First post in 3 years. Better late than never !
After much back n forth in my head, I finally decided to go the State Fair. I had been there the first year I was in MN(cos my cousins' family was here and I tagged along), but every subsequent year, I avoided it on the premise that going alone kinda sucks.
This was the year that ghost was finally laid to rest.
Woke up at 11:30 and took a bath, shaved etc(those things I hate., yeah I would rather look like the Geico Cavemen) and headed out to catch the 1:00 bus. Its just a 15 min bus ride and Metro Transit makes it easy to go to/come back from the fair from the cities and suburbs. There are buses every 15 mins and really no excuse not to go.
It was a 11 dollar extrance fee (cheaper if you buy earlier/online etc). I picked up a map of the State Fair grounds and I had a written list of some foods/stalls I wanted to check out based on doing some research online the day before.
Basically started walking in no particular direction. Came upon the 'Custard's Last Stand' stall, which was one of the places I had on my list, but I didn't wan't to start with that. I planned to end with that later in the day.
Anyways this helped me get oriented and I set off looking for some of the other things on my list. After much deliberation I decided to start off at the Blue Moon Diner. This place supposedly has some of the best burgers and they have a great wood fire pizza (huge slice for 5 bucks ... its very thin .. kinda like NY style). I was too late for their eggs/breakfast menu and I wasn't yet in the mood for burgers or pizza, so I setlled for buffalo wings served on top of a bed of popcorn. ($6) This didn't seem like a breakfast/lunch/dinner item, so I gambled. Even though it was tasty it was a move I wish I hadn't made. I think cos I had eaten nothing since morning, I basically made a light headed move. I should have started out with some thing smaller/lighter. Well next time ...
After this I walked around looking for a beverage ... not any beverage, I wanted root beer. Not any root beer, I wanted 1919 root beer. These guys have been around for a century and their root beer floats are raved over. A float was going to be too much so I settled for the small root beer soda. ($1). Well worth it. I have never been a root beer kinda guy but I think they have converted me. Great stuff and very refreshing. Not saccharine sweet and not heavily carbonated like regular soda. Just right.
I had a lot more exploring to do and continued my wandering. Headed for the 'Food Building' and looked for Lynn's Potato Lefse. ($2.50)This was one of the things on my list. I think this is a Norwegian origin food. Its like a French crepe but made with potato. Somwehere between a crepe and a thin potato(alu) paratha. You could get many different varities of fruit inside it, but I went simple. My filling was butter and white sugar. Good choice. It was very tasty and kinda reminded me of a type of dosa my mom used to make back home. She used to fill the dosa with coconut shavings and add some sugar. In some respects it was like that. I think if they did a mildly spicy filling, it would sell well. Right now all thier fillings are either sugars or fruits.
After this I was kinda full, so I decided to take a break from the eating and just walk for a while. Walked past the children's rides and the snake show(which had an iguana from Haiti), the butterfly cages(huge room where butterflies fly around you) and did a lot of ppl staring. If all 12 days of the fair were this crowded, the local economy definitely got a great boost. It was packed today. And with it being the last few days of summer in MN, the females of our species were as skimpily dressed as possible, so the ppl staring worked out very well. We are (outwardly) a very beautiful species :)
Saw a lot of families and I pictured what their daily lives might be like and how the fair would actually be a great chance for them to head out, eat and bond. The bonds forged over good food are some of the stongest ever. It was nice to see kids being pampered and dads/moms being very sweet. Since I am cynical person, I doubt that that is the case everyday. Ppl have to live with a lot of stress these days and the truly happy days are actually rare.
Took some pictures of some of the stands that stood out, either for being something I hadn't seen before, or because the lines in front of them astounded me.
It was time to start stuffing my face again and I headed out for some corn on the cob. ($3) This was probably the best thing I ate all day. So simple and yet so tasty. This was either some delightfully sweet corn or they had added some sugar. Either way it was simple fantastic and reminded me of how truly bad suprmarket corn is. There is simply no comparison betwenn locally grown food and mass produced factory varieties. After eating you could even recycle the cob, that was cool. Its sad that the world has lost so much of its food diversity. (To know more about this read.,The Sixth Extinction : Journeys Among the Lost and Left Behind, by Terry Glavin)
Now I was ready to try the thing I had been waiting for all day long, a new animal : Alligator. I had to choose between Alligator sausage and deep fried alligator ($6), and I went with deep fried. I should have tried the other one too, but anyways now I know what alligator tastes like. Andrew Zimmern (Bizarre Foods) mentioned on his visit to the MN State Fair 2 years ago that if you fed this meat to someone and asked them to guess what it was, they would say chicken. Well who am I to argue with Andrew .. he was right on the money. Its slightly tougher than chicken but it tastes very much like chicken. I enjoyed it and if it was more readily available, I would eat it more. It actually is a lot leaner than red meat and actually healthier than most meat you eat(cos most meat you eat has been fed corn, which is not their natural food), whereas these alligators are wild and pure.
