I just wrapped up my third year of working with Lisa Prince of the state ag department, WRAL’s Local Dish, and Flavor NC on PBS. At the State Fair I help judge some of the specialty contests. These are the competitions sponsored by entities such as King Arthur flour, SPAM, and the North Carolina Pecan Growers.
It’s a huge honor, and more fun and food than any one person should have, but somebody’s gotta do it, and I will proudly take this bullet on behalf of the people of North Carolina.
There are folks that have been doing this for years and have judged 20-30 contests. I’ve only done nine, but have learned a few things. About entering cooking competitions, and a few other random truths. I’ll start with those unrelated, incidental lessons.
Traffic and parking: However long it takes to get from your house to the fairgrounds on the odd, non-fair Tuesday, quintuple it. For weekend fair days, multiply it by six or seven. For opening or closing day, just spend the night before out in the parking lot.
When sampling sixteen or seventeen pies, take no more than two bites each. If you feel unable to control yourself with an especially delicious entrant, get it away from you. And even those two bites can add up. Post-judging, it’s probably best to dial back the midway munching. Maybe only have one turkey leg, and either ice cream or funnel cake, but not both.
If you plan to enter any type of cooking contests, I have a few tips. They may not give you the win, but sometimes the difference between placing and being an also ran is quite narrow, and this advice may give you a few extra points.
Flavor and seasoning: Taste, taste, taste. Make sure your food is seasoned. If it’s a processed food such as SPAM, be careful your dish isn’t too salty. Other foods need more salt. There’s no way to get it right without tasting. 
Acid is your friend. Dishes should have balance. Rich, fatty foods need something to break them up, and the best way is by adding the acid of citrus juice, vinegar, or tangy dairy such as yogurt, sour cream, and buttermilk. It will make your dish stand out in what can be a sea of mouth-coating, stomach-churning, heaviness.
Make your dish at home, over and over, tweaking the recipe as needed. Get your most brutally honest friends and family to give you feedback. The girlfriend that doesn’t want to hurt your feelings is doing you no favors if she will not tell you the truth. On your end, if you can’t take criticism and comments, contest cooking is probably not for you.
If you don’t like the theme ingredient, pick another competition. In the SPAM contest, the kids made their entries all about the SPAM. Many of the adults tried to hide it. Bad idea. You must embrace the food and celebrate it. This isn’t a game of, “How to get the kids to eat liver without realizing it”. It’s to elevate and showcase the chosen ingredient.
Any excuse for a little cupcake porn. AmIright people?
Read the brief carefully. You might make the best cupcake anybody’s ever eaten in the history of cupcakes, but if the instructions are to make a breakfast item, you will lose. It will probably break the judges’ collective hearts to eliminate your cupcake, but they, and you, have to follow the rules.
I have seen winners who’ve been cooking for decades, and others who’ve only been at it for weeks. So my final advice is—go for it!
Thanks for your time.
Last week I spent a couple hours on I64, traveling east, then a couple more back home.
It was at this point I felt unequivocally bullied. There was menace in their maneuver. At the earliest possible moment, they would go around, at a frightening proximity; both next to me, and when they pulled in front.
On my way home, this attitude struck me even more forcibly. You see, I was returning home after a day with Sam Jones, proprietor of Skylight Inn and owner of Sam Jones Barbecue.
One day the couple was traveling in Sam’s truck. He pulled into an intersection. And that was the last thing he remembered until he found himself crawling on the road, looking for Ashley. There had been a collision, ejecting both from the vehicle.
When rescue arrived, he wouldn’t allow them to transport him until Ashley had been loaded into the ambulance. With paramedics furiously attending her, the truck left, and finally Sam was taken so that his own, not insignificant injuries could be tended to.
Today, Jones is married with two young children. He’s also become chief of that volunteer fire department. He loves what he does and gives back every chance he gets. He’s smart, funny, cooks amazing Q, and tells a great story.
Every.Single.One.
Thanks for your time.
Contretemps (kon-truh-tahnz; French kawntruh-than): an unexpected and unfortunate occurrence. Synonyms include kerfuffle, hurly-burly, fracas, hullabaloo, brouhaha, and Donnybrook. As a former English major, my mind just boggles at the mischief our language gets up to (and yes, I do know I ended the sentence with a preposition).
Due to instantaneous dissemination and digestion of information, issues that formerly only a few involved parties knew about now have global dogs in the fight. If somebody in Wichita says something stupid and offensive, wired people in both Kansas City and Kazakhstan know, have opinions about it, and feel obligated to weigh in on it.
In the past, when people said and did hurtful, illegal, and sometimes just flat-out annoying things, the circle of knowledge and subsequent anger was much smaller.
Recently a couple of controversies occurred involving area businesses. Both happened in the real world. But in both cases, social media spread the word and left much egg on many faces.
As a bystander, each controversy seemed easily predictable. One seemed to stem from the overreaction to a minor provocation by an authority figure, and the other a clear, textbook case of cultural appropriation so blatant it bordered on naked racism.
A company attempts to use the historic Mideast turmoil to sell shoes. A phone company clumsily references 9/11 in an ad. On Pearl Harbor Day, a soup company makes the mistake of tweeting a flag-waving noodle.
To hopefully mitigate damage that ensues from these missteps, I suggest the creation of a vital new position for every company in the US.
