Big Red made its first appearance at the Chesterfield County Fair the past nine days.  While there were some problems and overall a bit disappointing, it was still a great experience, we made some new friends and learned alot. If you want to check out some pics, just click on the Flickr thingy at the side of my blog.  Then just look for the Fair set  and enjoy. Chesterfield County has adopted the same ridiculous standards as Henrico County in that they require a fire suppression system in trailers just like in restaurants.  Big Red doesn't have the system yet.  So, I couldn't cook inside the trailer.  That wasn't too bad as I was already planning on setting up a tent out back for my big grill thinking that the volume would be so much that the inside griddle wasn't big enough.  Setting up my fryers outside was no big deal and I figured we'd serve from Big Red, do our prep and serve our lemonade, tea and drinks.  Tank or I would cook and the girls would handle service and sales. Wrong! The Health Department said that they would allow the grill under the tent but that they wouldn't allow a fryer.  Both use propane.  Both are commercial.  The tent is fire retartdant.  What's the problem? By the way, the other counties with these standards allow cooking under a tent as long as you meet all of the other Health Department requirements, which we do. So, I couldn't offer funnel cakes, corn dogs or fries.  Probably cost me at least $300-$400 per day in sales. We also lost 2 1/2 days due to weather.  Something like 11 inches of rain.  What a mess! All in all, my first venture on the fair circuit wasn't very successful.  The crowds were OK on the weekends but a little light during the week.  And there were 32 food vendors.  Probably for that size fair, there should have been about half that many.  For instance, there were six other funnel cake vendors.  So nobody did all that well. We did surpringly well with Bar-B-Que and of all things Bologna Burgers.  Of course, we sold lemonade and tea like crazy. We were located right outside the Karaoke tent which was going every night.  Karaoke is an interesting phenonmenon.  Sometimes it can be foot stomping, dance while you cook good.  Other times, it makes your fillings hurt.  Unfortunately, I only wore out one pair of shoes while I lost five fillings. I did fall in love during the fair however, and Peggy is on her way to the curb.  Right across vendor way from us was Ronnie's Seafood out of Maryland.  Ronnie, his wife Sylvia, their daughter, Dawn and her daughter Jada ran the stand.  Jada, who is now six, started selling crab cakes when she was 2.  That's before she could even pronounce 'crab cakes'.  She definitely wrapped me around her little finger the first day.  Grandpa Ronnie also became one of my advisers offering bits of advice from his long years in the business. I also spent a good bit of time with Hans of Dimitri's Greek Foods.  They're another of the big guys who don't mind talking to a new guy like me.  Both Dimitri's and Ronnie will be doing the state fair next month. For us, we start in on our football schedule this week.  Tank and I will do the auction on Friday.  Tank and my sister Jean will handle Amelia on Saturday while Peggy and I with either Laura or Todd will handle JMU's opener on Saturday afternoon.  We also hope to be back in Fredericksburg this week or next for the big auction we did last year and thru February this year.  Our fall schedule is pretty full and Big Red will be well broken in by Thanksgiving.