Ah, the end of summer… time for the annual “Erin eats her way across the Minnesota State Fair post.” And so, without further ado, the foods I ate on Friday were:

• A sarsaparilla custard float… think root beer float, but with sarsaparilla and frozen custard
• State Fair French Fries… an annual tradition and favorite of my mother’s
• Hotdish on a Stick (see photo)… this might be the most quintessential State Fair Food I have ever eaten. Take a stick and make a kebab of meatball, tater tot, meatball, tater tot, etc. Cover it in corn dog batter and deep fry it. Serve with cream of mushroom sauce. It was delicious.
• All-I-Could-Drink-Milk… only three glasses this year. I think they’ve gotten bigger. Plus, we screwed up our ordering and went from here to the Dairy Barn, where my stomach refused to let me order a milkshake. Sad, because those are the best milkshakes in the world.
• Stuffed Olives on a stick… onion, garlic, pimento, sun-dried tomato (given away due to allergies), and a jalapeno
• Honey taffy… actually, I’m still eating that as I brought a bunch home.
• Deep fried cheese curds… Quite possibly the most unhealthy thing I look forward to all year. Yes, you can get cheese curds in Wisconsin, but can you get them deep fried?
• Deep fried macaroni-and-cheese on a stick… you think we’d be all cheese-on-a-stick’ed out at this point, but no.
• A sample of some organic-all-natural-whatever cheese from the environmental building… it was good, but a little too healthy for the fair.
• A Happy Dog Meal… okay, I didn’t eat this. But we did buy one for Cooper. It included “french fries” which smell remarkably like real french fries, a “mini-bacon cheeseburger,” a “bacon bone,” a “cheese biscuit,” a “cheesy chicken wrap,” and a “peanut butter cannoli.” (Okay, in actuality, these were all flavored dog biscuits.)
• Chocolate-Vanilla twist frozen custard in a cone… This was to make up for the lack of a milkshake.
• A lingonberry sno-cone… A good refreshing palette cleanser after a solo trip on the Sky Ride (because my sister refused to go).
• Sweet Martha’s Cookies… two buckets of them. Mmmm… delicious with ice cold milk.

It is time for my annual report of being gluttonous at the Minnesota State Fair. This year I hit the fair in two separate trips. Last night with my mom and dad, we saw Brandi Carlile in a free concert, which was awesome — her cover of “Hallelujah” is fantastic (better than Rufus Wainwright, not as good as Jeff Buckley… but who is?). Today with my mother and sister we saw the animal barns, which was also awesome because of my first ever observation of placentophagy. (Note that I don’t mean to imply any similarities between the awesomeness of Brandi Carlile and the awesomeness of placentophagy.)
But before I get to the sheep eating one of the richest sources of proteins available, here is the list of foods I ate:

• Pig Lickers (chocolate covered bacon) — Delicious, but rich
• A turkey drumstick — generally reserved for Renaissance Festivals, it fits in well with the State Fair’s “on-a-stick” theme
• Frozen apple cider — So fresh it still tasted like apples
• A honey stick — Just a quarter for a straw full of clover honey
• The best chocolate malt ever — I wait all year for this dairy barn treat, located next to the butter sculptures
• Birch Beer — Why drink a standard Coca Cola or Pepsi product when all this variation is available?
• Sweet Martha’s Chocolate Chip Cookies — Comes in a giant bucket
• Scotch Egg (hard boiled egg stuffed in pork sausage and slathered in horseradish… on a stick, duh) — Always a favorite
• Deep fried cheese curds — A mouthwatering heart attack waiting to happen
• All-I-Could-Drink Milk — A pathetically low number of three glasses this year (because we were only there once and my sister wouldn’t let us return for more)
• Raspberry Chocolate Wine Ice Cream — I couldn’t taste the supposed wine
• Black Cow (root beer float with chocolate syrup) — I was skeptical, but it was good
• Bites of my mother’s corn dog and my sister’s brownie — Always share
• Free water from WCCO radio to wash it all down!

And now for the part you’ve been waiting for… at the Miracle of Birth Center (i.e. stick a bunch of pregnant animals in a barn and hope most of them give birth during the fair), a sheep had given birth to two lambs just before we arrived. When we got there, the birth was so new that the placenta had just fallen out and some of it was still attached to the mother and the umbilical cords were still attached to the lambs. Sure enough, mom and babies were nibbling at that rarest of protein sources, the placenta.
For the human kids in attendance, it was quite the learning experience. I heard more than one parent awkwardly trying to explain to their kid just what they were seeing. “No, dear, it’s okay that she’s bleeding. That’s natural.” “Um, I’m not sure why she’s eating it. Maybe it tastes good.”
And for lasting this long into the entry, if you’re not easily grossed out by the facts of life, here’s one of my tamer photos of the scene. And here’s a little more detailed one, but not for the faint of heart (or all work places). (Both photos are >2MB.)

Today I bought a T-shirt with the following Garrison Keillor poem on the back which pretty much sums up my afternoon:

You had a bratwurst and corn on the cob
A hot fudge sundae and a shish kebob
You got a bucket of cheese curds in your hand
And yet you’re stopping at the hot dog stand
You had a taco four inches thick
And a deep-fried walleye on a stick
You better be careful with that Pronto Pup
‘Cause what goes down might come back up

Note: Food consumed today may vary slightly from those listed in the poem.
Also, once I get my camera cable (left in Michigan) I’ll post pictures of both the Fair and the 35W bridge (taken from afar).

“Our state fair is a great state fair…”
Okay, the bulleted list of today’s highlights of my annual visit to the Minnesota State Fair:

• Seeing a calf be born — Walking in to the fair, we saw a new building — the Miracle of Birth Center. Upon approaching the building, we noticed it was packed with people. As it turns out, we arrived just in time to see a cow give birth, with placenta and everything. However, they are not yet at the point of serving placenta as a fair food. (I would try it though — seriously.)
• Princess Kay in butter — One of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way candidates was having her head sculpted into butter, as is tradition, in a chilled room in the Empire Commons. She mentioned that both of her older sisters had been dairy princesses, and thus this will be the third butter head in her parents freezer. These are 90 pound blocks of butter. I suspect they must have a separate freezer just for the butter heads.
• The food — Many glasses of milk, a scotch egg (hard boiled egg surrounded by sausage), deep fried macaroni and cheese on a stick, a chocolate ice cream cone, a lingonberry ice cream float, fried cheese curds, ginger beer, chocolate covered cheesecake on a stick, and probably more that I’m forgetting. I think I will eat salads for the rest of the week.
• Flying over the fair — Rode on both of the gondola rides — the original Sky Ride that takes you from Heritage Square to the Agriculture Building and the much newer Sky Glider, which takes you from the north end of the fair (near the Twins booth) to the Grandstand.
• The Barbary Coast Dixieland Show Band — These guys were great. Clarinets, trombones, trumpets, a banjo, an upright bass, and drumset — and most of them rotated around a few of these. The highlight for me was the Washington and Lee Swing, a swing version of my high school rouser.
• The animals — Not just the newborn calf, but pigs, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, geese, and even a few horses (though the main horse barn was closed today).

I love the fair.