They can recommend guidelines like staying completely away from sexual, socioeconomic, educational, racial, and any other stereotypes that exist. Just take your hands off the keyboard and walk away. Just.Walk.Away.
So, for the private social media aficionado without the means to employ their very own VOR, I offer a few tips that may save the pain and infamy that comes from ill-considered postings.
And I beg you, when drunk or jet-lagged never cut your hair, call your ex, or hit “enter”.
Thanks for your time.
The Kid likes to project a certain image. Being raised in the city has convinced the child of possessing colossal amounts of “street cred” accumulated from years of living on the mean streets.
Don’t get me wrong; there’s a certain amount of the aforementioned street cred. My spawn is afraid to go nowhere and is in no way gullible or a soft touch.
I have seen this “misanthrope” walk out of restaurant carrying takeout, only to give it away to someone who needs it. I also have seen, on more than one occasion, the effort to make things right when we’re in an establishment and another customer is being an arrogant butthead. Whether it’s doubling the tip or giving the put-upon employee an opportunity to vent, The Kid tries to make it better.
“Do you have somebody that loves you?”
So, that’s The Kid—a stealth altruist.
If, Gentle Reader, you’ve read more than a few of these published psychological exsanguinations of mine, then you probably wouldn’t be very surprised to discover that most of what I think is either spontaneously spoken to all present or written down for public consumption.
This means that I’m constantly striking up conversations with strangers. And through this I meet awesome people every single day.
What my kind, but uber-reticent child resolved to do is when observing something that deserves praise, gives it. If speaking up can brighten someone’s day, why stay silent?
And, inspired by my bambino, I’ve worked hard to overcome my innate bashfulness and attempt sharing as well.
I know that in these early days it’s impossible to imagine anything other than shiny optimism, innocence, and clean diapers, but you only have to take a peek at poor old 2017 to see how very badly it all can go. That pathetic year is a dirty, misshapen failure, half crawling, half dragged off the calendar and into the history books. It had very few friends, and hardly anyone will miss it. Even the folks who seemed to be having a good run ended the year in a less than glorious place.
So, here are a few recommendations that might help to make you, 2018, less catastrophic than your older sibling.
There are many, many people who were completely caught off guard by you, 2018. That’s because they had their heads buried in their smartphones. These are the same people who’s lives will be over with nothing to show for it except for bathroom and brunch selfies, with no memory of why they were in that particular bathroom, or who else was at that picturesque meal.:fill(transparent,1)/promote-webinar-on-social-media-56a6d01d3df78cf772905e47.jpg)
I have many perfectly nice and sane friends who regularly sing the praises of Facespace and Twattle. They talk about how it keeps them in touch with family and connects them with treasured long-lost school chums. Here’s my query: if they were so treasured, how’d you lose touch in the first place?
Feverish social media use is illustrative of the human need for justice and the desire for complicated matters to have simple, black and white solutions. That’s why people will learn of something that seems outrageous at breakfast and will have tried, convicted, and publicly pilloried the culprit by lunchtime. Then three days later when the full story comes out which explains the unexplainable, nobody cares because everybody’s busy watching some Turkish dude salt meat (I swear-google it).
Thanks for your time.
I can’t live by your rules, man!
I have such an aversion to those people and their rules, that I’m the girl that would rather have a spectacular failure than let somebody tell me what to do.
Nope, and here’s why. Unless you’re purchasing and cooking restaurant quality aged meat, the best thing that can happen to your steak is some salt and a little rest in the fridge for a couple days.
At work, my child is within walking distance of at least twenty really outstanding restaurants. It would take no effort at all to spend $200 a week on lunches.
2 Spaghetti squashes
Let the squash until it is cool until it is able to be handled. Then remove the peel, and delicately break into strands. It will want to break apart on its own, so just follow how it wants to fall. Put the strands into a mixing bowl, and set aside.
Throw it in the fridge. Once cool, slice into servings, and put into separate containers. Freeze all portions not to be eaten in the next couple days.
I’m also fond of raw veggies and dip. Buy whole and cut them to your own desired shape. For dips, try hummus, whipped low-fat cream cheese with herbs or hot sauce mixed in, or nut butters. I love carrots dipped into peanut butter. But for the love of all that’s delicious, please don’t use those bagged “baby” carrots. They’re just whittled-down regular carrots sprayed with chemicals.
I knew what I wanted to write about, but I was hesitant to do it. It’s not that the recipe isn’t tasty because it.so.is. It’s not that the preparation is difficult, because literally a child (with a little adult supervision) could make this dish. And it’s not that it requires a lot of expensive ingredients, because chances are you have everything on hand right now.
Makes 8 servings.
When you’re ready to cook, heat a heavy skillet on medium-high. Add about 1 inch of vegetable oil. When the oil is nice and hot, cook pork until browned and crispy on one side then flip and cook the other side.
The frosting stays sticky. If they’ll need to travel, I suggest you toast it with a kitchen torch to seal it. The recipe was a traditional cooked marshmallow/meringue topping. It turned out to be easy to make, and so good you need to frost fast, to reduce the chance of eating it all from the bowl.
I think, in a way, I may have out-Martha-ed Martha. But maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud.
Thanks for your time.
bull city mom 