dancing through the fire.

17 Heart-Stopping foods at the Iowa State Fair

Hi. I've been gone. Deal with it.

Guess where I've been? Guess.

The Iowa State Fair.

So, first... story: I grew up in Texas, and I'm pretty sure the Texas State Fair is in Dallas, and I lived nowhere close to Dallas. State Fairs never used to be my "thing." And then we moved to Iowa and we knew nothing about our new city/state other than where to find the grocery store and the closest park. Iowa is... kinda boring. I love me some Iowa, but seriously... you have to know where to find entertainment here; it's not like living in a large city where opportunities smack you in the face as soon as you walk out the door. We moved to Des Moines in June 2000, spent the first few weeks unpacking and finding our new favorite places, and once that was finished we took to occupying our time with lots and lots of TV (because, like I said, there's nothing to do here). By July, advertising for the State Fair was on full blast and we figured what the hell. Sprung for a family pack of tickets and made a day of it.

Thirteen years have since passed and... I FUCKIN LOVE THE IOWA STATE FAIR. I can't tell you how much of my good feelings-ness towards the fair is because we had nothing else to do that first summer or how much of it is legitimate love, all I know is that I have good memories and I can always count on the fairgrounds to serve as my happy place.

So that's my story.

The point is... I went to the fair. Thank God I saw that BuzzFeed page after I had already gone. We're not going to discuss how many of the foods I ate from that list, suffice it to say that it was several and I am not ashamed.

I don't know how to explain it, but having Iowa-made honey lemonade and deep fried oreos and looking at GIANT farm animals (a 3200 pound bull, and a pig with nuts bigger than my head) makes me so, so, so happy. Corn-fed and proud of it.

My skinny jeans still fit, so that's good at least.