It has been quite a while since the old passport was pulled out of the drawer for a culinary trip so it was time to remedy that. My sister Lynn alerted me to some new food items in her area so I knocked the dust off the passport and headed to the exotic east. To the North Carolina State Fair in Raleigh to be precise.

After an extremely roundabout way to a parking place that was a hike from the fairgrounds and making said hike we came to edges of the fair. Fair warning, this post has more pics than normal.

It was beautiful day for being out and about so it shouldn’t have been a surprise the State Fair attracted a couple of folks.

We went into this knowing it was going to be an abbreviated, no rides, no games trip because there were afternoon football games to get back to the house to see but we did tour several of the buildings with exhibits. First was the one was a grist mill where they were giving out hushpuppy samples as well as selling varieties of cornmeal. Of course I decided to follow that up with a sample of Pepsi Zero and some new Mountain Dew sugar free orangey looking soda with a melonesque flavor. I didn’t bother to learn the real name. It was actually good.

My primary target for the day was a rattlesnake corndog but as pictured above there were a buttload of people there, all of them funneled through the food aisles, of which there were many. I was hungry and at one point we came to a dead stop for no reason apparent to any of my new close, I mean very close, friends. So we angled towards a vendor with some interesting wares.

You know it’s not a visit to the fair without something fried. I doubled down and got the deep fried country ham with the bourbon peach jam (middle picture above) plus the allegedly candied apple hushpuppies with Cheerwine glaze. They were hushpuppies and did have a sweet pinkish glaze that might have had some Cheerwine included however, there was not a hint of apple, candied or otherwise. Having said that though they were decent hushpuppies.

The deep fried country ham was much more pleasing to the palate. The ham was salty and tender which the bourbon peach jam complimented well and the greasy fried batter just guaranteed the whole thing slid down the gullet with ease. Quite tasty.

After much walking and exhibit viewing and a stop at a pizza seller so Lynn could get something to eat we were getting ready to head out when I spied the initial target of my quest to the east.

In addition to the rattlesnake corndog I was chasing they had an elk corndog and bison burger. I stayed on point though and got the rattlesnake corndog.

I can now say I’ve had rattlesnake sausage so I’ve got that going for me. The reality was, it was just OK. The cornbread outer was good but the sausage was a little chewy and didn’t have a lot of flavor on it’s own in spite of the visually apparent herbs in the mix. The avocado sauce drizzled on it was honestly the most flavorful aspect. Having accomplished this goal though it was time to make the hike back to the car which we both found quite the chore after lighting up our respective fitness devices with the steps we put in.

Turns out we like to eat. Dinner at an Irish pub and breakfast at place that was featuring some Bavarian dishes were the follow-up. I’ll hit those in the next entry. In the meantime if you’re in NC and the fair is still going on go have fun and even you don’t like the interesting foods you can still get funnel cake, hot dogs, burgers, cotton candy, deep fried deserts.