Minnesota will offer a midwestern-style salad -- lime Jell-O (tm), mandarin orange sections, banana slices, walnuts, and Miracle Whip (tm) -- on a stick.

The description was disappointing. A spinach leaf and a cheese cube? Come on, they can do better than that. Start with a long carrot or celery stalk. Stick veggies to it with edible glue. Or put little slits in the stick and thread the veggies through it. I'm still working on the dressing. Maybe it could be converted to edible glue.

Considering what most restaurants consider a side salad these days, a leaf of spinach and a cube of cheese seems about right. I mean, a plate of lettuce with a few lonely shreds of carrot and a single cherry tomato has been considered a salad for years...

Maybe next will be Chef Salad on a Stick: a romaine lettuce leaf, a cherry tomato, a small hunk of ham, a smaller one of turkey, and a chunk of cheese. Or Greek Salad on a Stick: A piece of cucumber, a small hunk of onion, and feta cheese that will crumble off the stick as soon as you pick it up.

Nothing says summer like food on a stick. Sure, a spinach leaf with cheese cube sounds a bit minimalist, but I guess I'd try the salad on a stick if I had the chance.

Makes you wish they'd do an extra super special Iron Chef challenge match, doesn't it.

Iron Chef on a stick? Dang! That'd be something to see.

Hiroyuki Sakai would probably win, but I'd eat a corndog if Chen Kenichi made it.

Perhaps apropos of nothing, but that reminded me a little of my first trip to Texas. It seemed like all the food was fried, and I was joking around at a restaurant and asked if I could get a fried salad, and the waiter didn't even bat an eye.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fried salad somewhere in Thai cuisine.

I'm disappointed - it's only a sampler, with DIY instructions for home use. It doesn't begin to make up for the full portion of deep-fried Twinkie that the fair is serving this year.

Deep fried Twinkies! Gaaaah!

Mermaids', the tourist-trap slot machine parlor across the street from Binion's Horseshoe in downtown Las Vegas, serves deep-fried Twinkies. They also serve footballs full of beer.

There's at least one tiny restaurant in the Lot Valley, in south-central France, that serves "aguillettes de canard," or, as Ellen Kushner delightedly puts it, "Duck on a stick!"

My friend Patti Beadles says those deep-fried Twinkies at Mermaids' are "surprisingly good, though one could feel them slogging their way through ones veins shortly after ingesting
a bite." I'm going to take her word for this.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a fried salad somewhere in Thai cuisine.

The only thing I could think of isn't Thai, but how about wilted spinach salad? You gotta fry the bacon and then use the fat for the dressing which is poured warm over the spinach. And there's always German potato salad. Damn I love German potato salad. I'm getting hungry.

MKK

I'm sorry, Piscus and Teresa, but I do know of a restaurant that serves deep fried broccoli and cauliflower. No "seems" about it: everything here _is_ fried. Even tofu. I've heard cornbread dressing was invented by a chef trying to deep fry salad.

At the Ribfest here a couple of weeks ago, I ate battered, deep-fryed oriol cookies. They were revolting. Neither the batter nor the cookie was crunchy, and the flavors of the cookies were painted over with grease, flattening all of the parts into a single, sweet, greasy bite with a bit of terrible artifical chocolate flavor at the edges.

Lydia: not only that, but if you ever go to Chino Latino on Hennepin you can wrap your lips around the sludgefest that is a deep-fried Snickers bar. I think it may even be served with 2 suggestive scoops of ice cream at either side on one end, and there's also a plastic monkey involved...maybe even on a stick.

I've had fried cauliflower and broccoli (and probably other vegies) at the Texas Renaissance Festival in, IIRC, Magnolia. Tasted like chicken. :)

Forgive my ignorance: how do fried broccoli and fried cauliflower differ from vegetable tempura?

Err, Lydia, please forgive the 'wrap your lips' thing. Considering my characterization of the food, that turn of phrase was...unfortunate. Very very sorry and no offense intended. [repeats to self: "Proofread twice, post once."]

Rikibeth: in my meager experience, there were several differences: the batter was very different (not nearly as light), the cuts of vegetables were much thicker, and (this is key): no delicious sauce to dip in. Well, ranch dressing...but it's not the same.

Sure, I know from fried cauliflower and fried broccoli. The best informal felafel place in the city (on 17th just west of Broadway) does a great felafel-and-fried-cauliflower on pita. But I deny that that's fried salad of any kind.

The ante definitely needs upping - how about a selection of bread, cinnamon and licorice sticks bound around a stick by some edible fibre to make Sticks-on-a-stick?

Stephanie, you worry too much. Even if I had noticed the double entendre, I wouldn't have been offended.

I see that I was typing under the influence of Ambien. Oriol? Fryed? Good heavens. It was the fault of the drugs, your honor.

I wasn't going to mention it.

The earliest Oriol cookies on record were made at Oxford University. Oriols are now manufactured in the United States by Fordyce & Ripken. They're filled with a distinctive orange and black frosting, and are shipped in beautifully made woven fiber packages.

You're horrid, Teresa. I love you, but you're horrid.

On the other hand, she knows about Rainbow Falafel. (Also known as the Broom Closet of Levantine Wonders.) So she can't be that horrid.

Yes, grease forms the base of the Texas food pyramid. The most horrifying fried object (horrifry?) I've encountered on a trip home must be chicken-fried french fries. Fry 'em once, dip 'em in batter and fry 'em again. Now, that's good eatin'! Until after your triple bypass, when you have to stick to fried salad. Doctor's orders.

Then there's sugar. My mother makes banana pudding with not only the usual (boxed) vanilla pudding, but also a tub of Cool Whip and a can of Eagle Brand. So sweet it makes your fillings buzz. (Not to mention what it does for your dentist.)

So does the MN State Fair offer funnel cake on a stick?