Five things you should eat at the Pennsylvania Farm Show this week

As the rural reporter at The Inquirer for about the last decade, I’ve cuddled bear cubs, rattlesnakes, and alligators, trembled in fear at horses, and been punched by the scent of deer urine farms.

Still, nothing scares me more than the mushroom burger at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.

I haven’t really missed a show since I began covering rural Pennsylvania, and I probably never will, regardless. If you’ve been there, you know. If you haven’t, take my advice from last year: pull your kids out of school, and go there this week. The show runs through Saturday at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, and it’s free to get in. It’s an agricultural spectacle you’ll never forget, a place to see show rabbits, hogs, goats, and cows, all while learning where your food comes from.

It’s also a place to eat, with a gargantuan food hall filled with offerings I’m still uncovering. Shannon Powers, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture I pester often during the show, smartly said she didn’t have a favorite meal there.

“But on a cold day, a cup of trout chowder hits the spot,” she told me.

Trout stew? Who knew? There’s also goat stew.

I do have favorites, though, including the sugared, German almonds I end my day with every year. I went on opening day, Saturday (never go on opening day) and took my daughter, sampling some old standbys and interviewing folks about some popular foods there.

As a man of tradition, if I like a certain item on a menu, I’ll get it over and over again, for the rest of my life. I still have dreams about the 90’s-era Wawa hot roast beef and cheese sandwiches I ate religiously.

Anyhow, I get a brisket sandwich every year from a 4-H stand that’s actually not in the food hall, but rather the main hall, where the famous butter sculpture is. Get a map, seriously. You’ll need it.

Brisket has a special place in my heart. I ate it for Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, and this year, I paid $14 for thick-sliced brisket on a roll, which I slathered in BBQ sauce, while squatting on the floor.

Then, I followed it up with a flu shot, another farm show tradition.

This sandwich was not better than my holiday briskets, but I’m easy. Almost everything I’m willing to eat is “pretty good.”

I assumed proceeds of the sales go to Pennsylvania 4-H clubs. The folks cutting the brisket didn’t know, though my receipt credits the Pennsylvania Livestock Association.

If you want to save a few bucks at the 4-H booth, the pork chop on a stick is $8.

I know mushrooms grow underground, and that Chester County is one of the nation’s top producers, but I assumed they come from even deeper places.

I’m not a fan and can’t be convinced, though I did have somewhat of a revelation about the mushroom burgers for sale at the Mushroom Growers of Pennsylvania booth.

They are “blended” with beef, specifically for big babies like me.

“It’s an introduction, an easy introduction. It’s 75 ground beef and 25 percent chopped mushrooms,” said Gale Ferranto, of Mushroom Farmers of Pennsylvania. “Would you like to try one?”

I declined.

There are more mushroom offerings, too, something called a “mushroom salad,” which I probably wouldn’t eat for less than $500.

“Somebody back home in Philly wanted the mushroom salad. She’s pregnant, like 7 months pregnant, so you have to do what she says,” said attendee Mark Soffa.

The Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association offers up a lot of food during the week, and when I saw grilled cheeses — a parent’s best friend — I grabbed one for my daughter, along with a chocolate milk.

The combo is wallet-friendly too, just $7

“Chocolate milk comes from brown cows,” I told my daughter.

She’s too smart for that joke and rolled her eyes, like her mother.

The grilled cheese crew actually had crockpots full of melted butter, slathering white bread before sending it off to the grill. You can choose American or Pepper Jack.

“We’ll at least make a few thousand today,” the cashier told me. “We made 500 yesterday, and that was a half day.”

My daughter’s verdict: “Very gooey.”

I’m cheating a bit here, including two items from the PA Cooperative Potato Growers, Inc., which is the oldest potato cooperative in the United States.

I planned on focusing entirely on the sweet potato, which is swimming in butter and brown sugar, with some cinnamon on the side. It’s basically a desert.

My Polish heritage requires that I never turn down a pierogi, though, or never fail to mention their wholesome goodness. I grew up on them, in the way other folks may have grown up on mac and cheese or PB&J. I actually prefer mine fried a bit, but the Farm Show serves them drowning in butter and onions: 5 for $4.

You can’t really mess up a piergoi, particularly in the Keystone State.

“These aren’t like Maryland pierogies,” a woman from Maryland told me.

The potato growers told me they sell 6 tons of baking potatoes at the show, plus 8 to 10 tons for french fries, and about 1.5 tons of sweet potatoes.

Plus, there are potato donuts.

The most well-known, must-have item at the Pennsylvania Farm Show is the milkshakes offered up by the Pennsylvania Dairymen’s Association since 1953.

On Saturday, the lines were a bit bonkers, more than 100 deep on each of the dozen or cash registers in the various locations where they’re sold at the farm show complex. I’ve had them before, and I’ll say they are “thick and creamy” as advertised.

Are they different than any other soft-serve style milkshake in America? I have to work with these people, so yes, I’ll say they’re different.

A colleague who was at the farm show had one and told me she didn’t “get the hype.”

I ran into a mother and daughter who had ordered 10 of them.

Either way, you have to have one while you’re there.