It's Here!

It's here! My Indiana State Fair Open Class Handbook came in the mail yesterday.

I've been debating lately how much fair competition I want to do this year. I've already put in for my days off work for the County Fair but I think I'm going to scale back on the number of items because I was feeling seriously stressed last year, plus, G is doing her dance workshop again the week entries are due.

I've flipped through the State Fair book.. there are some new sponsored contests - a bacon contest sponsored by the Indiana Pork Producers, a cooking with maple syrup contest sponsored by Burton's Maplewood Farm, and a "eat well, live well" healthy cancer preventing recipe contest sponsored by the Little Red Door Cancer Agency. Also notable is that Pillsbury is no longer sponsoring a pie contest this year.

Again, I think I'm scaling back on some of the State Fair competition too. Reason number one is that I've already asked off for a huge number of work days for all my running related activities and I feel guilty about asking off for more. Reason number two is, as much as I love the adrenaline rush from the open judging events, the open judging last year was just not that great. Often there was only one judge, for the most part, the judges are making less and less comments, and then there was the judge that refused to eat anyone's bread in the Spam sandwich contest (deets here).

Overall though, I'm excited that Fair Season is just around the corner. Time to get cookin'!

I'd love to have some company too this year (that's you Isabelle).