Minnesota State Fair: Some people go for the Food

If a person had to choose one thing to do at the fair, eating food or people watching, I'm not sure which I would pick.  Every year the fair gets about 50 new kinds of food. Many of them are on a stick.  This year the one new food I really wanted to try was something called Comet Corn.  It was described as a futuristic caramel corn flash frozen with nitrogen.  Since this sounds like something that you can't get at any other time of the year, I was willing to drop the money and calorie allotment on a serving of it.  I forgot to photograph it because it's hard to operate my camera while I am holding and eating food.  And when I am at the fair I do not sit down, at least rarely.  There is too much to do and see for any breaks.  I am always moving.  But I did photograph the nitrogen tank that freezes it while I was waiting for them to freeze mine because they do it one batch at a time.

©2013 Lisa Bond Photography

The next food I had to try was a couple things I had read about from a place called Mancini's.  I had the same problem though.  I ate it before I photographed it.  It was becoming evident that I needed a new strategy.

Here is some food I did not eat but I did photograph.

Does beer count as food?  I think in Minnesota it does.  Barley, hops, barley malt, malted barley...

Those are all some kind of food product that originate out of the ground and if you stopped by the Ag-Hort Building (that's what we say up here in farm country, it is short for Agriculture-Horticulture also known as another food and beer building or get a beer and walk around and look at the giant pumpkin building)

©2013 Lisa Bond Photography, this picture is not blurry because I just had a sampler of beer, although I'll admit I was tempted

or Adrian Peterson's Christmas tree

©2013 Lisa Bond Photography, nevermind what that tag says, I'm pretty sure this is where AP hangs his holiday dingleberries

you could have had a sampling, literally, of four different types of locally brewed Minnesota beer.  There were 4 or 5 of those stations, each unique, so if you tried them all, then 4x5 = I hope the swinging hammer ride wasn't your next stop.

©2013 Lisa Bond Photography

When it's all said and done though, I think most people would agree that the hands down #1 mandatory food stop is Sweet Martha's Cookies.  I don't get it and I used to be offended when my kids insisted we drop $15 on a bucket of chocolate chip cookies.  What about MY chocolate chip cookies?  I don't care that they are hot and gooey, that they just came out of the oven.  Mine are like that too when they are hot off the press.  Maybe it's a quantity thing.  They say you get 3-4 dozen in a bucket.  When I make cookies, I put half of the dough in the fridge for another day.  So I suppose if I made all the cookies and put them on the table in a bucket and imposed no limitations, then maybe, just maybe, they might like mine as much as her's.

I finally caved in though and had one.   Then I had another.  Then I had another.  And then it happened.  As they say...if you give a mouse a cookie.  3 cookies was my personal limit before needing a drink of some sort.  Some people are really smart and they get a bucket and head straight to the all-you-can-drink milk stand.  Note: the fair did not put the cookie stand anywhere near the milk stand.  It is several fair blocks away.  But the wise get their bucket and bee-line it to the milk stand.

Now that it's a couple of weeks after the fair, I imagine that Sweet Martha has boarded her multi-million dollar yacht funded with cookie money and is sailing off in the sunset to her own private island or vineyard.  She is one smart lady.  Who would've thought a simple chocolate chip cookie could build an empire?  I bet the deep-fried pickle people are thinking the same thing right now.  Or maybe the fried alligator people.  Which raises an interesting question.  Why do the alligator people always run out of gator?  They are giant animals.   I'm just glad they sell frozen grapes there so I can look like I'm getting some gator.  It's one of the healthiest treats a person can get at the fair and look cool doing it.

That is a wrap for my food report from the fair.  I hope you will come back for the animal report and next week to see what the second floor of the State Capitol looks like!  Thanks for stopping by!