May Daze – Jam, Sausage, and County Fairs

May was a busy month. After a five-month blogging hiatus with May 1st being my first blog post in 2016, I fully intended to get back to my three-per-month average over the past few years. It didn’t happen. This time it was not for lack of subject matter, but lack of time. When we weren’t busy socializing this past month, my time was spent working on MFP projects. That is, the Master Food Preserver program. The non-profit county organization that teaches locals safe food preservation methods.  The focus of my life for the past few years. You remember. Since we’re on the subject and since May was dominated by all things MFP, I’ll bring you current on the subject.

Each October our MFP group meets to decide what should be taught the following year. We usually take off the month of December leaving us with eleven classes from January through November, an additional combination class with the Master Gardeners in the fall, and half a dozen evening classes over the summer, called the Basics. The big ones, though, are the eleven 2-3 hour Saturday classes that often include lectures, wet demos (that’s what we call live demonstrations of food prep and preservation from beginning to end), and samples of our products. I’ve signed up to teach three of these classes this year. The first one, my old favorite, Jams and Jellies, was held in May. Even though I’ve had plenty of experience teaching this subject both to the public and as continuing education for members of the program, I always get myself worked up into a frenzy the week or so before a class.  The May class was no exception. As usual, it went very well and all of my fretting was for naught. Still, it’s what I do. I’m much like Tom Hanks’ girlfriend, Patricia, in You’ve Got Mail, when he said, “Patricia makes coffee nervous.” I know several of my fellow master food preservers who would agree with that.

Throughout the month I had two additional MFP distractions: first, the June class on sausage making, a subject matter completely new to our Amador/Calaveras County group, and second, a continuing education presentation I agreed to make on county fairs. These turned into to far larger challenges than expected. The person who volunteered last October to be the “lead” instructor and the only member of our 25+ group of volunteers who had ever made and preserved sausage, completely flaked out. As far as I know, he’s fallen off the face of the earth.  That left me on the hook for the class. Well, I ordered a couple of books on the subject and soon realized there was no possible way to adequately cover the subject in one 3-hour class and, thus, renamed it, “The Basics of Sausage-Making at Home, Fresh and Cooked Sausages,” emphasis on the word “basics”, and I omitted all reference to cured, smoked, and fermented sausages. This I could manage. I recruited the one MFP who seemed passionate about learning to make sausage, rallied a group of ten volunteers for a sausage workshop at his home, and we were off and running. As typical, of the original ten, half of us have done all of the work, making various sausages and meeting to taste test our results. My silent partner at home (I refer to Verne this way because he has refused to go through the MFP training so has no official status, therefore, no public credit!) has been a huge help and as always enthusiastically supported my folly. After a few tries, we have perfected a breakfast sausage, a spicy Italian sausage, and a Mexican Chorizo. Along with my compatriots, we have experimented using a manual grinder and three electric grinders varying in sizes and cost; worked with different casings and stuffed a hundred feet of links; boiled, sautéed, and grilled sausages. It’s been an incredible experience and when I finally meet up with my flakey fellow MFP, I will thank him. Our follow-up class next year will cover smoking, curing, and fermenting sausages. Exciting! That requires equipment well beyond our KitchenAid with it’s meat grinder/stuffer attachments, and casings. Verne may just draw the line with this second class. We’ll see, I do have several months to work on him.

It takes a lot of people to make sausage!

The second (actually, third) MFP distraction was the county fair project. Since I started making jams a few years ago, I’ve always proudly referred to my creations as, “Blue Ribbon Jam”. Last year Jana pointed out in her blog that while I call them that, I have never entered my jam in the Amador County Fair, or any other county fair for that matter, and have never won a ribbon of any color. This was true. Not any more, though. I started preparing for the county fair presentation by calling our local fair office in Plymouth and talking to the people in charge of the fair each year. They provided me with the 2015 fair guide and I realized they needed help. There were a number of out-and-out mistakes in the canned foods section. Without boring you with the details of a week’s worth of work, one thing led to another and by the date of my presentation I had become involved with three local counties reviewing their guidelines and making the necessary changes to create a set of consistent requirements. After immersing myself in fair guidelines, interviewing three different judges with a total of 80+ years of experience, studying the USDA standards of excellence for home preserved foods, I realized that the only missing piece was first-hand experience. With just a few days remaining for the Calaveras Fair I entered my first competition. And, because Verne has become quite the canning expert, he also entered his famous barbeque sauce. Actually, his fame is limited to our immediate family, so it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of High Sierra BBQ sauce. He also entered a salsa we made last fall with Aaron, when he and the other Burkhards visited.