It was time for another refreshing beverage and I headed back for root beer. Did I mention I loved it? :)
After another walk around some stalls and other attractions(and more ppl watching) I headed back to the vicinity of the alligator shop to try another meat I've never tried before ... Ostrich.This was being served in a Chinese place right next to the alligator place and many ppl asked them "Is it really Ostrich", and they assured everyone that it indeed was Ostrich. I think it was imported from Australia or someplace else, cos I don't think they are native to these parts. The dish was called Teriyaki Ostrich. ($5.50) It was kinda like an elongated meatball served on a stick and dipped in teriyaki sauce. I would have preferred less sauce but the meat itself was awesome. Another thing I would eat if I see it again.
After this I was very happy and content. Whenever I see Anthony Bourdain or Andrew Zimmern on the Travel Channel, I think .. wow wouldnt it be great to try these new and weird foods from diff places and cultures. And they get to do that for a living. So since I had expanded my repertoire, I was very happy and felt that my visit to the State Fair was worth it now.
I was completely stuffed now and after a short walk just decided to sit on one of the benches and let my stomach try and digest all this in peace for a while. So back to ppl watching. One of the intriguing things I saw was that among all teenage/pre teen couples walking around, at least 50 - 60 % of them were interracial ... black-white ... white-latino ... chinese-white, indian-white, etc etc. I hope that half a century from now, we would have moved along much farther in our understanding of racial barriers ....and realize that these barriers don't exist at all. For more reference on this topic watch "The Human Family Tree" on Nat Geo, for a truly stunning experiment based out of Queens, NY. All 6 billion humans on the planet fall within a 2% variation and with that tiny amount we have managed to fight and kill and persecute. Just sad how much ignorance is all around us.
Ignorance bring me to my next topic ... the booths run by the Republican Party(obviously spreading mis-truths about health care ... I know ... I went and listened.) They were also handing out badges. One of those was actually innovative (CHANGE ... I'd like mine back) and I appreciate their ingenuity. If only they thought so hard about actually doing some good. There was another booth for the Independence Party. I didn't see a big crowd here, so I assume they are still trying to gain a foothold. Both booths advertised "Real Solutions", whatever that is.
After all this food I need to cleanse my palate and system a little bit, so I headed back to the Food Building for a serving of fresh watermelons. ($3). This is probably my favorite fruit and I enjoyed digging into it. I felt refreshed after that.
By now it was close to 7 and I was thinking about heading back. But it was just starting to get dark and the lights on the various rides were starting to glow more brightly and I felt compelled to stay for a little while longer. There were some musical perfomances going on around the fair, so I just kept moving listening to songs I did not recognize.
Something very native to MN State Fair is the Corn Dog. I dont know if the corn dog was invented with the hot dog in Coney Island, but it sure has a mass following here. There are at least 50 diff places to get this at the fair. You can even get footlong and I think there's an even longer one.
Before the invention of electricity and batteries, I'm sure the ladies would have resorted to
'instruments' like these. I headed for Poncho Dog. These guys have been around for decades and they still offer a lower price that all the other newer stands. ($3). As soon as I bit into it I realized why ppl love it so much. It activates both the critical senses (sugar and salt) ... the corn breading is sweet and light around the salty hot dog .. a very good combo.
Well now I was well and truly stuffed. If I was butchered at this point, I would make a good meal. But I had to get the custard I had skipped at the beginning.
So I headed to Custard's Last Stand and ordered the $4 Mocha Chocolate Custard. To put it plainly it was well worth the wait. Simply decadent. I'm sure it was all fat. Sooo good.
The girl at the counter even engaged in casual conversation with me and of course I ended up flirting for a minute :) It was probably good that there was a line behind me, else I might have been picked up for hitting on a minor.
I was heading for the bus stop when I passed by the "Miracle of Birth" building. This is a building where local farmers bring their livestock and animals are actually born here and filmed. It is quite an amazing spectacle. I had seen a live birth on first trip back in 2005 and in the morning when I had stopped there, there were no births happening.
Anyways I thought I'll spend some time here. I got to see newly born dairy calves ( 3 - 5 days old), about 30 - 40 piglets, all born within the last few days, turkeys, chicks, baby ducks, and kid lambs. There were rabbits and a mini-horse and its kid.It was truly moving to see tiny animals. There were farmers and vetenerians who you could talk to. I ended up taking to a vet who had helped a dairy cow give birth to a calf just an hour and a half earlier(around the time I was eating my corn dog). He explained how we just need to give them grain and they gives us all their milk, and their kids and their own bodies eventually for meat. Even though I've always known that it was quite a powerful statement coming directly from another person straight to you. He also casually mentioned how all of these dairy cows and beef cows you see here will end up at McDonald(and other chains). It was funny, sad and chilling all at once.
I left with a new respect for the animals who give us so much and who end up getting treated so badly in factory farms. The farmers who come here are all local and have small farms, so they're not part of the cruelty movement, but that side is the large part of the industry.
All pics from my trip are at
http://picasaweb.google.com/mohan.mathews/2009_State_Fair?authkey=Gv1sRgCJfVhI-t5bGRJA#
Thanks for reading.
Any comments are welcome.
Peace.
