Foodsicles. Nowhere but Minnesota. Yes the home of Lake Woebegone,
“The Land of 10,000 Lakes”, has a new identity. It’s now Minnesota,
“Where It Tastes Better On a Stick”.
The Minnesota State Fair is
underway through next Monday. Almost two million fair-natics will
stroll through its gates, people claiming to be there for stage shows,
4-H fairs, Ag exhibits plus pie baking and home made jelly judging.
Don’t be mislead. Minnesotans are drawn to the fair like bees to honey
to devour the unending variety of foods on a stick.
We’re not discussing a simple
corn dog and candy apple world. Last year’s Minnesota State Fair
featured an estimated, and the guess might well be low, eighty-seven
different gourmet stick delights.
Judy Walker, food editor of the
New Orleans Times-Picayune, wandered north to the Twin Cities last
August and reported, “Minnesotans have raised the food on a stick
schtick to a culinary art form.”
To keep up with the 2008 stick
food menu there’s an online listing, complete with map, to assist
fairgoers in finding their own personal stick-de-resistance.
Scanning the list, were I lucky
enough to attend, a beeline would be made to Big Fat Bacon On a Stick.
It reeks of yummy. A 1/3-pound of sliced bacon fried and caramelized
with maple syrup and served on a stick with dipping sauce.
After allowing the bacon to
raise one’s desperately low cholesterol count move on to sample scotch
eggs on a stick, a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage, rolled in bread
crumbs and deep fried, or head over to Bayou Bob’s Gator Shack for
alligator on a stick, sautéed in garlic, olive oil, breaded, deep fried
and seasoned or, since it is Minnesota, stop at any one of a number of
food emporiums serving walleye on a stick.
At The Mouth Trap you’ll find my
Minnesota sister’s favorite, deep fried cheese curds on a stick, while
The Pickle Dog and The Preferred Pickle specialize in deep fried dills
on a stick. Over at Sausage Sista & Me one dines on the Lil Sistazz
minneporketta (their spelling), a sausage bread “rap” or the Puff Daddy.
Yes, both are on a stick.
Ms. Walker termed the spaghetti
and meatball on a stick a total disaster. Au contraire said Maxim
magazine claiming the Oodles of Noodles offering is “American ingenuity
at its best”. Note: If others can say with a straight face they peruse
Playboy for the articles, I can certainly claim to read Maxim for the
recipes.
Dessert? Choose from deep fried
Snickers, raspberry scones, frozen key lime pie dipped in chocolate or
turtle cheesecake. Sticky concoctions all.
But for the ultimate Minnesota
State Fair stick-perience head to Ole & Lena’s where the crème de la
crème is a Tater Tot Hot Dish on a stick with cream of mushroom dipping
sauce followed by the Uff Da Treat, an on a stick filled krumkake topped
with caramel sauce and butter roasted pecans.
Rumor has it devouring at least
one of every fair food stick qualifies fairgoers for fifty per cent off
heart bypass surgery. Provided the procedure is done at Mayo’s in
Rochester by a surgeon whose last name ends in quist or son.
Always supporting the Minnesota
economy, “ya sure you betcha”.
