Windsor and Essex County pumped for Harrow Fair

HARROW, Ont. - Know the food, know the Harrow Fair.
Two sisters, Harrow high school and St. Clair College grads who've gone on to culinary careers, have written a book with their cousin about the fair and its fare.

The Harrow Fair Cookbook, selling for $29.95, will be available from publisher Whitecap Books by mid-August and on sale at this year's Labour Day weekend fair.

The big book tells country stories, offers fair archive photos and contains 150 recipes. It walks readers through how to prepare such fair foods as corn dogs, fried chicken, and pies, pies and more prize ribbon-worthy pies.

Co-authors Moira Sanders and Lori Elstone, the daughters of Sharon and Chuck McDonald from the Harrow area, wrote the book with their cousin, Beth Goslin Maloney, who is originally from Kingsville.

Sanders now lives in Mount Albert, in the Newmarket area north of Toronto, teaches cooking classes and has worked in a variety of restaurants, such as Senses in Toronto. She also ran a kitchen in a cooking school in the Limousin region of France.

Elstone resides in St. Catharines, has worked extensively in the Niagara food and wine industry, and writes for the media, including the Harrow News and St. Catharines Standard.

Maloney works in food marketing in New York City. She helped shape the cookbook's content and approach.

Like a love letter to the community they call home and the country fair they remember, their cookbook celebrates food, farming and fairgoers.

"All three of us have a passion for food and Essex County," said Sanders, 37. "It was combined effort. That's how it all came about.

The Harrow Fair has stayed true to what's made it so great. This is something special, not just another small-town fair."

Another reason for the book about the Harrow Fair, which the publisher calls Canada's favourite, is that this area is under-represented in cookbooks compared to places like the Niagara region and Kelowna, B.C., the sisters said.

The book is also in tune with current consumer food trends that favour local ingredients, frugality and simplicity.

Those who have seen the book and been involved in its development feel it transcends the location, said Elstone, 35.

"This is not a quickie, 30-minutes-or-less for dinner kind of book," she said. "That's not to say all of the recipes are super involved. They're real, from-scratch recipes."

Even the authors, who worked on farms back in the day, were impressed with the wide range of ingredients available here, including field-fresh produce, greenhouse vegetables, lake fish and local wines.

"Until we actually, really started working on it, we didn't have any idea how much stuff there actually is here," Sanders said.

They describe the wineries, refer to the sun parlour climate and note the area's latitude is in line with northern California and Italy.

Besides produce and fruit pies, they included recipes for buttered pickerel and pan-fried perch. One chapter highlights recipes for watermelon martinis, picnic table iced tea and more libations to enjoy in the heat of an Essex County summer. Accents like authentic fair ribbons and country-style gingham backgrounds provide local colour with a country-style.

Look for family references and photos that include the sisters' dad, Chuck, as a youngster, Sanders' son Gavin and Elstone's son Hugh. Sanders, Elstone and Maloney dedicate the book to their children and "others who help make the fair so special."

Not all the material they found in more than two years of research and recipe-testing made the cut. The authors left out a Portuguese recipe they considered a shout-out to the community.

A book tour will include a stop at the Sept. 2-5 fair, where the sister-author duo plan to have a booth to display and sell their new book. See www.theharrowfaircookbook.com.

They wrote the cookbook to celebrate a fair that's inspired and influenced them in their careers with food, created so many memories and offered so much fun with food and farming. They hope readers, wherever they live, enjoy the book and its message: Harrow Fair is special and so are the area's people, their farms, recipes and food. Their mom loves it.

"I'm very proud of them," Sharon McDonald said. "To see it in print was like, wow! My daughters did that? I'm thrilled for all three of them."

The book appeals to another cook, Harrow's Pie Lady bakery and restaurant owner Sandi MacCharles, who has also won several fair ribbons for baking.

"That's really cool to me," she said.
The Harrow Fair board provided research material and supports the book, said public-relations co-ordinator Brenda Anger, who has been involved for 45 years. Her apple dumpling recipe is in the book.

"It kind of advertises the fair. It encourages people to come out and see what we're all about," Anger said. "It's going to fly that book, just everything about it. I'm telling you, I can't say enough good things about it."