A delicious Harvest Festival challenge
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The Thames River Mud Pies made by Miss Ingersoll Restaurant might be best described as heaps of chocolate and butterscotch, a chocolate-crumb crust and a lot of whipped cream.
“It was… excellent,” said Kate-Lynn Pink, winner of the Ingersoll Harvest Festival pie eating contest junior division.
“I’d say good,” said Bailey Pink, second place in the junior division. “It was hard to break through the crust.
“No it wasn’t!” Kate-Lynn laughed. “It wasn’t ‘that’ hard.”
“The centre was like a butterscotch, which was really nice because it was creamy,” said Bailey.
“I didn’t know what that was,” Kate-Lynn admitted.
“But it was a lot of chocolate,” said Bailey.
“And whipped cream,” Kate-Lynn added.
Contestants in Saturday’s pie eating contest were each presented a Thames River Mud Pie – small-size for the junior division, and large for the open division – and no utensils.
Kate-Lynn initially looked a bit surprised, asking Bailey, “Are we supposed to eat the whole thing?”
Yes they were and yes she did, devouring her mini mud pie in less than half of the allotted three minutes to win the division which included Daniel McQuiggin from London.
“We’ve done it (pie-eating contest) a couple of years,” said Scott Gillies, curator of the Ingersoll Cheese and Agricultural Museum.
Ingersoll Councillor Gord Lesser was this year’s full-pie open division winner, cleaning his plate down to crumbs within the three-minute time limit and narrowly defeating second-place Ingersoll Councillor Mike Bowman.
Nathan Daniels, 10, with face completely covered in whipped cream, was the youngest to attempt the full pie.
Connor Gunkel, from Tillsonburg, loved the mud pie, especially the “the whipped cream and chocolate.”
“I just dunked my face right in,” laughed Gunkel, 18, who planned to finish what he started at home.
“I’m going to finish eating the rest later.”
The Harvest Festival, which has a 25-plus year history in Ingersoll, in years past was a five-day festival with two evening dinner events, followed by downtown sidewalk days on Friday, then moving to the Ingersoll Cheese and Agricultural Museum for the weekend.
In the past couple of years the one-day Harvest Festival, said Gillies, has been a celebration of the end of summer.
“We had kids crafts in the museum school. Members of the Model T assembly team put on three different shows where they put together a pile of car parts and drive it away in six minutes. One of our partner museums, the Gay Lea Dairy Heritage Museum (Aylmer) is here with an information booth and activities. We’ve got different food trucks, and almost 30 vendors and exhibitors, everything from children’s book authors to cat toys to woven rug and everything else in between.”
An official opening ceremony was held for the Kirwin Pavilion, recognizing the Kirwin Family and their generosity to the Town of Ingersoll.
Next month, you can carve a jack-o-lantern at the annual Pumpkin Fest on Saturday, Oct. 19, 12-4 p.m., an afternoon filled with family-fun activities at the museum.
“That’s a big one,” said Gillies. “We’ve had as many as 2,500 come out for that four hour event.
“Then we have Santa’s Village later in November and that’s always a big draw as well.”
Also coming up in November is the 8th Annual Ingersoll Craft Show, organized by Carol Sharpe, on Saturday, Nov. 9 at the Ingersoll Arena.
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