Caloric Carnage – It’s Easy to Eat Healthy at Sonoma Fair (Especially If You’re Delusional)

As we marched down the Midway, carnival hawkers were cajoling us to try our luck and win stuffed animals. “Instead of enormous pink teddy bears, they should be offering TUMS,” one funny girl in

Healthy donuts? Sure. Why not?. Photo by Carey Sweet.

my group quipped.

“Ha,” I said, “How about TUMS strung on a necklace, like candy jewelry? You could just chew as you walk.”

We nearly laughed ourselves sick, all in anticipation of, well, getting sick, as we ate our way through nearly all the food booths on opening day of this year’s Sonoma County Fair.

Visions of deep-fried atrocities loomed, of sticky cotton candy billows bigger than our heads, and of course, all kinds of stuff-on-a-stick. And, indeed, we found plenty of that (chocolate covered bacon? Yep).

But in a somewhat shocking twist, we also found that, in the year of 2010, The Sonoma Fair is also doing what Sonoma does best: serving up healthy, fresh, and surprisingly tasty food.

It’s true. Amid the rubble of our sweet-salty batter-coated corn dogs and Mackinac Island Fudge’s rich, chocolate-y confections, we found “healthy” donuts. Seriously. From Castle Mini Donuts, brand new to the Fair this year. “Donuts have never been healthier,” proclaimed Castle owner Terry Turchin, noting that his cinnamon-dusted rounds are made with soybean oil.

Maybe, because you can get the crunchy-edged, fluffy-inside beauties drizzled in chocolate sauce, served as a sundae under whipped cream, or even piled in a giant plastic tub, if would be tough to not pretend these babies weren’t really going straight to our hips.

Clever advertising at the Sonoma County Fair. Photo by Carey Sweet.

Yet naturally, because the donuts are tiny, they have less calories per bite, I said hopefully. Turchin would not confirm that.

Several vendors were serving roasted corn, however, and eating doesn’t get any healthier. Except when that corn, as ours was, can be dunked in butter and slathered in mayonnaise, just begging for a sprinkle of chile powder. For more corn, you can snag some pozole from the Old Mexico booth, the savory broth brimming with hominy, and veggies (just avert your eyes to the fried tortillas for dipping).

The creatively named Thai Cuisine had egg rolls on a stick, and we gave them healthy props for being vegetarian (no mind the candy-sweet sauce we dipped them in). Butterfly-cut French fries could be considered healthy (the chip-like curls were fried, but so lightly they tasted baked), even when we doused them in buckets of barbecue sauce.

A giant dill pickle? You betcha! A full serving of veggies right there.

So sure, we stuffed down pounds of ribs and pork and links from Bubba’s Barbecue, but we chased it with a surely-healthy smoked turkey leg from Willie Bird’s (ignoring the fact that the leg was the size of a caveman club).

Yes, that was powdered sugar on our faces, from the deep-fried dough glory that is Pennsylvania Dutch Funnel Cakes. But we sipped fresh-squeezed lemonade alongside, in the dainty “small” serving, no less, instead of the offered “tanker” cup. Pure virtue.

Mom’s Apple Pie is full of apples, I pointed out. And fish tacos, from Pepe’s Mariscos in the Mexican Village, could be ordered grilled instead of fried,

Fried food on a stick is never a bad food option. Photo by Carey Sweet.

tucked in a heart-friendly corn tortilla and packed with fresh vegetables and cholesterol-clearing salsa.

For final proof of how healthy the State Fair has become, our group did not eat the Oreo-covered banana (though, still, bananas equal good-for-you, yes?). We passed on the cute, crunchy churros, the snow cones (really, as if ice has calories), and even the candy apples (though again, I pointed out, this is a snack brimming with apples).

Okay, we indulged in two-way spaghetti from Ibleto’s Spaghetti Palace, but we declined the meatballs.

By the end of our feast-around, it’s true an antacid would still have come in handy. But thanks to the Fair’s new “healthy” bent (ha!), at least we weren’t waddling out looking like a group of fat chicks in the funhouse mirror.

Details: Sonoma County Fair, July 27-Aug. 8 at Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa, 707-545-4200, sonomacountyfair.com.