nosh nook #119 - thursday, august 27, 2009

new york state fair's butter sculpture celebrates old-time milk delivery (link)
08.26.09 - the post-standard - by debra groom

oh new york state fair! you just started today but you're so far away! there's no way i can justify traveling all the way up to syracuse for you! it's just not fair! i want see your extreme canines stunt dog show & your hollywood racing pigs & your duck races & your scooby doo tent & the master of the chainsaw brian ruth. how about your entertainment?! you've got kelly clarkson tonight & then kenny chesney & the fray & funnyman ventriloquist jeff dunham & crue fest & kid rock & a tractor pull AND a demolition derby! um, does anyone with a car want to drive to the ny state fair with me some time over the next twelve days? maybe we can camp out there til labor day?

oh. there are also butter & cheese sculptures. apparently they're a big thing at the state fair. they must be or the post-standard (out of syracuse) wouldn't be reporting on them. yesterday around 9am, the fair unveiled "cow power," a butter sculpture that "celebrates the old-time milk delivery system--the milk man." it's a sculpture with a cow milk man stepping out of a milk truck to deliver the morning's milk, cream & butter. for those of you not familiar with a little thing i like to call "history," this used to be how people got their dairy products. the post-standard notes that the milk man used to come "right to the doorsteps of his customers in cities and towns throughout central new york, new york state and the country." um, couldn't they have just written "throughout the country" & saved time?

it's made of 800 pounds of butter. they could've just used a hundred pounds of butter & that would've been a lot of butter, but they had to go all the way baby...all the way home...with 800 pounds...of butter. oh! are you blind? no problem. they'll have "a hands-on clay model of the butter sculpture" for the visually impaired. back to the cow milk man thing though...the reason why they made the milk man a cow goes deeper than the fact that cows give us milks & butters & whatnot. cows also fart & poop all the time & that means a whole bunch of methane gas. one farm outside of syracuse has begun to "use cow manure to make methane gas that then generates electricity." i knew this sort of thing would happen if we got a democrat in the white house. i hope he doesn't subject me to a death panel & take away my gun too. at least let me go to the state fair first, mr obama.