Spend any amount of time with Sable chef Heather Terhune (right), and you just want to knock off for the rest of the afternoon and go get some ice cream. Or some fried dough. Or both.

We had a ball watching Terhune make funnel cakes for today's At the Chef's Table column. Not only because, well, we're talking powdered sugar-covered fried dough, or because she makes it look sooo easy (and it actually is pretty easy, but even the chef admits "it's kind of a pain to fry to order).

Simply: Terhune is a riot. A few swirls of batter was all it took to get her reminiscing about her childhood and many a summer spent at the Iowa State Fair, "the best state fair anywhere," she declared.

"They've got pork chops on a stick. And the Maid-Rite sandwich, this loose meat sandwich. Corn dogs, dipped right there," Terhune told us. "It's really more about the food than anything."

We'll say. Take a look-see (isn't that what they say in Iowa?) at the food roster for this year's fair. Whatever Funtastick Pork on-a-stick is, we want to know. (Yes, that's Garrison Keillor below, at the Iowa State Fair, but with a pork-chop-on-a-stick.)

Having grown up in Kansas ourselves, where they do say, 'look-see', we can only speak for the freak show that was the Kansas State Fair; we don't remember much about the food, but we do remember the Viking boat ride and the godawful Zipper. So, please, tell us -- have you been to the Iowa State Fair? And how's the food?