Snickering at Picasa and the New York State Fair

Browsing the different software Google recommends can be dangerous, and this post is evidence of the peril it can cause. Today I downloaded Picasa, the photo-managing software, and felt the need to experiment with its "Blog This" button. The click of a mouse can place your picture in your blog without your having to dictate the messy steps involved in more traditional uploading! My lack of computer savvy-ness has finally paid off!

I found it necessary to upload a picture of myself eating in the food critique blog, and I had surprisingly few shots of this important act. Fortunately, my past endeavors saved me, and Picasa dug up this beautiful image of my trip to the 2006 New York State Fare in Syracuse at the end of August.

Sadly, it has been nearly five months and I cannot recall the exact date or price of my meal that day. Fear not, though, because I know with certainty that I tried one of the most exquisite delicacies to ever escape the confines of a deep fryer. I speak not of french fries, onion rings, or even special Thanksgiving Turkey. No, I had the delight of delights, a fried Snickers bar!

My sensory knowledge is also unblemished by the trials of time, and I can tell you with fair certainty that this hard-to-find caloric bomb costs the better part of five dollars. More importantly, I can tell you that it is pretty darned good. A fried outer shell is a surprisingly fitting wrap around your standard snickers bar.

Of course, the whole thing comes out of the fryer piping hot. Therefore, fried Snickers are impaled on a stick. This fact can make the biting process somewhat difficult. Tearing off a piece of the Snickers is also complicated by the fact that the bar is frozen when dropped in the deep fryer so that the chocolate portion does not melt. The sensation is otherworldly, as the outside is hot and the innards of the concoction are quite cold. It doesn't hurt the flavor, either. But frozen Snickers are notorious for being difficult to bite, and I had problems with the deep fried outside sliding off the candy bar.

The two temperatures also wrought havoc on my sensitive front teeth. Eating this thing was like competing in an oral pain marathon, but the sensations coming from my tongue were enough to keep me chomping down.

Of course, anyone considering eating the fried Snickers should not consider the health implications of ingesting such food. A deep fried candy bar -- take that, trans-fat bans and fitness gurus! In case the snickers and deep frying weren't enough, the kind people at the fried snicker's booth topped off my prize with some chocolate syrup and powdered sugar. I suppose those hundred calories were justs a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the bar-on-a-stick.

Caution: eating a fried snickers will almost surely result in a serious case of stomach cramps. The thing lays there like you just swallowed a bar of solid iron. Between my soaring risk of heart attack and twisting tummy, I was happy the state fair only offers these things once a year.

But, for all of it's caloric overindulgence and swinely charm, the fried Snicker's falls a little short of the stardom achieved by my personal favorite unhealthy-fried-treat, the fried Oreo. The whole hot/cold situation is interesting, but it can hamper the eating experience between tooth pain and disintegrating food. Fried Oreos are just a bite or two, with little temperate variation. My stomach never goes to bed angry at me for eating fried Oreos, either.

Still I must say the Snickers was an overall positive experience. The chocolate and caramel are surprisingly suited to be engulfed in more fat, and I now have the (dubious) ability to proudly claim that I have eaten a fried Snickers. In the end, cholesterol and logistics combined to clog this fair-specialty's ability to rate highly. It receives a solid but somewhat-disappointing three out of five sporks. At least I can use its picture to test new software.