WDM, IA - 'Our State Fair is a Great State Fair'

        

And, today is the day we head off to the Iowa State Fair. Don’t believe the words above in the title for today’s blog? Well, I’m just quoting a line from the Rogers and Hammerstein’s musical: State Fair. But that’s not the only thing proclaiming that the Iowa State Fair is one of the best. Midwest Living magazine named the Fair one of the "Top 30 Things Every Midwesterner Should Experience." The Fair is also included in the New York Times best-selling travel book "1000 Places to See Before You Die" and the subsequent travel book, "1,000 Places to See in the U.S.A. and Canada Before you Die."

I’ll have to admit that in 2011, the Iowa State Fair, at 1,080, 959 attendees, ranked 12th in attendance behind the Texas State Fair, the Calgary Stampede, the Minnesota State Fair and the LA County Fair to name a few. However, come on, this is Iowa, with a much smaller population that all those others. Now, I’ll admit that I’ve been to the Minnesota State for at least 8 times and it’s a pretty good fair. But, did it have a play named after it? Did it have a musical named after it? Nope on both accounts.

‘Our State Fair is a great state fair

Don’t miss it, don’t even be late

It’s dollars to doughnuts that our state fair

Is the best state fair in our state’

We actually go almost every year and invite Jack down. Gives him a chance to get our of Dodge. We arrived at 9:00, parked in the VFW lot as we always do and headed in to join Americana. If you think the fair is about the agriculture in Iowa, you’d have been right - in 1912. However, this is 2012 and it’s all about the food with lots of agriculture thrown in.

There are 12 new foods making their debut this year at the fair. Among these are: double-bacon corn dogs (a hot dog wrapped in bacon, deep fried, dipped in bacon-bit batter and fried again), deep fried pickle ‘dawgs’ (a quarter kosher dill slice, covered in cream cheese, wrapped in ham or pastrami, dipped in batter and deep fried) and fruit on a stick with dipping sauce (I’m not sure how something healthy like fruit sneaked in). 

You can buy 57 different foods on a stick this year. For example:

        deep-fried butter on a stick debuted last year. It’s still around for this year so it must have been a hit. (And, I thought putting butter on a frosted cinnamon roll was sinful. The recipe is simple: take a two ounce stick of butter (a regular stick of butter is four ounces, so this is half a stick), keep it very cold, almost freezing before you take it out to dip, dip it into a batter with lots of cinnamon and honey. Deep fry it for three minutes and pour a glaze over it (in case it's not sweet enough). Then dig in! I hear that the first two bites taste like warm French toast but then the butter begins to melt and drop and squirt out in all directions as you bite into it. Luckily, the concession owner provides you with a fork and a paper tray. 

And, here’s the deep fried butter on a stick.

        deep-fried carrot cake: carrot cake batter with fresh carrots and the traditional spices deep fried and then covered with cream cheese frosting.

        deep-fried German Chocolate: German chocolate cake batter deep-fried with homemade coconut pecan icing covering it.

        deep-fried Twinkies on a stick: I’m sure you’ve heard of it. ‘Nuf said.

Are you seeing the pattern? Deep fried and being on a stick increases sales approx. 30% - 40%.

We’re going to start with the cinnamon rolls which are sticky, gooey, sweet but do not come on a stick. We’ve been to the State Fair enough times to know where the best rolls are and we made a bee-line for them. No time to gawk at the zip line, the new Deere tractors or the chocolate moose. We’ll save those for later but the cinnamon rolls and coffee are calling us.

We passes the 900+ pumpkin as we headed over to the Agricultural Building where the displays of prize winning vegetables and fruits are arrayed on the bottom floor. Table and tables with luscious looking potatoes, tomatoes, corn (natch - this is Iowa) zucchini, broccoli, cabbages, green beans, radishes, onions, etc.

Upstairs are the product booths, every cleaning product known to humans, elk meat, buffalo meat, and the ever popular Vita-mix. Note how entranced I am here. Actually, I was more entranced several years ago when I laid my money down and bought one. This year I was just looking for new techniques.

But, what’s the Iowa State Fair without tractors? We happened to hit the tractor day when the members of all the various groups: Deere, Farm-All, etc parade into town with their tractors and line them up on the Grand Concourse. They were shined to a fare-thee-well and gleamed in the sun.

Hey, we’ve been here for 2 hours and only had cinnamon roll and a coffee. Isn’t it time for more food? How about a pork chop on a stick which is my brother’s favorite and Gary and I headed over to the homemade ice cream booth for the peach.

We wandered around a bit more but Jack’s back was hurting him and every step was a bit painful so we cut the fair short this year. Back at home, we all had a salad, trying to erase the guilty feeling we all had from eating the fair goodies and trying to get some actual food in us.