The overdue North Carolina State Fair food report

Going to the North Carolina State Fair each year is a long-time family tradition.  For most of that time, a key goal of the trip has been to try as many of the new and unusual foods as possible.  The challenge was always that eating more than a couple of them was both a challenge and a way to gain a ton of weight in a hurry.  A few years back, I devised a strategy for tasting the weird foods and not gaining weight, too:  eating only one (or at most two) bites of each.  To make this plan work, you need either to be willing to throw out a lot of food or to have a group willing to join you in the quest for strange delights.

Fortunately, our State Fair group is willing to help me.

We always enter from the same gate, so I began with my traditional first food:  a pretzel dog.

Click an image to see a larger version.

It was as warm, greasy, and delicious as always.

Sarah begins her feasting with a butter-and-salt pretzel from the same vendor, and she is always willing to let me have a bite.

Umm, good.

Scott opted to start with a blooming onion, and he also let me try a piece.

Greasy and hot and tasty, oh yeah.

Another early dish was the fried cheese.

Hot and gooey and tasty, it was everything fried cheese should be.

Up to this point, we had been following tradition and eating dishes that, while definitely bad for you, were not really Fair food.

The fried Oreos, covered in powdered sugar, took us squarely into the land of unusual foods.

Though you're bound to wear the sugar if you try these, they are surprisingly good little rascals, with the strong Oreo flavor complemented by the dough and sugar.

Continuing in the vein of things you shouldn't eat more than once a year--and maybe not then--we went for the Krispy Kreme donut bacon cheese burger.

This fat and sugar bomb is tastier than you would expect--though I knew that before my first bite, because I've tried it before.

Next up was one of the few fails of the Fair foods:  the fried Klondike bar.

Now, I like fried things (as you can tell), and I like a good Klondike bar from time to time, but this one didn't work because the bar turned completely to liquid before you could take a bite.  Klondike bars are rarely frozen hard, but you might have to do just that to make this dish work.

This next one was just too sweet for me, but it worked for some:  a Reese's peanut butter cup and something else (I think; I can't recall for sure) deep-fried and covered with sugar.

To be fair, those who enjoy peanut butter with their sweets did seem to like it.

After all of that sweet, a salty ham biscuit from one of the Methodist food halls was just the ticket.

Hey, wait, is that a juggling Elvis on a unicycle?

Duh.  What else would it be?

Returning to food and sticking with savories, the sausage baguette was yummy and provided just the right amount of spice to warm your mouth without making you hurt.

Don't believe in artisanal baked whoopie pies?

Come to the Fair.  They exist, and they are amazingly delicious.

Is that a bear chilling in a huge tire swing?

Again, duh, of course it is, though for all his size he is hard to spot in this photo.  Watching him climb into the swing and steady it was a treat in itself.

Back on the midway, hot mini sugar donuts are a staple our group cannot resist.

Damn, that is a big watermelon!

That is also a freaky pumpkin.

I don't know what one would do with such a thing that it would be worth $900, but I'd love to know the story of anyone who bought it.

This cow, who was chilling while staring into a fan, his ears blown back and his eyes nearly shut, proved to be a surprise star of that part of the Fair.

Like a dog hanging his head out a car window, this cow was extremely cute.

We had to search high and low to find the deep-fried Cubano, but when we did,

it was delicious.

No trip to the State Fair can be complete without a simple cheese dog.

Sometime in the course of the night, we sampled some delicious N.C. State ice cream, but I forgot to take a photo of it.

In a final Fair tradition, Sarah, and now Ben and others, rode the swings.

My fear of heights, better in recent years but still present, made me happy to watch everyone's stuff from the ground.

We walked for four hours, and I ate almost nothing before the Fair, so the morning after tasting all of this, I weighed exactly what I had the previous day.  I thus declare victory for this year's State Fair trip!

