Alpacas, just about the softest creatures you'll ever touch, tend to look like Muppets when rained upon. They are always, in the words of Cluckin Awesome Coops owner Reece McClung, "very unlikely looking creatures."

The Mother Earth News Fair is an odd duck.  I write that rather than “strange beast” because the fair, held at a verdant ski resort an hour east of Pittsburgh last weekend, was far more plucky than beastly, and not just because torrential rain and wind walloped the thing all through Saturday.  The “fun-filled, hands-on sustainable lifestyle event” was awash, as could be expected, in exhibitor booths hawking bee keeping products and heirloom seeds and energy efficiency technologies.  There were over 240 pretty fantastic workshops, hour-long sessions with titles like “How to Cure Your Own Bacon,” and “Homesteading the Suburbs with the Kids,” and “Hand-Milk Your Goat; Make Feta, Chevre, and Ricotta; and Stay Out of Jail.”

But there were also exhibitors demonstrating for rapt middle aged men the newest and greatest development in drill bit technology, pens of alpacas, and a wildly popular booth selling slim plastic devices that allow women to pee standing up.  The event was slammed with people.  When the sun finally came out on Sunday and everyone wheeled out his wares and skills in full, the vibe was pretty hard to beat.  Imagine the rosiest aspect of the spunky side of DIY America.  Malaise was unthinkable.

The concession stand's chili, which looked and smelled distinctively of ketchup, getting a boost with a pat of butter.

However, for an event featuring a workshop named “Organic Eating on a Dime” and children’s tutorials like “Trapping Animals for Food and Survival,” the cuisine was appalling.  Seven Springs Ski Resort, the host facility, obviously had a lock-down on concessions, and save a precious few exceptions, the only available meals were mass market, assembly-line garbage, tasteless things processed and compiled into existence long ago and reheated under lamps or a deep fryer.  So maybe it was more a schizophrenic duck.  Or a duck with an identity crisis.  Or a duck that could break free of the flock only so much.

Thankfully, there were two food trucks that somehow wiggled their ways into the scene, three or four snack shacks making fresh maple kettle corn and the like, and some smoothie/coffee purveyors.

The saving grace of Sunday afternoon was Randita’s Grill, a small silver vegan food truck powered entirely by the solar panels on its roof, panels hooked to a generator that allowed them to stay fully juiced all Saturday even when the sky was low and thick and gray.  At one point Randita’s had an hour wait, and although that was partly due to having only one competitor other than fast food, it was an appropriate reflection of approval nonetheless.  As I waited for my lunch, an older woman who had eaten the African peanut stew approached owners Randy and Dale, feverishly whipping up grub, to announce, “I have to tell you, this is the best thing I’ve eaten here in three days.”

I began to covet that stew.  But I and my partner in crime that weekend, owner of Cluckin’ Awesome Chicken Coops, had already ordered the spicy taco wrap and the hot sausage wrap.  The sausage was solid, high-end veggie sausage in a spicy sauce with peppers grilled just enough to be singed but not so much as to be limpid.  The taco wrap, though, was the knockout.

I use tempeh when I make my tacos at home.  It holds up well in the pan and can be diced into ground beef-sized bits without disintegrating to mush.  I’ve always had problems pulling the same thing off with tofu.  In truth, I’ve never seen it done well, and I’ve sampled a lot of attempts.

But Randy used tofu, and it was delicious.  It replicated the ground beef form, was somehow solid and juicy without being über-fried, and achieved what Cluckin’ Awesome described as “a creamy roundness.”  I’m really not sure how she did it.  And the spice was excellent, distinctly Southwestern and with a bite that was not overwhelming.  The Mexican sauce, though delicious with lime and cilantro flavors, could very easily overwhelm the dish.  I’d recommend no more than a dollop.  Because it was the deceptive simplicity and spice that make the wrap the best fake-meat taco I’ve had in a very long time.