State fair trip report...

We were exhausted by the time we got home from the fair yesterday - I was all ready to get the post up last night, but nodded off not too long after finishing dinner! There were plenty of exhibits that we didn't get to see, but we did make a good dent and did quite a bit of walking. We took a fair amount of pictures so we could show you some (mostly food) highlights if you couldn't make it out this year. As always, you can click on the photos to see them in their larger form if you have trouble seeing everything in them.

We got there fairly early in the morning, but that did not stop Jeff from making a dash to his favorite stand where they sell the infamous pork chop on a stick! He has gotten this every time that we have gone but I've never tried one until this trip - it was much better than I was expecting. It was juicy, smoky, pretty tender - the blend of spices (that they of course sold separately) made you want to lick your fingers clean and forgo a napkin. I now see what Jeff was talking about... this will be on my must-have list next year.

Once that was out of the way, we spent a good deal of time strolling around checking out all of the different food stands. One of the first ones we saw was the obligatory cream puff stand - fairly large line for this one at 9am.

A little farther down we came across a very empty Hot Dish on a Stick vendor - wonder what that is? It is basically a tater tot hot dish on-a-stick with a cream of mushroom dipping sauce. They also sold the "Uff Da treat" - a filled krumkake topped with caramel sauce and butter roasted pecans.

Next were the Scotch Eggs and Meatballs on a stick.

Staying warm under the lights...

This stand had a sign up to let you know what exactly you were getting yourself into if you ordered either of them.

If you wanted to stick with breakfast in the morning, there were quite a bit of people checking out this vendor...

There did not seem to be much of a line at this next one... too odd for some maybe?

Now we couldn't go to the fair and not get classic mini donuts...


There are a couple different vendors, but we like Tom Thumb the best.

If you are a Chocolate Chip Cookie fiend, then this is the place to go at the fair here...

Most everyone coming from the cookie building were walking away with one of these pales... I can't imagine eating that many cookies!

While we did stop here...

Where we got some fantastic salty and greasy fries, we did not however get this many - we got the little cup! I swear!

Later on, once we recovered from the fries, we decided we should go healthy and make a pit stop at the Kashi booth - they had lots of samples and coupons. They also gave us a nifty tote bag... woo!

I'm sure Paula Deen would be proud if she would have came to see them carve the face of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way winner out of a 90 pound block of pure butter.

We didn't only walk around to see food, we made sure to take a snap of...

And as you can see, this piggy didn't disappoint - that is one large animal!

This is what the crowd looked like as we tried to navigate our way back to the car - it got extremely busy and very hard to move around... and this was only around 1pm!

Oh, and before you ask - no, we didn't eat at all of the places we took pictures!