[caption id="attachment_615" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Stand in Exhibition Hall for Craftsmen's Classic"] [/caption] At the start of football season, I converted Big Red over to its high volume set up. That means I took the grill out and added a third fryer. The sole reason is that for football games where funnel cakes rule, we needed more fire power to try to hold down the lines.  The third fryer helps to do that and because we have games every weekend throughout the fall, the grill was  just wasted space. That, however, caused a slight problem when Todd and Danny from Americrown confirmed that I was doing the Craftsmen's Classic Arts and Crafts Festival at Richmond Raceway over the weekend. They gave me an inside stand in the Exhibition Hall and asked me to do basically a full menu. But because the grill is out of Big Red, and I still have several more football games, I was met with a challenge and forced to come up with an all fried menu. [caption id="attachment_616" align="alignright" width="300" caption="New Fish Sandwich Platter"] [/caption] So, I added a fish sandwich and a chicken sandwich. Both could be expanded to platters with fries and slaw. Of course, we also did our staples: funnel cakes, corn dogs and our fresh squeezed lemonade. Plus because it was a bit on the cold side, we kept coffee going all of the time. Peggy and Ryan manned the booth inside while Chuck and I did all of the cooking.  As it turned out, I did mostly funnel cakes and Chuck handled the fries, corn dogs and sandwiches. By the way, he did an awesome job and the new items were great. [caption id="attachment_617" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="One of the "Hot" Booths at the Craftsmen's Classic"] [/caption] The Craftsmen's Classic is a huge festival held twice a year at Richmond Raceway Complex and draws 25-35,000 folks at each show.  It is ranked as one of the top ten crafts shows in the country. It was also great to see some old friends like Steve from TJ's Catering that now operates Helmut's Strudel, and John Bell of Fresh Roasted Nuts by GSNC (who I lovingly call Lemonade John). Over the years, we've done a bunch of shows together and I truly count both as good friends. All in all, it was a good show.  Our volume was up from the last time we did this show two years ago and although we could have handled more, it was still a solid effort. The only problem we had was on Sunday morning, Peggy fixed a 40-cup pot of coffee and forgot to put a filter in.  I, of course, drew the first cup. Boy, was that nasty. [caption id="attachment_618" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Perfect Funnel Cake Cooks Merrily Away"] [/caption] Given a little more time, I might also have tried fried oreos and fried twinkies. But, that's for another day and another show. Meanwhile, Tank, Laura and Mark, along with some help from Tank's sister, Kimberly, Jean, who has been on the injured reserve list, and her friend, Gene all pitched in  at Liberty for another football game. While it wasn't another record setter, it was another good effort for the Big Red Crew. Sadly, what we used to consider a great game, as was our volume Saturday, we now consider it a bit disappointing. That's how good the LU games have been this year. But, with the colder weather, our lemonade sales drop considerably and everything depends on how many more funnel cakes and corn dogs we do than in the warmer games. Still, we're having a very good year at Liberty. This week, we have the final JMU football game of the season and basketball starts at Liberty.  While I'm still working out all of the details, we may be changing things up a bit for our indoor program for the winter. More to come on that next week.