Marta here. It's summer and the Orange County Fair is in full swing here in our little corner of the world. My Lucy went with her friends, her camera, and her appetite. What follows is her account of the crap unfortunate food choices available to her.
CAUTION: Not for the squeamish.
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I’ve tasted regret. And it’s covered in powdered sugar.
Hello. My name is Lucy. And this is my story.
After passing through the ticket booth and tripping into the noisy, musical, aromatic world that is the OC Fair, good judgement snuggles onto the warm back burner of my brain.
The options are overwhelming. The proposals are intriguing. The smells are bewitching.
I’m speaking, of course, of the food. The battered, sugar-coated, chocolate-covered, chocolate-filled, crunchy, greasy, untidy, confusing food. Forget the cotton candy and the snow cones! The grossest, most unappetizing crap delicacies become the very thing my life was missing. Until this moment.
Quite frankly, I’d like to know at what point in the evolution of Fair Cuisine did the word “deep-fried” become the saving grace of… everything. Twinkies. Oreos. Brownies. Klondike bars. Avocados. Frogs legs.
Befuddlement is a good word. My friends and I stood in front of the billboards, blinking slowly and reading off the options. We soon accepted that the question "…but why?" would never be answered.
To make sense of the billboards, I tried to categorize. The Favorites and The Classics fit in nicely with The Must-Haves (ice cream cones, funnel cakes, giant turkey legs… you know, healthy stuff.) while The Curiosities teetered on the edge of I-Would-Never-Eat-This-Anywhere-Else and I-Just-Don’t-Care-Anymore.
Before they could say “You’ve got something on your lip,” I’ve just bought ten minutes of quality time with a deep-fried Snickers bar.
You see, this is a place where bacon takes a magical journey and ends up frozen, covered in chocolate, and tossed into a little white box. With a side of deep-fried butter (which is topped with generous portions of whipped cream), they had the nerve to call it the “Coronary Combo.”
And I ate it. With some help.
Real friends will eat the rest of the crap food that your own heart can't handle.
We traipsed and we took pictures and I tried to “walk it off.” Then someone suggested ice cream. Which turned into a frozen banana covered in chocolate and peanuts. A subtle transformation, really. Some people just never know when to quit (ahem).
A long day made even longer by good company, good memories,“good” food… and then we saw it.
Have you ever found yourself staring at something, trying to understand what you’re witnessing… but your brain refuses to translate the information into something reasonable?
Yeah, me neither.
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Lucy,You’ve written a thoroughly wonderful review of Fair Food and the pitfalls
that you encountered. Your descriptive prose had me choking with
laughter, but then I began to worry about your wellbeing. Glory be, you
survived the frightening offerings and lived to tell about it.
Suggest you next tell us about street food venders. Chances of finding
fresh, healthy items are pretty good. Not as good as your Mother’s, but
an improvement over fried Kool-Aid!
We are looking forward to Aug 9, Crazy Grazing Days at the Wisconsin State Fair, where I might try the deep fried butter because the only thing that can make fat better is more fat.