One of the highlights of the Stratham Fair is the pie eating contest. Clowns travel throughout the crowd as heralds, calling the warriors to the arena.
Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs can be blamed for the entire eating contest thing. In the year Nathan's first opened, 1916, they held the first July 4th Nathan's Famous eating contest on Coney Island. As if that weren't enough ignominy, Nathan's is also credited as being the Home of Fast Food. Nathan's also came up with the idea of the International Federation of Competitive Eating (IFOCE). It's for real. The IFOCE seems to realize that it is funny as evidenced by its official heraldic emblem bearing two standing lions facing each other, each holding one end of a footlong hotdog in his mouth.
Some words of advice for first time competitors:
- Don't eat anything before the contest to maximize your potential pie intake.
- Attach your plate to the table with tape or Velcro to prevent it from sliding away from you.
- Tie your hands behind your back. you don't want to get disqualified.
- Slam your whole face into the pie and stick out your tongue. Pull the food toward your mouth.
- Eat by turning your head to the sides and up and down. This will get lot of pie stuck on your face and in your hair. You will be dirty but it will get the pie off the plate faster.
- Try to eat as much crust as possible, as a half-empty plate from side to side looks like a lot less pie then from top to bottom. Try to uncover as much plate or pan as possible.
- Have fun.
Years of training are required to become a champion!
You may enjoy reading: Earl, you're outta luck. Mary Anne's a 4 H'er.
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Whether they are made of pork, as is most often the case, or of beef, veal, buck, goat, chamois, venison, sheep, wild boar, or horse, cured meats (salumi in Italian) were born of a need to conserve meat for months after the slaughter of the animal. Salting, smoking, and air-drying are the three processes by which fresh meat is transformed into a long-keeping staple.
While all meats are salted, some are smoked, and others are simply air-dried. Italians have been making an amazing array of cured meats for thousands of years using both noble and humble parts of the animals they raise. The ancient Romans prized the spicy pork sausages crafted in the southern region of Basilicata (called Lucania then, and giving rise to sausages named Lucaniche still eaten today). And, fond of intensely tasty foods, they smoked or salted whole pig thighs, yielding savory Prosciutti not unlike those still made in mountain villages across Italy.
Two thousand years later, pork remains Italy's favorite meat for curing. Pigs are especially prevalent in areas where there is a notable cheesemaking tradition: after all, wherever there is cheese, there is excess whey, which, combined with bran and corn, becomes perfect feed for pigs.
The Silver Surfer (Norrin Radd) is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero created by Jack Kirby. The character first appears in the comic book Fantastic Four #48 (March 1966), the first of a three-issue arc fans and historians call "The Galactus Trilogy".
Originally a young astronomer of the planet Zenn-La, in order to save his home-world from destruction by a fearsome cosmic entity known as Galactus, Norrin Radd made a bargain with the being, pledging himself to serve as his herald. Imbued in return with a tiny portion of Galactus' Power Cosmic, Radd acquired great powers and a silvery appearance. Galactus also created for Radd a surfboard-like craft — modeled after a childhood fantasy of his — on which he would travel at speeds beyond that of light. Known from then on as the Silver Surfer, Radd began to roam the cosmos searching for new planets for Galactus to consume. When his travels finally took him to Earth, the Surfer came face-to-face with the Fantastic Four, a team of powerful superheroes that helped him to rediscover his nobility of spirit. Betraying Galactus, the Surfer saved Earth but was punished in return with everlasting exile there.
Stan Lee enjoyed the character and decided to feature him in his own individual title in 1968. John Buscema was penciller for the first 17 issues of the series, with Kirby returning for the eighteenth and final issue. The first seven issues, which included anthological "Tales of the Watcher" backup stories, were 72-page (with advertising), 25-cent "giants", as opposed to typical 36-page, 12-cent comics of the time. Thematically, the stories dealt with the Surfer's exile on Earth and the inhumanity of man as observed by this noble yet fallen hero. The Silver Surfer comic book series became known as one of Lee's most thoughtful and introspective works. Englehart writes that Buscema and Lee were "pouring their souls into the series".
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