A judge's lot not always a piece of cake

The baker's daughter was a rookie Minnesota State Fair food judge when a colleague in the Creative Activities Building asked, "Who wants to do the hot peppers?" Barb Bright, who grew up greasing bread pans and cracking eggs in her father's bakery after school, made the mistake of opening her mouth.

"There may be five jars and they look just beautiful and you sniff 'em ... and then you're dumb enough to take a bite," said Bright, a food industry executive and a State Fair food judge for the past 10 years.

"You just want to die. It's 90 degrees in the room, nothing in sight to drink and you've got four jars to go!"

Not everything advertised as edible at the State Fair comes fried or on a stick, but the other stuff doesn't all qualify for a blue ribbon, either. For every fragrant piece of heaven, there are dozens of food-contest entries that are assaults on taste buds and vicious enough to curl the tails of the connoisseurs grunting in the Swine Barn.

Many entries to the baked or canned goods categories are enticing and some are delightful. Others are culinary calamities. Either way, not everyone has the expertise or stomach to be a judge.

For a dozen years as a food judge, Shirley Barber has made an art of holding end pieces of bread 2 inches from her nose, giving the crust a gentle squeeze and basking in an aroma that instantly tells her if the ingredients were fresh. So when Barber, 69, a former educator with the University of Minnesota Extension Service, nibbles on pie crust, the last thing she wants to blurt out is ...

"It was rancid!" Barber said. "Maybe the family taste buds became accustomed to it, but when home-rendered lard becomes rancid and is mixed and heated, it is not delicious.

"Rancid butter is not delicious. Rancid nuts are not delicious. Butter that sits around too long is not delicious."

Hitting a grand Spam

Barber, raised near Aitkin, is an expert on canning and food preservation. But like the other food judges, she has an insatiable taste for adventure. Her favorite State Fair foods may be the malts at the Kiwanis booth, and foot-long hot dogs with mustard and fried onions. She also eats cheese curds at least once each year. Here's another confession: A few years ago, she says, she bought a package of banana-flavored Twinkies.

If you're going to judge everything from jams to Spam -- yes, there's a "Great American Spam Championship" calling for appetizers made with one 12-ounce can of Spam -- you can be picky, but not snobbish.

And you'd better be hungry.

"On baking judging days, you only take tiny nibbles," warned Barber. "But when you have dozens and dozens of cookies in each category..."

With popular cookie recipes like oatmeal or peanut butter, there can be as many as 50 entries. But with only one judge assigned to a particular category, judges learn quickly to pace themselves and abandon expectations. Don't expect these judges to enter the Creative Activities Building salivating, nostrils flaring, with dreams of chocolate-chip cookies dancing in their heads.

The apple pie of her eye

"I love bread and butter pickles, but there are years you'll open every jar and there's not a crispy one in the bunch," said Bright, who worked for Green Giant and is now a production supervisor for Buddy's Kitchen, a Burnsville company that produces foods for Northwest Airlines and Caribou Coffee, among others.

"Judging at the fair is very subjective," said Bright, 60, whose father made everything from scratch at his Busch Bakery in St. Paul. "It's wonderful, and it can be heartbreaking. Believe me, I've tasted some apple pies that were heartbreaking."

Supervised by Jan Stroom, a longtime fair food judge herself, the judges know food, know one another and know the State Fair judging routine. All receive pamphlets with Creative Activities rules and categories. For instance, cakes are awarded points for appearance, lightness, tenderness, texture, moisture content, flavor and smell. And that doesn't include the frosting, for which there are more criteria.

Tables are covered with various goods and treats, with everything categorized. All are assigned numbers, the baker's identity unknown.

Rare lopsided victory

"You can almost tell the professionals because the cakes look so perfect," Bright said. "I'll see one that's lopsided, and I can tell that maybe it was done by a 4-H'er. You hope those are good. You'd love for them to get a ribbon."

Bright never plays favorites with so much at stake. Some blue ribbons come with $6 cash awards, but there are also a few $1,000 grand prizes and even a $2,000 national grand prize and a trip to Hawaii in the Spam contest.

And when judges have made their final rulings, they total scores and put the information on a card backed with -- ready? -- carbon paper.

"There's nothing more frustrating than hearing a clerk say, 'I'm out of carbon paper,'" Bright chuckled.

Maybe someone can type an order for more on the fair's old Smith-Corona. For food judges, it's all part of the recipe.

Paul Levy • 612-673-4419