Also, the Fair provides more opportunities for eating than you can shake a stick at.

Every year, they add new food items. The local media makes it pretty easy to tell what is worth trying during the feeding frenzy leading up to and during the Fair. My household are not the only Fair aficionados around.

Any Fair trip involves three kinds of things to eat and see: the rotation (items we eat/see every year), the optional (nice but not necessary) and the new stuff (whether it’s new to the Fair, or just new to us).

Stuff I Ate

The Rotation

Cheese Curds for breakfast – from the Mouse Trap, in the Food Building. Even at 9 AM, they do enough volume that these curds are fresh out of the fryer. Eating cheese curds for breakfast is how I know I am at the Fair, which is the only time this constitutes a sensible start to one’s day.

Frozen Mocha on a Stick (Farmer’s Union Coffee Shop) – sweet, delicious, on a stick, plus the Farmer’s Union Building usually has some music going on. Right next to the DFL!

Roasted Corn (Corn Roast) – sweet corn on the cob during sweet corn season, roasted, with butter. One very viable definition of perfection. I also love that they’ve started offering composting for the cobs. Very popular.

Turkey Sandwich - the State Fair Food Finder is not helping me out with the name of the place that sells turkey sandwiches and legs outside the Sheep & Poultry barn. Usually, this is a reliable source for some food to provide a solid base to mitigate the crazy sugar highs and lows caused by other Fair foods. This year’s sandwich was soggy and not up to snuff. Turkey sandwich, you have lost your spot in the rotation. There’s now an opening in my Fair roster. [Update - the MN Turkey Growers Association let me know first, that the name of the restaurant is Turkey To Go, and also that they have heard the feedback from multiple sources, and are working to address it. So, we'll probably give it another go next year to see if they have succeeded. Because foodstuffs high in protein and low in sugar and dairy are a rare and valuable commodity on the State Fair Grounds].

Optional

Kettle Corn (Henry’s Kettle Korn) – bring a friend, even if you get the smallest bag. It’s a generous amount of corn. I can only have kettle corn every few years, because having it tends to lead me into a spiral of kettle corn addiction. I can’t stop myself! But man, it’s delicious. And it’s fun to watch them make it in an enormous kettle.

New Stuff

Scone with Lemon Curd (French Meadow) – once we found French Meadow (it’s across from Ye Olde Mill and the Republicans), we waited in line a LONG time to get the scones. This is a new addition to the Fair, and while they’ve done beautiful things to make their space shiny, new and beautiful, I don’t think they have their scone assembly line fully worked out. This was mostly Ian’s choice, but the bites I had were pretty tasty (I am a sucker for lemon curd). In addition to scones, they have other things, like pretzel roll sandwiches and churros that I wouldn’t mind trying.

Caprese Salad on a Stick & Maple Mine-Soda (Renewing the Countryside, located, shockingly, outside the Eco Experience) – this was a tasty and relatively healthful treat. The sungold tomatoes were not as good as the ones from Spring Hill, but the mozzarella was right on the money. The Maple soda seemed to be a shot of maple syrup and fizzy water. These were good things to try, but, as I can make these items at home, they will not find a home in the Fair rotation.

Sunnies in a Boat (Giggles Campfire Grill) – this was Ian’s choice. He said they were fine, which leads me to suspect that these will not become regulars. The bite I tasted tasted like fried, which isn’t a bad thing, but which is not up to my Fair standard.

Lemonade with lime and raspberries – the turkey stand which shall remain nameless almost redeemed itself.

Other Stuff I Saw

(In roughly chronological order)

Insane traffic on Como until we made it to the glorious site of the bike  parking lot, which seemed to be very smoothly run. A dude wearing a t-shirt with an illustration of toilet paper and the words “that’s the way I roll.” Newborn lambs, calves, and piglets in the Miracle of Life Center. The cutest 5 month old Rottweiler puppy, plus cute Beagles, Labs, and rescue Greyhounds and dogs running an Agility course at the Pet Center. A mercury-sniffing chocolate lab chomping on a tennis ball in the Eco Experience. Crop Art; nothing inspired by Michael Jackson, but a surprising amount inspired by Michelle Bachman. I was NOT expecting that, but was amused by it. Sheep being readied for the 4-H judging; they open their mouths up in a truly comical way when they baah.  A mom reminding her little boy that “that’s the cow we saw pooping earlier. Remember?” About a bajillion super cute bunnies. Comically gothed-out teenagers looking a bit lost in the midst of the super cute bunnies in the Poultry Barn (it’s kind of hard to mope when surrounded by bunnies). The swine barn in all its 4-H glory, including home made signs saying “get your picture taken with a pig” and “feed a pig a marshmallow.” Also, a farm kid offering the option to sit on her sleeping pig. She demonstrated. It was comical; who needs to see the Big Pig with all the other action in the Swing Barn?

Part 2 (scheduled for Friday)

To see: butter princesses, llamas, crafts, more awesome animals and weird people

To eat: Fried Green Tomatoes, something from Harry Singh’s, shake from the dairy barn, frozen cider pop and honey and sunflower seed sundae from Agriculture Building.