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Angela
Noodle maker
turns avocation into a living
By Elaine Bailey
“When Generous Motors laid me off, I turned to what I knew how to do…
make noodles.” Tom Hiel shares his story as he expertly chops a
heap of portabella, shitake, and oyster mushrooms. He will sauté
the mushrooms and later add them to pork that has simmered eight
hours. All ingredients will culminate in Chipotle Pork, an entrée
for visitors seeking new fare at this year’s 2013 Great Darke County
Fair.
Although Hiel has made noodles at the Darke County Fair for 17 years,
his destiny for noodle cuisine began when he was ten years old in his
grandmother’s kitchen. It was there that he watched his
grandmother Franer mix various flours, seasonings, and eggs as she was
raising him in the small Greene County village of Jamestown,
Ohio. The art of cooking runs in Tom’s family as his son is a
chef in New York. Tom however admits, “His world and my world are
totally different.”
Now living in the Kettering and Xenia areas, Tom and his crew make
noodles for 28 festivals each year in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, West
Virginia, Illinois, and Pennsylvania. And for the first time this year,
they will travel to Texas. Their largest event is the Christmas
in Historic Springboro Festival where it is not uncommon for folks to
wait in a three-hour line for a steaming container of rich, homemade
noodles. Their most ardent customers are children.
That rings true at the Great Darke County Fair as ten-year-old Dylan
from Englewood dives into a mound of noodles as his grandmother
confirms that she has been looking forward all day to the noodles.
A Heartland employee walks onto the fair grounds expressly to purchase
a serving of noodles, while promising she again will return, adding yet
another year to the three that she has patronized their business.
Five-year patrons from West Milton enthusiastically admit this is the
first place they visit. The wife, originally from Arcanum, looks
forward to her annual return to Granny Franer’s Noodles, validating the
business’s motto ‘Just One Taste… That’s all it Takes.’
Even Sunny Anderson’s Food Network has repeatedly featured the master
chef of Granny Franer’s Homemade Noodles. If his four
experimental flavored butter recipes with Givaudan Flavors out of
Switzerland prove to be successful… well… stay tuned.
Friends for 47 years, the crew of four enjoys the Great Darke County
Fair because it runs nine days and ‘It’s a fair everyone wants to go
to.’ They have a lot of fun working at it and ‘love the people.’
This is evident as Roxanne McKown, a stay-at-home grandmother, strikes
up friendly conversation as she ladles generous servings and concludes
by cautioning customers to be careful because the noodles are hot.
Angel Feris, a special education paraprofessional in Xenia schools,
accurately checks to see that the homemade mashed potatoes, containing
thin, brown wisps of skin peaking through the fluffy mounds, are 135
degrees. She enjoys passing her cooking skills on to her young
grandsons who love to practice and demonstrate their ability to crack
eggs, a step in the noodle-making process in which all are adept.
Bill Feris enjoys retirement while engaging in winter projects such as
retooling a mobile home, an enterprise that all four undertook this
past winter, resulting in a customized kitchen. The group gave
careful thought to the design and layout of their new kitchen.
Faucets are positioned above the vast cooking pots. The steamer
pans are strategically placed to allow for easy serving. The
arrangement affords ample room for four friends to work… plus… a
novice, noodle-making fairgoer.
Pictured below are
Dylan; Roxanne; Roxanne & Bill; and Tom.
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