New State Fair foods leave us in a pickle

The new State Fair foods have been announced! And I'm probably not going to eat any of them.

That says more about me than the offerings, which are as inventive as usual, if a little pickle-centric. Apple pie, but with pickles! Picklemocha coffee, with a nice fresh pickle-glazed minidonut for dunkin'! Pickle pancakes topped with whipped brine butter — we call it the Gherkins Perkins! Or would, if it didn't invite legal action.

Pickle lemonade does sound good, if puckery. It would seem to be the perpetual-motion machine of fair drinks: The liquid slakes your thirst. but while it's doing the slaking, the salty pickle-part unslakes, and now you're pickle-parched and in need of additional slakery. It's like Tabasco Milk. You could stand there all day drinking one after another until someone pulls you away.

Surely there are some that don't make the cut. Deep-fried saffron-infused yak thyroids. Poutine 'n' Cookies. Longo Pups, which are just like Pronto Pups but slow-roasted for an hour. Something really Roman, like quail brains, but with an American twist: quail-brain nachos. If you saw that, you'd stop and consider, right? "Nachos" seals the deal on just about anything.

Or maybe not, because as much as you think you might try something new this year, there's a chance you won't. The problem with new fair food is that it invades the space occupied by old fair food.

It depends on which type of fairgoer you are:

Heedless, unformed young people moving in packs, grazing here and there as the spirit moves you, keen to try new things so you can post pictures on Instagram in the hopes that everyone will envy them and click "like" — which means they are loved — except it didn't work out because they dropped their phone on a ride and it like flew, like, a mile.

Careful, deliberate, seasoned old people who have experienced the fair in the same sensible, methodical way since 1977 and realized long ago that if you eat your first big meal at 11 a.m. you beat the lines, and when you're hungry again at 2 p.m., you hit the Machinery Hill area, where the line for the Severed Turkey Leg should be short, and that's a good walking-around meal right there.

I am in the latter camp, although I do not have a set route. On the first day (duties at the StarTrib booth mean many trips) I head directly to the Pronto Pup stand, just to tick the box. And to celebrate the return, of course. Perfect summer day, not yet sticky, grass still green and untrampled, August mellowed but still strong. Sure, it's only 10 a.m., but no gustatory rules apply here. We can have alligator for breakfast and waffles for supper!

But we won't, because we always go the Lutheran diner for breakfast. If memory serves they don't have anything new from year to year. No one walks into a Lutheran diner and says, "Hope they swapped out the eggs for a tofu simulacrum." No. You want comfort food and translucent coffee.

For years, I made a point of having an About a Foot Long hotdog, if only to celebrate the curious honesty of the name. It's as if one day the first guy who sold a Foot Long was watching the people go by and noticed how many were carrying complimentary yard sticks and had a sudden pang of panic: They could do some fairly accurate measuring on the spot if they wanted to. You know there's one guy who'd sue. Better say "about," and if someone ever says, "Why the name change? I just measured mine, and it's exactly 12 inches," you could say, "It indicates our dedication. We are all about a Foot Long Hot Dog." No court would take it up. Well, maybe the 5th District, they entertain all sorts of goofy suits.

Then, one year the Foot Long disagreed with me, and I mean that in the sense of "took great offense, argued nonstop for an hour with ever-escalating vehemence, and finally got physical." To this day, I don't know why there isn't someone walking around with a giant bottle of pink antacid strapped to his back, offering three squirts for $5. Some people would pony up as they went through the gates, just as insurance.

If I try a new dessert, it means I have to give up Mini-Donuts. I eat those once a year. I wish they sold them in smaller bags, because after three, I start to hate myself, and after four I think, "These would go great with ice cream." And just vanilla, thank you, not some gussied-up new flavor that tastes like something a Baskin-Robbins exec dreamed up after licking an Amazonian toad.

There are days I'll just have a hamburger, because it's cheap and I don't feel like spending $14 on something I have to eat while sitting on a curb. Your basics, your mainstays, your go-to items — they're all good curb food, and some days that's just fine.

By all means, go, enjoy, try new things! But don't feel guilty if you don't. There's always next year. (As you said last year.)