CAYUGA, Ind. — Don’t try to tell Henry Antonini the two giant tenderloin sandwiches he just ordered from a concessionaire at the Vermillion County Fair are bad for him.

He knows, but he’s throwing caution to the wind.

“I’m not supposed to have this,” the Clinton, Ind., resident confided. “But I splurge once a year. I don’t watch the calories and I don’t watch the fat.

“It’s once a year, it’s not weekly,” he rationalized.

The two bigger-than-the-bun tenderloins were just the beginning of Antonini’s fair food run that day.

“My wife is drinking a lemon shake-up, and before the evening is over, we’ll get a couple of ice cream cones,” he said.

The food, Antonini said, “is the best part of the fair for us.”

Regardless of whether it’s good or bad for one’s health, the food is a major draw for local fairs.

Kay High of Newport, Ind., a fair food vendor that goes by the name Katie’s Concessions, has been selling a variety of food items for seven years.

She started out in the concessionaire business as a helper for a friend’s stand; then High decided to branch out on her own with a 10-by-10 tent.

Now she has a much larger tent and sets up at 26 fairs and weekend festivals a year.

“Corn dogs and lemon shake-ups are always popular,” she said.

“At the Georgetown Fair, the fried candy bars, Twinkies and Oreos are popular,” she said.

The corn dogs as well as the candy bars, cookies and snack cakes are deep-fried to a golden brown in a special corn dog cooker.

Out on an open grill, onions and green pepper slices sizzle next to Polish and Italian sausages.

“We also do fried green tomatoes, fried green beans and fried cheese,” High said.

“At some fairs that’s all we can sell and we do well,” she said, explaining that some fairs require vendors to specialize in one or two food items so there isn’t duplication of vendors.

“People are amazed at what we can fry,” High said as she dipped a Twinkie in cake batter and then submerged it in a deep fryer.

Ethel Megason, formerly of Hillsdale, Ind., who was visiting friends and family in the area, was the recipient of the fried Twinkie.

“I’m kind of curious,” she offered as an explanation of why she ordered it. “I want to try it at home and make it myself.”

After breaking through the deep-fried coating of batter, the melted Twinkie cream oozed out.

“It is good, but it’s not something I want to eat every day. It’s too sweet,” Megason concluded.

For some fair-goers, the midway vendors served up that night’s dinner.

“It’s our Friday night supper,” said Janice Smith of Perrysville, Ind.

After visiting the fair three times that week without trying out the food, she and her husband, Jerry, finally dined on some corn dogs.

“I have to have my once-a-year corn dog,” she said. “I don’t like the frozen corn dogs. This is so nice and fresh.

“We don’t eat this kind of food all the time. But you have to treat yourself,” she added. “I believe in everything in moderation.”

Melissa Strohm of Clinton, Ind., also was a big fan of the corn dogs.

“This is the first fair food we’ve had this week, and we’ve been here all week,” she said.

Strohm admits she loves corn dogs, but she also has been dieting the last six months and didn’t want to derail her 55-pound loss.

There was, however, one more “cheat treat” Strohm wanted to try before she left the fairgrounds.

“If I can find an elephant ear, my husband and I will split it,” she said.

Next to corn dogs, the next brisk seller was a giant pile of curly fries drenched in cheese sauce.

Dale “Shag” Harris of Newport, Ind., has been selling paper plates of giant curly fries from his concession wagon for 13 years.

“That looks fattening” exclaimed teenager Bobbie Roskovsky of Clinton, Ind., as Harris slid a plate toward her stacked high with curly fries drowned in cheese sauce.

“No, it’s a vegetable,” Harris sarcastically reassured her. “You come to the Fat Man’s cart, what do you expect?”

Perrysville, Ind., resident Anita Fultz and her 15-year-old son, Matt, who showed pigs and entered his homemade corn hole game at the fair, ordered a tenderloin sandwich and a plate of giant curly fries with cheese sauce from Harris.

“This is huge. I won’t be able to eat it all,” she said of the heaping mound of cheese fries. “I hope my husband gets here to help me eat this.”

The curly fries, however, had some competition from another fair food concoction: ribbon fries, which looked like a pile of potato chips but all strung together.

Dorothy and Kenneth Palmer of Perrysville, Ind., enjoyed a plate a ribbon fries and a couple of corn dogs.

“When you get here, you’re kind of romancing the idea of what vendors might be here from last year,” Kenneth said.

“We get down here only once a year, so we make pigs of ourselves,” he said.