So here we are in the Fun Season…the Fair Season. Everyone comes up with a reason to promote hot grease and sno cones and enough sugar to sink the island of Puerto Rico. On any given weekend one can drive across the Buckeye State and catch a whiff of the abovementioned gastronomic outrages at nearly every turn. Garrettsville’s SummerFest, Windham’s Bicentennial, Art on the Hill, Raccoon County Anything, St. Joseph’s Ox Roast Fair–we’ve all got ‘em. And we’re not the only ones!
State fairs are renown for being in the forefront of this stuff. There are lots of fairs but the State Fair is the big Lollapalooza when it comes to culinary cuckoo bites. In many places the vendors must “try out” their offerings before a panel of tasters before they’re allowed on the midway. This year Texas and Minnesota–by ByGolly!–seem to be in the lead when it comes to the fried and furious sweepstakes. Read on :
The land of Ten Thousand Lakes, the Land of Blue-sky Waters weighs in (literally) with spaghetti and meatballs on a stick tucked in a batter-ball and deep-fried (For brevity’s sake we will henceforth refer to foods as OAS–on a stick– or DF–deep-fried, where applicable). You can also get (Ho Hum) shrimp OAS or–we’re getting global here–camel OAS. Yup. The humped ones. Of course, Minnesota always features as well a Dairy Princess sculpted in butter (She sits in a rotating freezer wearing a parka while the sculpting is being done; people watch). But there’s competition.
Texas comes out swinging with beer in pretzel dough, DF, deep-fried bacon and, for the gourmets in ten-gallon hats, chicken-fried bacon. So there!
There’s more. In Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, you can find chocolate-covered bacon OAS (Take that, Texas!) and Irish stew in pastry. Bet there’s a butter sculpture somewhere in that crowd too. California comes through with the DF White Castle cheeseburger at the Orange County Fair and tops it in Sacramento with, of course, avocado, corn dog-style, served with either ranch dressing or an herbed-oil dressing…like…gnarly! Pickle pops are available in Kansas. Koolickles–that would be frozen Kool-Aid, OAS, DF, in many colors and flavors make an appearance in North Carolina. In Florida the retirees can feast on a milkshake burger; that’s a cheeseburger with DF ice cream. Not to be outdone, Indiana offers a hot beef sundae: marinated beef with mashed potatoes, gravy, cheese, corn, and a cherry tomato on top. Massachusetts–they’ve apparently overdosed on baked beans up there–has a jelly bean funnel cake. Arizona has probably the funkiest item out there so far–selling briskly, by the way–a caramel apple rolled in–not chopped nuts, that’s for sissies–rolled in mealworms, frozen, I think, the very same things that get fed to the birds and fishes. Tweet tweet!
And I couldn’t even find where the frozen coffee OAS or the DF Norwegian Banana Split were to be found.
Maybe it was in Montana where one can taste the ultimate : Deep-fried Butterballs.
Careful, you could wind up with too little blood in your cholesterol stream!
