Fair Fare

     For 12 days prior to Labor Day the Minnesota State Fair is up and running.  It's an annual event for me and I look forward to it with eager anticipation.  Apparently so do a lot of other folks as well.  On the first weekend of the Fair nearly 180,000 people passed through the gates on Saturday alone.

     As I perused the  list of new foods at the fair for 2014 with my daughter there were a few that looked very appealing.  And others, not so much.  We decided not to waste any time (or calories) on the bacon wrapped turkey leg or the beer gelato.  The chocolate dessert salami also did not appeal to us and neither did the Korean BBQ collar with kimchi pickles. And we questioned the s'more flavored beer.  Some things are just better left by themselves and not co-mingled.  Chocolate porter beer with marshmallows floating on top?  No thanks!  But there were several interesting new items that we put on our "must do" list.

     The iron range pierogies sounded interesting in the description: "...deep fried dumplings stuffed with potatoes and cheddar cheese stopped with crispy onion strings and served with a zingy horsey sauce."  But we came away disappointed after sampling them.  Too pedestrian and no zing to the horsey sauce.  So we moved on to the deep fried lobster on a stick.  That, too, was a disappointment.  Too much deep fried taste and not enough lobster flavor in the claw meat with a crunchy crust.  

     Undeterred, the next visit to the fair I ordered the breakfast juicy LuLu, an American cheese stuffed sausage patty, a terribly overcooked sausage patty, I might add, served up in between two very dry pieces of toast, not the English muffin that was advertised.

     After enjoying some of the tried and true favorites like garlic fries, fried mashed potatoes on a stick and fried cheese curds (picking up on a fried theme here?)  We finally hit paydirt with two newbies that will become favorites from now on.  The deep fried buckeyes were fabulous!  After all, what's not to like about 6 peanut butter balls coated in chocolate, dusted with confectioner's sugar and served with strawberry sauce on a stick?

     Another winner was the deep fried walleye mac n' cheese.  Creamy, gooey and crunchy all at the same time.  Dubbed North Shore Pasta it was a tasty combination of smoked walleye, sweet corn kernels and roasted red pepper atop a bed of cavatappi noodles, smothered in smoked Gouda sauce and sprinkled with Parmesan parsley bread crumbs.

     But perhaps our blue ribbon favorite was the shrimp dog.  Baby shrimp combined with cream cheese then batter dipped, deep fried and served on a stick.  It was so good that I wasn't able to get a photo of it. I ate it too quickly!