Even though by the time we decided to compete I was very familiar with the entry process, it took several calls and a lot of last-minute anxiety as the filing deadline neared. The next step a week later was to deliver our products to the fairgrounds in Angels Camp. I was busy, so Verne took off on his own to make the 80-mile round trip to deliver the goods. He was gone for hours. The fair grounds are huge and during “fair week” mostly run by volunteers. No one seemed to know where to take our canned goods and once he finally found the right building my entries were on the computer but his had somehow failed to get that far. Eventually, he found one of the few paid employees who took our entries and assured him she would add him to the list. Hmm… Last year we attended the judging of canned goods in Plymouth and found it to be a great experience. This year the judging day in Angels Camp conflicted with one of our two social events in May and we weren’t able to attend and had to wait until the Monday following the fair to pick up our entries (and, hopefully, our ribbons). Verne assured me he’d read the guidelines and we could pick them up at 10 a.m. on Monday. Wrong! We arrived a little after 10 to a locked building, although we could see people inside moving around. They ignored my pounding on the door until they decided I was not going away. “Noon was the pick-up time,” I was told by a surly volunteer. I explained the great distance we’d driven, begged and pleaded, and they finally searched and found three jars of our products (we’d delivered two for each entry, eight in total). At that point I was mad at Verne for having gotten us there early, mad at the volunteers for not having a better attitude, and mad that the three jars they’d given me showed no standing in the competition – that is, no ribbons. After walking to the car and taking a closer look I realized I was holding Verne’s BBQ sauce and salsa, no jams. I went back and pounded on the door again. The same people (no less surly) answered and agreed to take another look for my entries. This time they returned with four jars, two that included the winning ribbons (one blue for first place in Preserves and a red ribbon for second place in Marmalades)!!! I’d done it! I could now (honestly) make reference to my award winning, blue ribbon jam. The excitement lasted only a moment. Verne had no ribbons. Sad.

Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee

(Strawberry Preserves 1st place; Peach Marmalade 2nd place

The story continues. A week later we received a $1 check in the mail made payable to Verne Moser. Again, being new to the process this $1 check held no significance except that we figured they’d sent Verne my premium (that’s what the money associated with a ribbon is called). Knowing now that premium awards are $3, $2, and $1 for blue, red, and white ribbons, we could have deduced from the check that he’d placed. But, we didn’t make the connection at that point and I asked him to call and see if the check was actually for me. I wanted my winnings. He was off the phone in less than a minute and had no confirmation as to why he’d received the $1. Some jobs are better done by The Big Boss (as I am known). I called back.  By now we have the Calaveras County Fairgrounds on speed dial and my name and voice is well known to the entire staff. What I found out was that my premium of $5 (I refer to it as five-large) has yet to be sent. The $1 premium (one-small) was actually for one of Verne’s entries. I wasn’t told which one, the BBQ sauce or the salsa – we had to use our deductive skills to finally figure that out.My honey was a winner! If we’d arrived at the fairgrounds at noon, when we were supposed to, he would also have a beautiful white ribbon to hang on his third-place salsa.

We are now old hands at fairs and will be entering the El Dorado County Fair next week and the Amador County Fair in July.

*UPDATE* Before I posted this we discovered that we’d missed the entry deadline for El Dorado. A few calls and a lot of whining and they agreed to take our forms (and money, including a late fee) if they were delivered today before noon. Off to a bad start. I’ll be adding the El Dorado Fairgrounds to our speed dial.

Am I being too wordy? I think this is a good place to stop. I’ll share more about our May Daze in the following two posts -- Sally's Amador Reunion and U-Pick Blueberries, Chaw'se, and Memorial Weekend.