State Fair, 2009

Ah State Fair, how I love you.  It never dissapoints.  Matt, Steph, Linda, and I took off early to the fair on Friday afternoon and met up with Jess and Jacob.  I'm putting up a slideshow of this year's highlights because otherwise there'd be too many to pick from.  The major part of any State Fair, at least to me, is the food.  This year's new additions were fried HoHos and chocolate dipped bacon.  We didn't manage to get around to the HoHos but the bacon booth was near the front of the line so we headed there right after we got our corn fix.  I'm a vegetarian but chocolate dipped bacon was so insane that I had to try it.  I'm not sure I even need to say it but it was fantastic.  I think its probably hard to go wrong with bacon in general.  But yeah, chocolate on bacon with a little bit of sea salt, mmmm.  I only had one bite but felt it was necessary to do it it in order to faithfully describe the fair experience.  Along with the mandatory fried veggies and fried cheese, this year Steph and Linda had ostrich burgers and Matt tried his very first corndog.  We also made sure to get a cup of the NC State ice cream that they make on their campus.  As always the fair food was both amazing and unsettling at the same time, in the best possible way.  As it turns out a friend of ours won several of the crafting competitions at the fair this year.  Tony Perdue is in charge of the very expensive microscopes in the biology department.  He also grows his own cotton, spins his own yarn, and then knits beautiful pieces out of it.  The little old ladies who are in charge of those competitions were all a flutter when we told them we were friends of his.  Looking at some of the entires this year has inspired me to enter a few of the contests myself next year.  I'm pretty sure I have the skills to at least place in some of the competitions.  This year we made sure to get to the pig races a good 45 minutes early to get seats.  I think that the duck racing portion is actually my favorite part but they're all pretty cute.  To sum it up the NC State Fair delivered once again.

Make a Smilebox slideshow

State Fair!!!!

I promised I would get to it and now that I have tidied up the living room a little bit I can.  On Wednesday Matt, Steph, Linda, Kuo-Chen (my super adorable rotation student from Taiwan) and I finally got to the always amazing NC State Fair.  Sure it meant having to leave work two hours early but it was darned worth it.  Let me just start by saying it was sooo cold out that night, Matt will laugh at my saying this but it was 48F.  I should have worn more layers.  Being a veteran of the fair, I took the lead and almost ran the whole way from the entrance to the roasted corn.  I can't even describe how much I love fair corn.  Maybe because its dipped in butter, maybe it is all the things that I sprinkle on it, who knows but it isn't the state fair with out it.  We munched our corn while viewing the display gardens because they are Linda's favorite part of the fair.  Afterwards we headed back into the fried food fray and began our decent into fried-ness.  In an effort to show Kuo-Chen everything that is right with American we might have gone a little over board with the food.  We ordered fried snickers, a blooming onion, fried mac and cheese (new this year).  Kuo-Chen got fried oreos, Dan (our lovely British friend and Kim's fiancé) got the fried pecan pie and ribbon fries for Kim.  Meanwhile, Steph was chowing down on a giant turkey leg.  I'd like to point out though that all food was bought for the purpose of sharing except for the giant turkey leg, that was all Steph.  After making all of that stuff disappear we decided that it was time for some veggies, fried veggies!  It is the state fair after all.  After the veggies and pickles were done, things were sitting heavy so it was time to check out some animals.  We wandered through the exhibits for a while and even got to pick up a baby duck when we realized it was time to head to Hogway Speedway.  Now, my dad pointed out that as a vegetarian I should probably object to the poor little animals being treated like this.  I'm not so sure though, they get treats at the end of the really short track...and they're so cute!  We managed to sneak in some fried cheese and ice cream, albeit separately before heading out.  You all might be surprised to hear that the cheese wasn't my idea.  I had explained it to Kuo-Chen earlier in the week and she was so amused by the idea that she insisted on trying it.  I was in a food coma the whole way home.  It is probably a good thing for my arteries that the state fair only comes once a year.

Dan enjoying his pecan pie

Kuo-Chen and the giant pumpkins which she found hilarious

Fried veggies and pickles

Matt and Steph sitting on a dumpster

Matt and I at the end