Quick Takes at The Big E

A few interesting things noticed at The Big E on Saturday...

The flower beds in front of the Brooks Building on the Big E grounds were filled with colorful pepper plants bordered with marigolds. The peppers were green, red, orange, and yellow and Lynnafred and I couldn't resist picking a few to see if they were edible. They were.

From their appearance, I figured they were Thai Hot Peppers, and a quick enquiry inside the Brooks Building confirmed this - they simply phoned up the groundskeepers and asked.

Unfortunately, these Thai Hots would have been better named "Thai Milds." They had the smoky peppery flavor of Thai peppers, but none of the heat. I even tried chewing a couple of the seeds, but to no avail.

We bumped into this very cool junk art statue of an ear of corn inside the New Hampshere building. The corn is made entirely of plastic milk jugs which have been painted pale yellow in the interest of realism and lulz.

And over in the Connecticut building, one of the central booths was dedicated to tobacco, which is perhaps our most famous crop. Special qualities of the soil and climate in the Connecticut River Valley make the area ideal for growing broadleaf tobacco, used to wrap some of the best cigars in the world.  At the exhibit, a young lady was busy hand-rolling the cigars which were for sale right there.

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