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Fair Game

After a month on a diet and fitness regimen that had always worked for me in the past, I was weighed at the doctor’s office. I’d gained weight.

I had also lowered my blood pressure, but I couldn’t allow myself to feel good about that.

I fixated on the weight thing. Even my doctor didn’t fixate on the weight thing. But I have been fixating on my weight longer than he has. I am better at it.

One oft repeated cliche that you usually can’t and won’t accept until it starts happening to you is that your metabolism slows as you get older.

Pair that with age-related body aches and analogous issues that prevent you from exercising as vigorously as you once did, and you have a recipe for corpulence.

As I have stated several times in the past in this magazine, I am trying to get more comfortable with my corpulence, since it seems to be settling in for the long haul.

I am not about to turn this column into some sort of jeremiad, philippic or any other word you have to Google.

Bottom line: I am not here to bitch and moan. I love food. I don’t feel guilty for loving food.

I am not even an overeater in the sense that I am liable to sneak up to the attic and go through an entire box of doughnuts.

I just always take in slightly more than I burn, I guess. Couple that with genetics handed down to me by generations of Swedish endomorphs and what you get is a persistently
fluffy guy.

About ten years ago, I got down to what the CDC considers to be my ideal weight given my age and height, and everyone (except the CDC, presumably) thought I looked sick.

My wife always tells me that I have the genetics of a Swedish farmer. She says it nicely. This analogy references strength and stamina as well as stoutness.

If I were a Swedish farmer and I attained my “ideal weight,” I’d become so weak that I’d have to quit farming and take up something less strenuous, like fermenting fish.

I guess I am just doomed to eat like a Swedish farmer (minus the fermented fish).

I don’t really know what a Swedish farmer eats (although I feel pretty safe in assuming that he eats fermented fish), but I know what sets my culinary imagination ablaze.

The list of new fair food items at the Indiana State Fair, going on now through August 20. 

Every year, the fair’s organizers send this list to me and every year, I consider making a special trip south just to eat the new items. I have never made the trip yet, but I am always sorely tempted.

Get a load of these irresistible abominations: Bratchos (tortilla chips topped with bratwurst), Flaming Hot Cheeto Corn in a Cup, Sirloin Tip Fries, Elote Street Corn Pizza, Smoked Bologna Burnt Ends, Deep Fried Corn on a Stick, Deep-Fried Sandwich Cookie Ale, Gimme S’more Bourbon Shake (yes, it’s an alcoholic milkshake), and Nutellaphant Ear (fried dough with a Nutella spread).

I have repeatedly read this list like other people read erotica.

Foodies get excited about molecular gastronomy. I get excited about spectacular gluttony.

That’s not precisely true, but it sounded good. It is more accurate to say that I get more excited about new fair food concoctions than about whatever Heston Blumenthal is doing to moss this month.

The culinary experiments I love are the mashups that don’t tend to get much coverage in Town and Country.

Ever hear of Piecaken? Created by chef Zac Young, PieCaken is a dessert with pecan pie on the bottom, pumpkin pie in the middle, spice cake on top and apple pie filling…somewhere in there.

This is a Frankenstein’s monster of a dessert, and if I had $100 to blow on such a thing, I would order this glorious atrocity off Goldbelly and have it shipped to my home where I might not share it with anyone.

No, I wouldn’t eat a box of doughnuts in the attic, but I might eat an entire Piecaken. I’d consider that a special occasion. And our attic doesn’t even have a floor, which would add an element of danger beyond the danger of eating an entire Piecaken.

Just off the top of my head, I could conceive of any number of comestible (and, perhaps, combustible) inventions that would excite me if they were real. Maybe they are: Sauerbraten Burrito, Kung Pao Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo, Korean BBQ Pierogi, Red Bean Red Velvet Cake.

On second thought, I am not sure how excited I am about that last one.

If I decided to limit myself to eating these sorts of things only while I am in Indianapolis, that would really restrict my intake.

Road trip, anyone? In the interest of helping me eat more responsibly?

JUST A THOUGHT

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