup of hot apple cider. Yum!
Most of the pumpkin flavored food were desserts including
pumpkin fudge, pumpkin roll, pumpkin pie and the occasional pumpkin spice
coffee. In the interest of helping a local foodie, we sampled homemade caramels
– delish!
Not pumpkin but still good!
We finally found three food vendors that realize that
pumpkin is a squash and can be used for cooking as well as baking desserts.
Husband gave the pumpkin chili a whirl.
It was a sweet chili rather than the typical spicy chili he
makes. I’m a fan of sweet over spicy hot and called it a win.
I tried the pumpkin hamburger. It was more like a pumpkin
sloppy joe when I expected to get something resembling a hamburger patty. I was
happy to find that unlike some of the pumpkin fudge and coffee, the pumpkin hamburger
(and the chili) was made with pumpkin as well as pumpkin spices.
The pumpkin hamburger is more like a pumpkin sloppy joe
Husband gave the pumpkin pot pie a whirl for dessert.
I tried the deep fried pumpkin blossoms. They reminded me of
the squash blossoms I add to garden salads with the exception of deep-frying
them of course.
Deep fried pumpkin blossoms with ranch dipping sauce
Would we go back? I’m not sure. I guess if we had a child or
teen involved in some of the activities we would. I expected a larger amount of
pumpkin food and pumpkin-related items and activities besides the giant pumpkin
display along the lines of the melon flavored food and everything offered at
the Milan Melon Festival. I think next year, we’ll skip the huge crowd and
spend time at a pumpkin patch, which might have a better pumpkin related items
to crowd ratio.
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