View a slideshow of photos from the 2009 Medieval Fair

Brew fit for a viking

The award for best drink of the fair goes to Clan McGilly’s Odin’s Ale, Valhalla Brew. It was available at this weekend’s Medieval Fair, and is pretty much just a fancy Middle Age name for “root beer.”

The delicious brew was available for $10 from Clan McGilly’s drink booth, which was one of the weekend’s most productive vendors, boasting long lines all day, every day. In order to fill the wishes of thirsty fair-goers, McGilly’s employed a small army of beer wenches, procuring and refilling various drinks nine hours each day.

Amongst the other drinks was a fruit punch, a raspberry lemonade and a cream soda – all featuring unnecessarily long, but appropriately silly medieval nicknames. The raspberry lemonade in particular stood out, as it bubbled with carbonation.

However, the root beer is of the greatest quality. I refilled my one-liter jug three times after walking around in the weekends’ heat.

It’s a bit heavy on the sugar, but it comes in a great souvenir bottle and lasts a while because of the stopper on top.

Hopefully it’ll tide me over until next year’s fair.

Some heart-stopping food

This weekend’s Medieval Fair boasted a cornucopia of high-cholesterol, fried, unorthodox and otherwise delicious and unhealthy food, and I spent a decent chunk of the three days living up to my family name.

Among the different foods I sampled were “carnie” classics like the giant funnel cake, cream soda and all manners of fried meat on a stick – as well as previously un-experienced tacos from Dan’s Indian tacos – and some pretty crazy Far Eastern cuisine. However, the ultimate combo I arrived at relied heavily on the fair’s more traditional fare.

For my entrée, a hunk of grease-dripping, steroid-poisoned turkey leg; the breakfast of a true carnie. It provides the protein one needs for a long day of tricking customers into shelling out inordinate amounts of cash on futile attempts to win cheap relics made in China.

While incredibly impractical to consume with only one hand (recall, your other one is clutching a sticky bottle of root beer), it is nonetheless delicious, at least for the first few bites, given that it is cooked properly. After grappling with the leg for a few minutes, it generally becomes clear who will win this matchup (hint: not you), as the standard carnie turkey leg is roughly the size of your head. This is where the root beer comes in handy.

The “Valhalla Brew” root beer mentioned above is incredibly valuable to the turkey leg-consuming process, as you have no hope of washing down the big stinky hunk of brawn and skin without it. The stickiness of the bottle, combined with the sweetness of the drink itself forces you to recall every time you have ever exercised, only to realize that it was all in vain. But the beverage segues nicely into dessert.

My highlight dessert of this year’s fair certainly faced stiff competition from one of the biggest bags of cotton candy I’ve ever seen (yes, size does matter) and the standard powdered sugar funnel cake, yet still emerged victorious in a landslide. Nothing beats kettle corn when it’s done right, and the so-called “honeycorn” I found was among the best I’ve ever had.

For a mere $6, one could purchase a bag of “honeycorn” roughly the length and width of one of Blake Griffin’s arms, though I’m sure the honeycorn would be far more delicious. I intend to be scraping kernel shells out of my teeth for the next six to eight weeks.

I have some serious cardio to do this week.

-Matt Carney is a journalism sophomore.