Another summer and another 10 days filled with food, food, and more food!

If you are planning on going to Kdays in Edmonton this year, you had better bring your appetite!  There is plenty to choose from for all kinds of appetites.

Personally, I like the carnival food.  There is no other time of year that I can indulge in the “deep fried flavour of the year”, elephant ears, cotton candy, candy apples and stuff “onna stick”!

It takes a team of us to get the marathon eating done to bring you a good sampling of the new food items available.  We generally scout out where everything is first and then formulate our plan of attack.  While waiting for our team to gather, I decided to grab breakfast – aboriginal style!

Nothing beats fresh Bannock with butter and jam for breakfast!  Native Delights is in the special Aboriginal “Trading Post” area located in the East end of the grounds near the choo-choo train!  Ian Gladue and team know their stuff.  Their burgers are amazing!

Next up was the “Montreal Steamed Hotdog”.  They are an entry in the “New Food Contest” that Kdays is running this year.

For those of you that keep complaining that the food is so expensive on the Midway, here is a bargain for you!  Just under $4!  These are steamed so they are much juicier than the roller grill version you get at most places.

Not on the new food list, but we had to give it a try anyhow – the “Fruit in a Fruit”.

You have three choices; watermelon, pineapple and coconut.  $12.  If you save your “cup” your refills are half price.  They basically take out the inside of the fruit, blend it with ice and pour it back into the rind.  The pineapple was very refreshing!

Who doesn’t like maple and bacon? Here we have the Maple and Bacon Corn Dog (onna stick!)

They present you with this giant bacon corn dog and a small condiment cup of maple syrup to dip it in.  It was quite the tasty little experience!

Next up was one of the stars of the midway: the Scorpion Pizza!

There isn’t much that will gross out myself or my team.  We are brave souls when it comes to trying new things.  Last year the bug pizza was cricket flavoured.   They kind of all taste like dried chicken.  It’s probably the texture that turns most people off; they are quite crunchy!  Besides the novelty of the scorpions, the pizza is nothing special and a bit expensive at $10/slice.  We put it on the “must try” list every year though and step up to the challenge!

Who doesn’t like mini donuts?  One of the new food items this year is the Maple Bacon Mini Donuts.

Perfect for sharing, and not too sweet, these were a big hit.  They sprinkle the minis with crumbled bacon and drizzle them with maple syrup.  Very delicious and decadent!  Cin City also has strawberries and cream and S’mores.  We will be back for more of these little beauties!

Myself and my team of awesome are all “Meatatarians”.  We haven’t met a meat yet that we didn’t like.  The novelty item at RibFest (located at the far south end of the grounds) is the “Pulled Pork Sundae”.

This lovely is pulled pork, mashed potatoes, BBQ beans, more mashed potatoes and topped with more pulled pork.  It’s at Gator BBQ for $9.

I have shiny new “Kansas City BBQ Society” judging certification.  For me, this was an opportunity to test drive my new skills.  The appearance was okay, I would have got a huge piping bag to make the mashed potatoes look like ice cream.  It does look and smell appetizing though!  The taste was good, albeit a little on the greasy side.  The texture for me was a fail.  The pork was mushy.

There are four different smokehouses competing for your vote at Ribfest.  Misty Mountain hails from my hometown of Hinton, Alberta.  Gator BBQ is from Southern Ontario, Prairie Smoke is from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and Boss Hog’s is from London, Ontario.

I tried all of the competitors last year and fell in love with Prairie Smoke.  Rob and team were at the last competition that I was judging at (Porkapalooza) and their team brought home the Grand Championship!  There is just something about Prairie Smoke that none of the other teams can seem to replicate; a subtle smoky flavour that is just divine!  Prairie Smoke also has a “BBQ Sundae” of sorts called a “Cuppa Q”.  Try it, you just might like it!

Ribfest has a people’s choice award, so make sure you try them all and vote for your favourite!

We finished off the night with a humdinger – Deep Fried Butter.  Yes, you read that correctly!

You need to be prepared to wait, it takes four minutes for them to fry these up for you.  It starts off as frozen butter wrapped in pie dough.  They come out as molten, melted balls of gushing liquid!  If you are brave enough to try these, BE CAREFUL! When you bite into one of these, the butter gushes everywhere and it is very hot!

The girl selling them really likes them.  This was OUR least favourite of the midway this year.  We tried it, all three of us did not like it.

Even with all three of us doing the sampling, this is just a small idea of what is available at Kdays.  We didn’t even get a chance to go inside to sample “Taste of Canada”.  We didn’t have room left for “Juicy’s” which is a BBQ rig that is “twenty-seven tons of grilling power, 100 feet of turf and over 20 feet high”.  It’s impressive to say the least!

This year has some great indoor exhibits as well.  There is a salon dedicated to Agriculture, the “Farm Hall”, where you can see where your food comes from. They feature live farm animals for everyone to learn about.

There is a “Techlife” salon that features some of the better tech companies (like Bioware!) and live video gaming competitions on HUGE screens!

Our favourite was the “Sports Experience Hall”.  Lots of family oriented activities like trampolines and hockey.  We nerded out in the games area playing classic Nintendo games, pool and foosball.  So much fun!

Kdays is something you just can’t do in a day!  You will have to watch my Instagram feed for more BBQ and new food items when I go back for more!

Many thanks to Mike and Jeremy for being on my Kdays team again this year!