This is one of those times.
This frankly is not my own, but was suggested to me by Lee Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once, New and Selected Stories, which has won raves from the New York Times Book Review and Booklist, a marvelous funny book, and a dandy gift for all occasions.
Here's the idea.
You know how at State Fairs and such there's a big demand for fried foods. Perhaps funnel cakes were the progenitors, and lest we forget, donuts (made God's way) and beignets (I don't know any state fairs that serve beignets, but I think it's a fine idea) and of course there are any number of fried meats from chicken to alligator tail. Lately, an with ever-increasing velocity of innovation, the inventive fry cooks of America have been introducing the public to a widening field of fried possibilities. Some, in my humble opinion, merely for the novelty of saying they have done so. Fried pickles, as I see it, are not a complete success. Sometimes, to overcome the sheer technical difficulty. Fried cream corn has yielded enormous beneficial results to humanity, in addition to fried Kool-Aid, fried Coca-Cola, fried Ice Cream. Some seem a defiant gesture to the AMA, such as the fried cheeseburger: a fully-loaded 1/2 lb bacon cheeseburger, dipped in batter and dropped in hot oil.
Achieving untold wealth coming up with the next fried novelty is a fool's errand, the fickle taste of the American public has seen to that, but...! Note that many of these fried foods are served on sticks - corn dogs, of course, and at the moment I'm stumped for another example, but we all know that "on a stick" is as common a suffix in this era as "a la mode" was in another.
Here then, is Lee's idea: the stick itself should be made of some edible fried substance!
The inventor of the edible stick will benefit no matter which way the winds of fried food fashion blow: should fair-goers in the future eat fried armadillo or fried human flesh, they will still need a handy stick to tote it on. This I think is as obvious and natural an innovation as the waffle cone. Many foods seem ready-made, especially in the meat category - Slim Jims, jerky - but perhaps an actual stick properly seasoned, battered, and deep-fried would be equally successful. Thing of the advertising dollars promoting mesquite-flavored whatever-the-hell-it-is. Why can't we just eat a straight piece of mesquite? I leave the details of the exact composition of the Fried Stick to the inventor, and perhaps the thing already exists; if so, my hat is off to you, sir or madam, who foresaw this great step forward in American cuisine.
If the fried stick's introduction does not meet with universal acclaim, well, I'll eat my hat. Fried.
