Batter Up

I’m going to the North Carolina State Fair tomorrow.  Yeehaw!  Course, I’ll have 30 fourth graders with me, but whatever.

Fair food boggles my ever-lovin’ mind.  Don’t get me wrong, I love me an ear of roasted corn or a funnel cake.  And I don’t love candy apples or cotton candy or giant turkey legs (does anyone else think they should sell goblets of mead and horned helmets with those?) but I understand how one might enjoy them.  What I don’t get is all the deep-fried stuff.  Yes, I know a funnel cake is fried, but it’s not food unless you fry it.  I’m talking about the stuff that’s already food (and already horrible for you all on its very own!) even before you batter it and submerge it in hot oil:  Twinkies, candy bars, cheesecake, Oreos.  With the exception of Twinkies, I like all those things, and feel pretty sick from them, pre-fry.

(Last year, the big, new thing was Deep-Fried Coca-cola.  I imagined a glistening, coated cylinder of aluminum and wondered how you’d hold the damn thing without burning your fingers, but it turns out just to be a funnel cake with Coke, rather than water, in the recipe.  Now why would you go and fuck up something as sacred and delicious as fried dough?)