September 27 - Buckwheat Festival

Goatview Farm - The Saint Report

www.goatview.com

September 27
Buckwheat

This photo of a buckwheat cake, stolen from the Preston County Buckwheat Festival official website, graphically demonstrates why only professional food photographers should be allowed to take pictures of food.

September 25 through Sunday, September 28, Kingwood, West Virginia, is hosting its annual Preston County Buckwheat Festival. Rather than doing my normal tongue-in-cheek review of the event, I will let Kingwood do my work for me....

Buckwheat Festival Trivia

Buckwheat Cake Dinners From the Kingwood VFD Community Building kitchens, all-you-can-eat Buckwheat Cake Dinners are served with Preston County produced whole hog sausage (two patties come with the dinner, but extra patties may be purchased), margarine, syrup, applesauce, and a choice of beverage.

Grocery List

During each Buckwheat Festival, thousands of visitors flock to the KVFD Community Building to feast on Preston County's famous buckwheat cake and sausage dinners. The record number of dinners served during a four-day Festival at the KVFD alone is 16,129. The "Grocery list" required to feed such a throng is truly mind-boggling. The sausage is a totally Preston County product, except for the seasonings. 4-H and FFA project hogs are prepared at the Preston High School meat processing facility. [Now that is something most high schools can't boast of having!] Then, in the Community Building's pristine "Meat Room" [ditto], this prime pork is cut up, twice ground, seasoned and pattied. For the above record year, 11,442 pounds of pork were made into 37,201 patties (5 patties per pound) to be served as part of the Community Building dinners. Used to season this sausage were 12 pounds of Jamaican ginger, 18 pounds of black pepper, 150 pounds of salt, and 288 pounds of brown sugar. Beside the sausage, some of the supplies ordered were 612 pounds of margarine, 4,944 (original order) half-pints of milk, 288 #10 cans of applesauce, 1,238 24-ounce bottles of syrup, 2 tons of buckwheat flour,and 50 pounds of yeast -- as well as 700 pounds of coffee to fill the bottomless cups.

In Festival supply annals, 1994 is remembered as the year of the milk run. An unprecedented 8,000 half-pints of milk were consumed and the demand remained. Those in charge of supplying the kitchens raided grocery and convenience stores and rounded up 88 gallon jugs, [1,408 half-pints], leaving the general population of the town virtually milkless during the weekend.

To its credit, Kingwood doesn't have a Buckwheat Queen--it is King Buckwheat and Lady Ag.

UPDATE: It seems that once again the Saint Report has erred. I just received the following from a better-informed reader: "I was reading your section about Preston County's Buckwheat Festival. You said there was no Buckwheat Queen. There is a Buckwheat Queen and it is a big deal. The interested girls have to write essays, go through interviews and then finally a pageant to select the winner. Yes, there is also King Buckwheat and Lady Agriculture. I don't know how they are selected. I thought you might be interested." And I AM!

Not only do letters like this keep the Saint Reports honest, they also prove that someone is reading them.

UPDATE ON THE UPDATE: Sheri Welch advises us that the previous update was not entirely correct. "There is a King Buckwheat and a Lady Agriculture, but the queen is Queen Ceres, named after the mythological goddess of agriculture. Much better sounding than Queen Buckwheat, don't you think?"

Yes. MUCH better.

Saints celebrating feast days today include, but are not limited to, Saint Vincent de Paul (patron saint of charitable societies, hospitals, and prisoners; invoked to find lost articles and for spiritual help) and Saint Elzear. If St. Vincent de Paul isn't also the patron saint of eBay, he ought to be.

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Meat Loaf, nee Marvin Lee Aday of Dallas, turns 56 today!

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