The 2015 North Carolina State Fair food report

The other night, a group of us headed to the Fair for our usual hours of strolling, snacking, gawking, and chatting.  For a few years now, I've managed the potential caloric onslaught of the Fair by trying anything I wanted--but trying only one bite of most things.  This strategy worked well again this year and enabled me to sample bites of a huge range of Fair foods.

First up was my traditional Fair starter:  the pretzel dog on a stick.

Click an image to see a larger version.

It was everything one could want from a pretzel dog and entirely delicious.

Sarah began with her traditional pretzel--salt and buttery topping this time around--and let me have a bite.

Look at that topping glisten!  Oh, yeah, it was a tasty pretzel indeed.

We then dove into the Fair and only came up for air at one of the bigger sources of fried and dipped foods.  Scott opted for his traditional frozen, dipped cheesecake on a stick.

He also let me have a bite, and it was quite good.

At that point, we hit a streak of serious fried weirdness, and the strangeness took hold.  I sampled single bites of the deep-fried moon pie (which also included more other ingredients than I can remember),

the deep-fried Reese's cup wrapped in bacon,

and the deep-fried oreos.

Each one was good enough that I enjoyed tasting it, but none made me crave a second bite.

At that point, it was time for what passes for health food at the Fair:  a ham biscuit.

Salty, fatty ham in a perfect southern biscuit; what's not to like?  It was delicious.

We hadn't planned our next stop, but the sign advertising bacon fried in maple syrup was too tempting to resist.  Here, Kyle goes in for a bite.

We did not stop for this attraction,

but we were sorely tempted.

Nor did we enter this shop,

though who wouldn't want to live in the House of Swank?

After a quick visit with the bears, a tradition Scott and I practice, the twenty-something men in our group decided turkey legs were the order of the day.

If JJ Abrams had only made the upcoming Star Wars film with glistening turkey legs instead of light sabers, no one would be able to resist the slick turkey force of their assault.

I bet you've never read that phrase before.

Anyway, Scott let me have a bite, and it was quite good.

Fried pickles have become a Fair staple,

and for good reason, because they are delicious.

What's that?  You worry that the noble tube steak has not yet appeared?  Fret no longer.  A bacon cheddar (and I use that term very loosely, as this yellow substance is more polymer than food) dog

slid down our collective gullets next.

No visit to the Fair is complete without some N.C. State ice cream, in this case a bowl of cherry vanilla that Kyle and I shared.

I did eat multiple bites of this frozen goodness.

You might wonder why this weirdly brown, oddly sauced piece of meat has chocolate-covered whipped cream on it,

but you'd wonder only until I told you the disturbing truth:  this is a deep-fried Klondike bar, a surprisingly good concoction.

Should you order deep-fried mac-and-cheese, you might expect that the combination of the already fattening macaroni and cheese with the fry dough would be enough of an artery clogger for any dish, but at the Fair, you'd be wrong.

You obviously need dipping cheese (again, a term I'm using loosely here).

My friend and colleague, Sharon, told me that the one thing I absolutely must not do at the Fair was try what she declared had to be the sickest dish yet on offer:  the pickle wrapped in peanut butter and deep-fried.

If you expected me to do anything other than run straight for that oddity, you don't know me.  The most amazing thing about this dish is that almost everyone who tried it thought it was at least okay, with some declaring it quite good.

For the last shared item of the Fair, we went old-school.

You can't go wrong with a thin-patty bacon cheeseburger.

We walked and walked, admired and bought crafts, watched with the open mouths of children as the fireworks painted the sky, and thoroughly enjoyed another North Carolina State Fair.

The State Fair report, 2014

Long-time readers of this blog know that our family goes to the North Carolina State Fair for the food.  Sure, we like walking around, we love looking at the various animals, and some of us even go on a ride now and again, but most of all we're there to sample the Fair's many food offerings.  A few years ago, I came up with a new, expensive but ultimately less fattening system:  fast for about 18 hours ahead of time, buy everything I want to sample, and take one or at most two bites, then share it with others.  This approach has let me try a ton of stuff at the Fair and not gain any weight from doing so.  (Standing and walking around the Fair for five hours also helps, of course.)

