Riverside County Fair and Date Festival

This past week, our company serviced the kitchen fire suppresion systems and fire extinguishers on the food trailers at the Riverside County Fair and Date Festival in Indio, out in the desert past Palm Springs. It was a lot of fun learning how to service the fire suppression systems installed in these kitchen on wheels. But it was a lot of work - we worked 12-13 hours a day for 3 days straight to get all the food vendors' trailer kitchens serviced, cleaned and upgraded before the fair opened. And man, it is amazing (and sick)to see how much grease gets collected up in the hoods and ducts over the professional-grade deep-fryers, griddles and gas burners! I am talking literally an inch thick of hardened grease, fat and oil that you have to chip off in chunks as big as Oreos (and it's black like Oreos too)!

And speaking of Oreos, I serviced a trailer known as Chicken Charlie's - this guy is famous for deep-frying just about anything. Like Oreos, Pop-Tarts, cheesecake, frog legs, White Castle sliders, s'mores, peanutbutter sandwiches, watermelons, Twinkles (umm, that sounds good!), assorted veggies (my favorite - cored zucchini with a hotdog stuck in the middle, then dipped in batter and deep-fried - sounds good).

And one of the most interesting concoctions he invented - deep-fried Coca-Cola! How the heck do you do that!?!?! Well, he mixes Coke syrup with a bit of flour, deep-fries it, then tops it off with more Coke syrup and powdered sugar! Talk about sweet! But it makes me really want to try it, being a Coke lover and all. ;-) He ain't called the Deep Fry King for nothin'!


PS - Here's a short video from YouTube of Chicken Charlie fryin' up some Pop-Tarts! That looks really yummy!