While ambling through the Maryland State Fair on opening day Friday morning, Belinda Bonds thought she'd stop for a few Oreo cookies, but not just any Oreo cookies. These were dipped in batter and deep-fried, then — because that would hardly do, otherwise — coated in powdered sugar.

"It's fair food," said Bonds, of Columbia. "Where else would you get this kind of disgustingness?"

Indeed, the 129th Maryland State Fair, running through Sept. 6 at the Timonium Fair Grounds, offers a wide range of food options: funnel cakes, kettle corn, cotton candy, corn dogs, eggrolls, crab cakes, barbecue, even fresh produce at the farmers' market. For many people, though, the essence of the fair experience is to be found at the deep-fry stand, where a cook will drop an astonishing array of battered items into 350-degree oil.

New this year at the stand, which has been at the Maryland State Fair for six years, are deep-fried strawberry Pop-Tarts, s'mores and peanut-butter/chocolate balls called Buckeyes. The menu also includes deep-fried Snickers, 3 Musketeers and Milky Way candy bars, Twinkies, Nutter Butter cookies and, yes, an entire peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich on white bread.

Every so often, someone strolls by, looks up at the menu and exclaims, "Oh, my God." The fry stand might be the food equivalent of the Bearded Lady or the Lizard Boy, bygone midway attractions meant to defy belief.

"It's intriguing," said Aaron Wade, a resident of Timonium. "It's something different. It definitely makes you want to stop."

And so he did, with his sister, Ashley Wade, who is also from Timonium. He ordered the PB&J; she got the Snickers.

"Oh, this is insane," Aaron said as he was handed his order. The sandwich isn't served on a stick, so he had to wait a bit for it to cool, then dived right in.

"That's really interesting," said Aaron. "It still maintains the peanut butter and jelly, but with a different consistency."

Gooier, of course, as Ashley discovered when she bit into the Snickers on a stick, finding she had to angle her head a certain way to catch the chocolate goop.

"Mmmm, it's good," she said. "Hot, but good."

Erik Anderson, who was serving the customers while Scott Czerwinski manned the fry station, got into the carnival midway spirit, hawking the wares and making outrageous claims.

"Would you like to try some deep-fried goodness?" he'd ask a group of passers-by. Those customers who dared ask about nutritional information were told. "The calories get fried out."

Czerwinski said most items are fried in about 90 seconds, a bit more for the peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. Brian Shenkman of West Palm Beach, Fla., who owns the fry stand, the slurpee operation next door and the nostalgic candy concession in the exhibition hall, said the goods are fried in some sort of vegetable oil, but he wasn't quite sure what it was made of. He certainly wouldn't talk about the secret of the batter, which he called a "homemade recipe from a friend's great-grandfather. It's something like funnel cake batter."

Bobby Jones, a fair visitor, had the temerity to step up to the stand and say, "It's, of course, 100 percent healthy."

"Yes," said Anderson. "It promotes heart health."

Jones, an Air Force veteran of the first Gulf War, knows something about danger — he works at Aberdeen Proving Ground supervising the testing of body armor. On Friday, he and his wife, Tammy, were defying mortality with a lunch of corn dogs, and had stopped by for dessert: a couple of deep-fried Snickers.

"This is the only place we eat like this," said Tammy. "It's part of the experience."

arthur.hirsch@baltsun.com