I like Coca Cola and I like deep fried food.  I don’t do very much of either anymore because at my age I have to watch my weight a tad more carefully then I did when I was a wirey little twenty-something.  But I have a nice Waring deep fryer here at Casa del Garrett and it gets used at least once a month, either for a fish fry or Maryland crab cakes, and maybe a tad more then once a month for a random side of french fries.  All of which are positively decadent when you use peanut oil in the fryer.  Trust me.  A deep fryer can be addictive.

Perhaps…a tad too much…

NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART

How to make Coke better? Fry it

It must be time again for the N.C. State Fair

RALEIGH – It has come to this at the N.C. State Fair: Deep fried Coca-Cola.

Each year, some carnival culinary innovator with a flair for foods bound to lead to congestive heart failure offers a new foodstuff bathed in gooey dough and dropped in a vat of boiling vegetable oil.

Past fairs have seen candy bars, Twinkies, Moonpies, Oreos, cheeseburgers, sweet potatoes and even green beans fried up and, in most cases, impaled on a stick. South Carolina’s state fair even added crispy Ho-hos.

Perhaps the concession operators, these Emerils of the french fry basket, simply ran out of solid foods.

The solution? Mix funnel-cake batter with Coke instead of water. Pour batter into the fryer and cook up a mass of doughy strands. Stuff into a Coca Cola cup, sprinkle with powdered sugar and douse with pure Coke syrup. Top it with whipped cream and a cherry.

Solution to what…that heart attack you’ve always wanted?  Why not just top it with a slice of bacon too while you’re at it?

Which brings me to another puzzlement.  County fairs and seashore boardwalks both have one thing in common besides Ferris wheels, bumper cars, and other assorted cheap thrills and that’s the quality of the junk food.  Funnel Cakes.  Cotton Candy.  Fries.  Pizza.  Fudge.  Ice cream cones dipped in hot chocolate.  Salt Water Taffy.  Think about it.  On the one hand you have the beach, and all the people frolicking in the surf and sand in their bathing suits mostly, and up there on the boardwalk we’re eating stuff that will eventually make us so overweight we’ll never want to put on our bathing suits ever again.