In which PhysicsGirl is deep-fried

School starts on Tuesday, so I'm scrambling to get as much summer in as possible. Intensive vegging out has been happening. I'm also trying to do some of that exploring of Toronto I keep meaning to do.

The Ex has always been the harbinger of the end of vacation. I haven't been in years, but I found out that they're doing a weekday lunch-time deal: Go between 11 am and 1 pm, leave by 2 pm, and you get your $16 admission back. I'd been hearing of all manner of deep-fried foods that I sort of really wanted to try, and this deal was the perfect opportunity.

I biked down with a thunderstorm threatening, prompting me to wear my lovely red rain boots. It rained, but the promised storm never materialized. Meaning I got to spend all afternoon walking around in sweaty boots. Blistery fun!

However. Food. Deep-fried.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of the deep-fried in general, but there are some things I'm willing to try. You know, for Science. I've had deep-fried cheesecake before and unfortunately it's really, really good. There are things I will not try, of course. The Krispy Kreme Doughnut Burger (to which you can add egg, bacon, and cheese if you are so inclined), for instance, which makes KFC's Double-Down seem like it's not trying hard enough. Yuck. However, I was intrigued by the deep-fried mac'n'cheese, coke, and butter. So I went to investigate. For Science.

The first order of the day was deep-fried mac'n'cheese. Unfortunately, when I got to the booth, the girl said they were out, which confused me because it was only 11:30 or so. She assured me that the mac'n'curds would be practically the same.

I can assure you they're probably not. I was hoping for cheesy balls of pasta. I got individually battered bits of pasta, with occasional pieces of cheese and practically no sauce. Blech. I will say, there 's quite a lot there for the $7. I couldn't finish it.

The next on my list was the deep-fried generic this-is-not-Coke-because-They-won't-let-us-call-it-that. The Food building provides you with a handy map to find the "Ex Favourites," so I found the booth fairly quickly. I was expecting lines, but I guess it was early enough in the day that the teens and hipsters who would be more likely to order this stuff weren't at the Ex yet, so I only had to wait for the girl to fry it up.

This was quite tasty. It's rather like a coke-flavoured funnel cake, with more coke-flavoured syrup.

Sadly, the deep-fried butter is not to be found in the Food building, although I wasted about 20 minutes trying to find that out. The only place you can get it is all the way on the other side of the midway. So off I went.

On the way, I got a smoothie to counteract the clogs in the arteries.

After the rain, the rides had opened up again.

Finally, I found the booth, tucked away beyond the surfing demos.

For $5, you get four lumps of butter dipped in batter and fried. The butter melts. Oh my god awesome.

Of course, with all the other bits of fried batter fighting for digestive juices in my stomach, I was having some issues with the actual eating part. It took me the entire walk back across the Ex, including a quick walk-through of the Crafts building, to eat three of them. In retrospect, perhaps eating both deep-fried coke and deep-fried butter within the same hour was not such a great idea.

But that's okay, because I saw an Ent.

I had to get to school to kill trees make opening-day photocopies, so I went back to the gate, got my $16 back, retrieved my bike from the fantastically close bike-parking, and was on my way.

I hope they have this same deal next year. I'd like to try the actual deep-fried mac'n'cheese. And perhaps a deep-fried Mars bar. You know, for Science.