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ByNancyLindahl CHICO Wearrivedaround 7 o'clock, just in time for dinner at the fair, on open- ing day. As we drove up the en- trance boulevard and cracked the window to pay for parking, the scent of ket- tle corn filled the car. We knew we were There. If you weren't hungry when you arrived, fair food marketing — a blend of, bright colors, flags, carni- val lights, hyperbole, gi- ant food pictures, and great smells from stuff siz- zling on the grill will make you suddenly ravenous. As dusk was settling, the col- ored lights came on and a carnival spell was cast on normally sane people to eat things they would never consider in the light-of- day. I'm talking deep-fried things, brimming with glu- ten and corn syrup and fla- vor. Long lines began to form around favorite food booths on the main drag be- tween the grand stand and the main entrance. Ask people what their fa- vorite fair food is and you will find it's overwhelm- ingly corndogs followed by funnel cakes, then it breaks down into personal favor- ites like garlic pizza, deep- fried Twinkies or Oreos, top-of-the line shish-kabobs at $18 a pop or equally ex- pensive bacon-wrapped tur- key legs — stuff you can't get anywhere else that has a culinary sense of adventure or daring attached to it. One fair-food aficionado told us how much he loved the Polish Dog On A Stick, situated at the intersection of the animal-barn walk and the main drag. He was so smitten one year he paid admission to the fair just to go to the Polish dog booth. He bought a dog and en- joyed it immeasurably. He ordered another and en- joyed it as well. Then he or- dered five Polish dogs on sticks, put them in the shop- ping bag he had brought for the occasion, and left the fair. He heated the dogs, one-by-one in his toaster oven and prolonged the gustatory bliss for another five days after the fair was gone. The following spring, he realized he was going to be out of town when the Silver Dollar Fair was in Chico. His chance to expe- rience the Polish Dog on a Stick was about to van- ish until the succeeding year. He called the fair of- fice and had the staff track down the owner of the Pol- ish Dog on a Stick booth, and their phone number. He called the booth owner and asked for their fair schedule — dates and lo- cations for the season, try- ing to arrange a time and place they could meet. He managed to arrange a con- nection at a fair somewhere in Central California. We ran into him on Thursday night, near the Polish Dog on a Stick booth where he told us the story, conclud- ing with, "Meh, they're only so-so this year. I'm over it." Is fair food better in memory than in person? Probably, due to its ab- sence for most of the year. I know my anticipation of a fair corndog was much greater than the pleasure of actually eating one, even though it was hot, fresh, succulent and slathered with French's shirt-staining yellow mustard. I'll remem- ber it as "the best ever." Ever wonder about the nutritional value of a corn dog? Here are the details, minus the pine stick, as gleaned from the USDA by Wikipedia: Calories, 460; Total Fat, 19g, Saturated Fat 5g, Polyunsaturated fat 3.5g, Monounsaturated fat 9g; Cholesterol 79mg, So- dium, 973mg, Potassium 263mg, Total carbohydrate – 56g, Protein, 17g. A corn- dog also provides 10 percent of our daily allotment of cal- cium, 34 percent of iron, a little vitamin A, a little vi- tamin B-12, a little magne- sium, and a little vitamin B-6, based on a 2,000-per- day-calorie diet. Just know- ing 34 percent of my daily iron allowance is covered makes me feel better about my corndog. My completely unsub- stantiated hierarchy of fair food purity goes some- thing like this: Best, most pure food is served near the animal barns where all the wholesome and great-look- ing future farmers hang out. Pretty good food is on the cement causeway that stretches from the grand- stand to the entrance, where the kettle corn, shish- kabobs, corn dogs, lemon- ade, waffle cones, and Job's Daughters have booths. The area on the stretch be- tween the animal barns and the main drag is also pretty good. Borderline sketchy food is the cotton candy and candy apple booth that sits on the grass at the begin- ning of the midway, where the carnival rides are, and anything deeper in the mid- way is too sketchy in my mind for fair grazing. So, here we are deep in the midway, surrounded by the Cyclone, the Gravi- tron, the Raptor and the Zipper with their attendant screaming and flailing, picking our way through the clumpy grass and ex- tension cords toward the seductive and forbidden beauty of an unusually bright funnel cake stand. Bravely, we order a fun- nel cake and a deep-fried Twinkie. When our order's up, we high-tail it back to the safety of the tables by the beer garden to eat. The funnel cake is Penn- sylvania Dutch classic: fried dough, crispy on the outside, soft and chewy in- side with a dusting of pow- dered sugar. The deep-fried Twinkie bears no resem- blance to anything Twinkie — it's more like corn-dog dough, deep fried on a stick and dipped in runny choc- olate. Carl is disappointed and wonders where the creamy center is, but we share the funnel cake. Molly was a sturdy little fair-goer and loved it all: food, rides, animals, the works. We persisted when the mud on the midway was so deep it sucked your shoes right off your feet after a heavy rain, and when it was cold and the Ferris wheel cars shuddered and rocked in the wind. One year she had a corn dog, an eggroll on a stick, and a strawberry milkshake before we got on the Tilt-A-Whirl which was like putting all the ingre- dients for a chunky Thou- sand Island dressing in a blender and hitting the "on" button without a lid. I was reminded of this as we walked past the new- est ride attraction, a rotat- ing, airborne, crazy gestic- ulating claw, the Freak Out, and Carl pointed out the at- tendant hosing out the seats before the next passengers loaded. When I was a kid the ar- chetypal fair foods were corndogs, cotton candy, Pi- zon's Pizza — pizza was a novelty back then — gleam- ing red candy apples on a stick, and frozen chocolate- covered bananas. Clouds of pale pink cotton candy on white paper cone-sticks were magical and unob- tainable anywhere but at the fair. It was pure delight to bite off a chunk of fluff that turned into gritty sug- ariness as it dissolved on your tongue. Pure spun sugar, cotton candy is a lightweight calo- rie-wise compared to other fair foods: 105 calories for cotton candy versus 730 cal- ories for a funnel cake, and contains less sugar than one can of a regular soft drink: one teaspoon of sugar ver- sus 12. Be forewarned, to- day's cotton candy is served in a plastic bag rather than on the white paper cone of yesteryear, which has taken away a fair amount of its enchantment; you don't see big-eyed kids walking around with those ginor- mous pink clouds in front of their faces. I only talked my par- ents into a candied apple once — probably because of the braces, and it was much better in my imagi- nation. In person it was a hard candy shell made of something like melted Red- Hots, with a squishy past-its prime apple inside. The per- fect thing to lie on a table and leave to the ants. It was a tradition to leave the fair through the animal barns with a chocolate-cov- ered frozen banana. Taking little bites and working on the problem of making the banana and chocolate last equally long made the long walk to the car seem bear- able, and the sleeping ani- mals and smell of clean bed- ding straw brought us back to earth. If you want to feel like a kid again, have dinner at the fair — it's a fun adven- ture and a dive into deep food nostalgia. Your next opportunity is the Butte County Fair at the beau- tiful Gridley fairgrounds, Aug. 27-30. SWEET BASIL AND THE BEE Fair food: tempting smells; satifying flavors PHOTOSBYNANCYLINDAHL Le to right, Shauna Manwill, Karly Manwill and Debbie Garcia, all from Paradise, enjoy chocolate-covered bananas at the Silver Dollar Fair in Chico. Carl and the iconic fair corn dog. Kettle Corn provides the fragrance du fair as you enter the main gate at the Silver Dollar Fair in Chico. 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