Reporter Getting a Taste of Conejo Days : Thousand Oaks: The writer samples a dozen examples of carnival food--from the greatest to the greasiest. But he’s not alone.

For many of the people gobbling hot dogs and consuming cotton candy Thursday night, the main attraction of Conejo Valley Days was not the rides, the games, or the five-day festival’s community Western theme.

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They had come to Conejo Creek Park not for, of all things, dinner.

“I love carnival food,” said Larry Atkinson of Thousand Oaks, shortly after ordering five hot dogs.

This was hard for me to understand. My mother always warned me of the hazards of carnival food--fat and cholesterol and prices that are too high. When it came time to eat at the ballgame or the fair, and other kids headed for the concession stands, I was the one who pulled out a paper lunch bag with an apple and a sandwich on whole wheat bread.

So Thursday, armed with a Los Angeles Times expense account and a ravenous appetite stoked by intentionally skipping lunch, I set out on a caloric quest to understand the essence of Conejo Valley Days by eating all I could, sampling a dozen examples of carnival fare, from the greatest to the greasiest.

I started slow, with a chocolate covered strawberry that cost me 50 cents. It was sweet and juicy. The profits went to Job’s Daughters, a youth service organization.

Emboldened, I moved on to the serious stuff, a quarter-pound all-beef hot dog. I ate it all, my first mistake. Not that the grilled hot dog, served by volunteers for the Conejo Youth Football Assn., did not please my palate. It did. But, as I realized later, I should have paced myself.

Atkinson sat at a table in front of the hot dog stand with his three children. “My kids love hot dogs,” he explained. “This is dinner.”

His wife Barbara Atkinson, on the other hand, was chowing down on a chicken, rice and bean burrito. “This is a little more healthy,” she said pointedly, telling her children that tomorrow, they could expect to return to their usual home diet of “organic food.”

Trouble hit at the next stop, a soft pretzel stand operated by the Conejo Valley Demolay club, which, like Job’s Daughters, is a youth service organization affiliated with the Masons. It was traditional carnival food, to be sure, but after a few bites, my dollar pretzel started to taste a lot like a sponge.

Sponginess notwithstanding, the pretzels are popular with Conejo Valley Days visitors. Bill Kavanaugh, who was dishing them out Thursday, said he expected to go through 30 cases of 50 pretzels by the time the festival ends Sunday night.

“We eat all the broken ones ourselves,” Kavanaugh said.

Having sampled the standard hot dog and pretzel, I decided to go international, and stopped by Deborah Kamisher’s crepe stand. Kamisher made me a spinach and cheese crepe.

“It’s the best food here. It’s fast gourmet food,” said Kamisher, whose stand benefited the Westlake High School baseball team.

I only ate about half of the crepe. That big hot dog was beginning to catch up with me, and eating was starting to seem more like a job than an adventure.

Kamisher boasted that she had personally imported her “crepiers,” the crepe griddles, “all the way from France.”

Ginny Baghdasarian’s cooking equipment, three blenders, had only traveled from her Thousand Oaks kitchen. But they were churning out orange slushies at professional speeds. Baghdasarian was supervising her two daughters, Lisa, 15, and Michele 8, in blending ice and syrup into frozen flavored concoctions.

By drinking only one-third of the slushie, I managed to avoid the carnival food hazard that Baghdasarian described as “a brain freeze.”

The hazards of greasy fingers and an unsettled stomach were not so easily escaped, however. Deep fried artichoke hearts and lukewarm French fries left me suffering from both maladies.

I kept eating, though. A box of apple juice left me feeling slightly less greasy, and a chocolate decadence sundae, scooped out by the Thousand Oaks High School Parent Teachers and Students Association, renewed my faith in carnival food with its fresh, light whipped cream and killer chocolate brownie.

Still, it was hard to escape the grease, especially when sampling funnel cakes and elephant ears.

There was still a lot I had not tasted: Thai-Chinese Food benefiting the Agoura High School Charger Club. Sausages from the Elks. Burgers from the YMCA.

But I was feeling really full, and, even though the money was supporting charities, I felt bad about wasting food by ordering and then only eating a few bites.

So I decided to call it quits after one last snack--a 25 cent banana. It was one of those healthy things I used to find in my brown bag lunches, and my mother always told me that bananas were good for an upset stomach.

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Conejo Valley Days

All events are held at Conejo Creek Park, Moorpark Freeway and Janss Road, unless otherwise noted. Carnival admission is $5 for adults, $3 for senior citizens and students, $2 for children ages 7 to 12 and free for children 6 and under.

TODAY

5 p.m. to midnight: Carnival

5 to 10 p.m.: Bingo

SATURDAY

9 a.m.: Parade, Thousand Oaks Boulevard

Noon to midnight: Carnival

Noon to 6 p.m.: Western pit barbecue; $6 adults, $4.50 children

1:30 and 4:30 p.m.: Rodeo

2 to 10 p.m.: Bingo

SUNDAY

Noon to 8 p.m.: Carnival

Noon to 8 p.m.: Bingo

Noon to 6 p.m.: Western pit barbecue; $6 adults, $4.50 children

1 and 4 p.m.: Rodeo