If it can be fried – you’ll find it at the NC State Fair.
I have not been to state fairs other than North Carolina and Kentucky, so I can’t speak for what their vendors offer in terms of food variety. If you are from North Carolina and have been to the State Fair, you have probably walked past a vendor selling fried items that are just not found on any restaurant menu.
This year’s NC State Fair (October 16-26) was no exception. While I did not sample the fried Oreo cookies this year (yes, I have tried them in the past), I was amazed to see that yet again there was another item that someone felt people might buy if it were dipped in batter and deep fried – peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Okay, I was shocked a few years ago when they started selling fried Twinkies, and the Oreo cookies were a stretch, but ‘understandable’. But I just can’t get my head around taking a perfectly good PB&J, dipping it in batter, and tossing it in the deep fryer. Sort of like setting up a slow drip of 10w-40 direct into your veins. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. I did catch a few episodes of Anthony Bourdain’s ‘A Cooks Tour’ and it is true that some people will eat most anything.
The NC State Fair was this year, as it is every year for us, a great time. Anna’s Gourmet Goodies is a proud member of Goodness Grows in NC and we always have our cookies on display in their NC Foods Tent.
We love seeing new things (like the fried foods), but also find it refreshing that many of the same vendors return year after year. Our company logo, the silhouette of Anna, was actually created by a scissor artist in the Village of Yesteryear. It was hanging on the wall long before the company was started and seemed like the perfect image for our logo.
We bought peanuts and drinks from the FFA (Future Farmers of America) stand, judged which church group does the best job of hawking their ham biscuits and capped the evening off with some homemade ice cream that was turned by John Deer tractor motors. Sitting there by the lake watching the fireworks display their dazzling splendor with a cup of real ice cream was just about the perfect way to end a day. Despite what you hear on the news and from the candidates, we do live in a great country.
If there are those of you that are intrigued by the idea of fried cookies, I invite you to next year’s NC State Fair. I’m sure that someone will be there dipping and frying cookies and anything else that might get folks to part with a few dollars to sample something out of the ordinary. But no, we won’t have any of our gourmet cookies on any of these menus. We’ll keep baking them just as they are – incredibly delicious, without the extra 10w-40.