What can't they deepfry?

Monday brings me back to the reality of the workweek following a very pleasant visit from some friends from out of town. Although the weather could have been warmer, the timing was just about perfect. What more could you ask for when visiting North Carolina than the state fair? I have now experienced three different state fairs, and they are all different. When I was growing up the Colorado state fair was a yearly event. The whole thing had something of a rodeo feel to it, though we were much more interested in riding the teacups, winning stuffed animals and eating cotton candy. I made one trip to the Iowa state fair back in college and I remember very little other than the giant butter cow and a lot of presentations about corn.

The North Carolina fair seemed a bit harder to pigeonhole. There were the rides and games, of course, though we avoided them (which I was fairly thankful for, since I crossed paths with two students in the ten minutes or so we spent in that area). The animals were interesting, in an "I hope they aren't always in these cages" sort of way. Most of my time in the rabbit building was spent trying to figure out what, exactly, makes one rabbit "better" than the rest. For the most part, I couldn't find any differences between the first, second and third place rabbits in each of the breeds.

The highlight, however, had to be the food. Pretty much everything I had heard about the fair before had revolved around the variety of items that they could put into a deep fryer. Thankfully, I was not disappointed. Both the fried Snickers and fried Twinkies looked terrible, so I ended up going with the fried Oreos. I was initially caught off guard by the fact that the cookie was melted (though, in retrospect, I really should not have been, given the temperatures of the fryers) and the lack of exterior crunch. All in all, it was certainly worth it. And, as an added bonus, I could feel it in my stomach for the next four hours.

There was one food vendor that even I could not bring myself to approach. Who decided that the best option to add to smoothies and lemonade was clam chowder?