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Sunday, September 23, 2007

What Kind Of Country Fair Are You Talkin' About?

One of the local generic store-brand product lines around here is called "Midwest Country Fare" ("Fare", get it? Whoo boy those advertising types are clever). I've probably written about it before as it has this foolish logo with a farmer hauling a bushel of some sort of produce and an idiot grin with a piece of hay sticking out from between his teeth. You know, yokel brand.

I sort of hope there's a line for other regional markets like "East Coast Communist Cell Meeting" -instead of the grinning farmer you get a picture of Che Guevara with a burrito sticking out of his beret. Or Emma Goldman with a can of beer.

I guess it was impossible to resist purchasing the Midwest Country Fare Chow Mein Noddles. I don't even particularly like the things, but I get such a charge out of the mental image of a booth at the State Fair serving-up plates of Chinese food (I mean Chinese food in a style sense, not actual food made from questionable Chinese ingredients. Wait, maybe I ought to have a look...nope, it's OK-made in West Des Moines.

It is sort of interesting that there is enough demand for crunchy fried noodles around here to warrant manufacturing a store brand. I'd been away from the Midwest for a long time (decades) but when I lived in Illinois as a youngster you had to actually go to Chinatown if you wanted anything beyond an egg roll and chop suey. I'd say that's a pretty positive development.

Wouldn't you know the noodles are actually good? It figures, they have as much fat as potato chips.

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