Winneshiek County Fair's Eat Local Cook-off

This week is our county fair and there was an Eat Local Cook-off on Wednesday. They needed judges and I thought it would be fun so I volunteered. There were 2 other judges and 10 dishes entered. This fun event involved trying to use as many local products(within 100 miles) as possible and in a creative way. The first place prize went to a Bangladeshi student from our local college. His dish was local lamb grilled with spices and served with a yogurt sauce and accompanied by potatoes and julienned squash. It was very tasty. The second place dish was kale and sausage Pie, which was very nice. The cook of this dish rendered her own lard for the crust and, I believe, ground the wheat. Third place went to a couple who entered 2 galettes, one sweet, one savory. The savory really was the winner in my book. It was a tomato, basil and cheese galette. I really had a good time being a judge for this. I look forward to attending again next year but maybe as a contestant.

We also had a great time attending the fair itself. If your an Iowan the food highlight of the fair is Pork Chop on a Stick. However, I had a very good piece of homemade cherry pie, which got my vote. Pork Chop on a Stick just hasn't won me over. For those of you who are not Iowans and are wondering, there really is no stick involved in Pork Chop on a Stick. It is called that because they cut them so that you can hold onto the bone as if it were a stick.

Strawberry Picking

Last week our family went out of town a bit to Wold Strawberries to pick our own berries. There is usually only a week or two a year when you can do this so we were glad we didn't miss it while we were traveling. We picked one tray/basket which came to 11 pounds. Originally I had wanted to pick 2 baskets but it is a good thing I did not. Berries don't stay fresh very long so you have to preserve them right away. I chose to wash and dry and then freeze them. I also made some jam and a strawberry crisp. The crisp recipe was from the Crisco website. I am not a fan of Crisco but I just substituted butter for the Crisco. It was a good recipe and passed my husbands test. His mother makes a lot of crisps so he knows what he likes. The strawberries are so beautiful it was fun to photograph them.

Putting my food knowledge to good use: An exercise.

I know entirely too much about food and I am a writer who never writes anything. So why not start my own food blog? Maybe we'll talk Northeast Iowa local food or write some poetry or do some home cooking. I am really a Californian disguised as an Iowan. But since my husband is pastor of a rural church in Iowa, here I am in little Decorah. And Decorah is not without its virtues both for quality of life and food. In California I shopped anonymously at generic stores. But here I buy meat from a friend and am a loyal customer of a particular vendor of produce, a man of few words but lots of tasty tomatoes and extra veggies thrown into my bag. And this will be my 3rd year buying chicken from a family just outside of town.

Now let's talk rustic. There are very few isolated places left in the USA but we live in one of them. We are 70 miles from any large town and about 150 miles from any metropolitan area. So because of that our food habits have definitely changed. Goodbye, gyros and feta and hello, ham steaks:) At first I was scared but we have simplified and gone local. We also have discovered that you can make your own, of just about anything. Imagine making your own bread, pretzels, Moroccan food, etc... Now, I may have some advantages over most people. I have had a pretty good food education previous to moving here. I was raised in home where matzo ball soup was a far more frequent occurrence than boxed macaroni. And we are not Jewish. But more on my food history at a later date.

All of this is to say I am going to give blogging a try. In future blogs I will post some of my poetry, which often features food; talk about my unique food upbringing; relate future food ventures I have planned and last but not least I will talk about cooking and what I am doing in the kitchen.