The Great Minnesota Get-Together

As we had planned, Mel, Emma, and I went to the Minnesota State Fair today. This is actually the first state fair that I have ever been to. In the thirty-four summers I lived in Iowa, I never attended the Iowa State Fair, but the very first summer I lived in Minnesota, I ended up becoming a fair goer.

Mostly, we just wandered around looking at the various exhibits. The first thing we did was to go to the Miracle of Birth Center. There we saw a newborn lamb and its mother. We also saw a cow that was starting to go into labor. However, Emma grew a bit impatient as we watched the cow, so we had to leave before the calf was born.

In all, we spent about four or five hours wandering around the fairgrounds. This gave us the opportunity to try a wide variety of the foods that were offered at the fair.

We had some deep fried cheese curds. They were very good, although Mel told me that at her Weight Watchers meeting last week they learned that just three of the cheese curds would be 11 Weight Watchers Points.

I also tried the hot dish on a stick. It was alright, but not my favorite of the foods I had at the fair.

We all had some mini doughnuts. Emma really liked them.

Mel and I also had some pepperoni pizza on a stick. It was pretty tasty as well.

It seemed that everywhere we turned at the fair, there was some other food being offered on a stick. One other food that was not on a stick that we felt we had to try was Sweet Martha's Cookies. We had heard from multiple sources that the chocolate chip cookies there were absolutely wonderful, so we had to check them out for ourselves. We ended up buying the tub of cookies. Now they fill this cookie tub significantly past its top, so it was good that Mel thought to bring along a Ziploc bag in which to put the overflow cookies so we could close the lid on the tub. I suppose we could have eaten the pile of fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookies down to the top of the tub, but that probably would have been a bad idea. I think it is better that we savor the cookies over the next several days, if not longer.

Next year when Emma is a bit older, maybe we will have to take her on some of the rides, such as the giant slide. I guess we'll have to wait until next summer for that though.