This year's outing began with the traditional pretzel dog.

Click an image to see a larger version.

Equally traditional and from the same vendor is Sarah's start-of-Fair pretzel, which she models here--and lets me eat a bite of.

A Diet Coke is, of course (there was no Coke Zero on offer), the walking-around beverage of choice.

A new vendor, Big Daddy's, contributed Scott's traditional turkey leg, which he also gives me a bite of,

and this rather tasty brisket sandwich.

I didn't eat anything from this vendor, but I loved the name, Bacon Ray's, so much, that I had to share its image with you.

At our next stop, this fryer was in heavy action at times, though here it is hosting only a few dough-covered goodies.

Those goodies included the Twinx, a surprisingly tasty concoction you build by stuffing a Twix candy bar inside a Twinkie, wrapping that in bacon, deep-frying the whole thing, and coating it in sugar.

It really was tasty, though one bite was plenty for me.  My nibble of the equally deep-fried and sugar-coated fried Oreos was also good.

A bite of a salty ham biscuit served as an excellent palate cleanser after all the sweets.

One of our non-food traditions is a visit to see the bears.  Yes, they're captive in small rooms, and yes, they're probably sad, but sometimes they are amazing to behold, as this lax bear was. 

A relaxed bear on a tire swing is a very cool sight indeed.

I'm not a chicken fan, but we always check them out, and I always find some amazing ones.  For example, the mere name "Bufflaced Polish" cracks me up, and their heads are equally entertaining. 

The cinnamon-sugar mini-donuts are another Fair staple, and they are yummy indeed.

McBride's Concessions, a Fair vendor that's been around for years, switched in 2014 to handmade onion rings using a recipe from the mother of one of the owners and a housemade dipping sauce.

The sauce was okay, but the onion rings were great, among the best I've tasted.

Scott's polish sausage hoagie with peppers, onions, and cheese was everything it should be.

So, too, were the fried bologna-and-cheese sandwich (don't hate until you taste it)

and the grilled cheese on white bread.

Oh, yeah, the bread is indeed that soaked with butter.

Did I mention giant pumpkins and watermelons?

Always a crowd-pleaser, and just kind of amazing in that "wow, people do anything and everything" sort of way. 

I forgot to take a picture of the cherry vanilla N.C. State ice cream I sampled.  I love that ice cream, and I get it only once a year at the Fair.

As we were wandering away from the ice cream, we ran cross these two fine hot dogs. 

Someday, the Motorized Hot Dog Throne of Doom will exist!

Back on the food front, another of the Fair's new offerings, the deep-fried Bananas Foster, met with mixed reviews, with banana-lovers enjoying it and banana-haters finding it disgusting. 

I thought it was pretty tasty, but I do enjoy bananas.

By the time we reached the deep-fried cupcakes, which Sarah models here,

many folks were done in, but not all of us.  Those who tried them found them basically to be fried dough, okay but no better.

All of us agreed that as disturbing as the phrase "WALK AWAY NUT SUNDAE" was, the face in the ice cream cone above it was creepier.

Sarah, Ben, and Ronnie,

as well as others in our group, rode the swings and had a grand time doing so.  I always find the ceiling of the swings to be a little trippy.

The "WIGGLE WURM":  friendly, or creepy?

I'm going with creepy.

This gentleman doesn't seem to be very happy to be at work,

but if I ever need a porn-star name, I could do a lot worse than "Jumbo Long Dogs."

A blooming onion

and a classic grilled hot dog with cheese

brought the Fair food odyssey to a close.

As we were leaving, we caught the nightly fireworks show, which was particularly gorgeous this year.  Gina took a lot of great photographs of the show, so to wrap up this huge entry, let me leave you with just a small sample of those lovely shots.