Village food competition

[Sweepies]

This is mostly light-hearted, my village has a very large "show" every year with many tents, food vans, entertainment etc. They have the standard exhibitions you can enter, for photography, flower arranging, longest carrot, most attractive onion, etc.

I decided to enter one of the baking competitions with a friend to see if either one of us would place 1st, 2nd or 3rd. The prize for 1st place is £3! So all to play for as you can imagine.

The category was a baked item using ready made puff pastry, I decided to make a "posh" bacon and cheese turnover using some nice bacon, brie and cranberry - finished it off with sesame seeds. My friend made some kind of chorizo twist thing.

After entering it I noticed there we're probably about 15 entries in all, including a rival bacon and cheese turnover though it looked like something from Greggs - I wasn't too worried.

After judging was over and a couple of drinks we went to see the results, neither of us placed, and the bloody rival bacon and cheese turnovers won - but what really annoyed me was the judge hadn't tried a single thing!

Most (not all) items had been sliced in half once (??) but nothing tried. I assume they were sliced to see the quality of the pastry - but as we were told to use ready made pastry that seemed a bit redundant.

I thought okay fair enough, maybe the judge doesn't like puff pastry - but it was the same for every food item. The cake category, pies, salads, sandwiches, wraps - nothing was tasted, just cut in half once.

So Mrs. Judge wouldn't have known my posh pastry contained bloody expensive bacon, brie and cranberry as it never entered her mouth. This, to me, seems to go against the spirit of the competition. If I'd known it went on looks alone I'd have put a lot more effort into how it looked and not how it tasted.

All previous years, even after coming out of covid, at least a small portion of the food was tried, so maybe it's just the judge. Or maybe it's me, expecting too much from a cooking competition.

So, AIBU?

I've been on the other side of this, I've been a judge (don't hate me!). Harrowing experience.

I was relatively new to the village and wandered down whilst the fete was being set up and thinking it would help me integrate into village life, asked if I could help with anything. Oh how green, how naive.

"Yes" said village grand dame "you could judge the junior Easter Bonnet competition" I wondered why she was smirking. They might as well have asked me to bring peace to the Middle East.

Oh reader, the bonnets were laid in front of me, but how to judge, the best looking? The most inventive? How many points to knock off for it being so obviously done by an adult? The pressure, the stress!

I was judging away and looked up to see a line of mothers with folded arms glaring at me.

I was clearly set up to take the fall and didn't dare go in the pub for a month.

I never go to anything in mine or surrounding villages but this thread has made me want to seek out the next village show to check whether the entries are in face tasted by anyone. I never thought for one moment they wouldn't be!

That’s brilliant. I’m imagining your hunter refusing to be shown or jumped ever again, because of The All-Conquering Scone.

I was the beneficiary of village judging. In the village dog show (8 dogs, the ninth ran out of the ring to sort out the Best Rabbit competition) my fox terrier won best conformation, best sporting breed, best young handler (or rather my DD did), best in show AND waggiest tail. The judge was staying with the show organiser, her good friend. Who when not organising village shows bred fox terriers. My lap of honour was conducted in utter silence and friends didn't talk to me for at least two village film nights. Years later we all agreed it was better than the current dog show now the professionals have got their hands on it and come with dogs in special crates, beautifully shampooed and the handlers have Combs in their Pockets.

If it's done on looks, well that onion pie looks terrible. (Sorry, onion-pie-maker, if you're on here).

Messy and unprofessional, I call it rustic! And you can’t really tell from that photo, but their cheese to bacon ratio was all over the place.

@BigOldBlue1

Country shows don't have massive money pots to draw from. It is meant to be a bit of fun anyway. Any village - even one with a close community - would turn into a war zone if the residents were competing for big money.

I like your style, OP!

🤣🤣you were robbed!

Hehe sounds like The Archers.. yep I'd be annoyed too, waste of time and money

Maybe the judge has read the Agatha Raisin book about the poisonous quiche that killed the judge at the village fair. Maybe they don't think it's worth the risk 😉

I got a commended one year and highly commended the next for flower arrangements in primary school 😁 I think they felt sorry for me, I didn't have oasis so used loo roll & the flowers were just from our garden, I think most of them were daisies 😁

I mistakenly entered the village 'Krufts' last year. Well not me obvs. One of my dogs. He comes from a long line of UK and Swedish champions and is Crufts material if I had so fancied.

He lost in Best Dog under 3 years to well I'm not actually sure what it was. It had one eye, a cauliflower ear and I could have stomached it if he was sweet but he had gone for the judge and every other dog in the ring who by the end were all cowering away from it in a huddle in the corner of the ring.

It was judged by the local vicar and one of the local vets so I should imagine it was the most church going owner who spent the most at the vets. My poor atheist hound stood no chance.

Didn’t expect all the great replies! Please keep
sharing your village show cake based dramas. Also here is a better picture straight from the oven air fryer. I feel not labelling the ingredients may have hurt his chances (the label I wrote blew off on route, I also don’t think you were allowed to include a label) as the cranberry does look a bit suspect if you didn’t know what it was! I know for next time, appearances appearances appearances; forget the taste. (Although it was jolly nice)

That looks and sounds fabulous OP. Down with their soulless no-tasting ilk.
We have a ‘pick me’ baking queen bee here, all swirly girly cupcake style over taste. Takes her over produced insta crap to school events and won’t let anyone eat till they’ve been sufficiently admired. Everyone despises her.

Not quite a cake based drama but every time I do gardening I think fondly of the “compost in a container not to exceed 18cm - 7inch - diameter” category in my in-laws’ village.

This thread is brilliant. Thank you OP.

I'm quite sad they dropped the children's handwriting competition this year at ours!

I'd love to know what voodoo goes into growing the the metre long carrots and boulder sized marrows.

Princess Michael of Kent refused point blank to taste the baking at a completion she judged recently.

There is no need for a secret handbook, the information will be handed down from generation to generation. In my village, there’s a saying that you’re not a local until you have 3 generations in the graveyard!

Edited to add, we are not locals, we don’t even have one generation in the graveyard!

I moved to a village a few years ago (one where at least 50% of the population have have lived there for generations) and have attempted to get involved in village life. In most respects I have been warmly welcomed, but when it comes to village events of any sort I've become aware that there lots of unwritten rules that as a newcomer I cannot hope to know/follow. I wonder if OP has inadvertently fallen foul of some local 'rule' about the pastry competition?

My village doesn't have an annual show but we seem to have loads of cake decorating competitions. The last was for the Coronation and one entry was delivered in a coronation themed cake tin. The judges disqualified it on the basis that a) it had not been removed from the tin by the entrant so was not 'fit for judging'. Apparently this rule is 'common knowledge'. The entrant was not given an opportunity to return to the judging table to remove her cake from the tin as this would, apparently, give her an unfair advantage.

I'm off to Moreton Show tomorrow so I'll have a good look round the competition tents and see if I spot any spicy comments/unfair placings/non tasted winners.

Got to say, I love a village fair drama. In the midst of all the horrible things that happen in the world, I find it comforting in a way.

It's a bit of escapism like reality TV "what's the worst thing happening in that world this week?, someone's upset about the pastry judging at the village competition" 😂

It reminds me that not everything everywhere is overtly terrible.

Pah! I always used to win the handwriting competition until the year a new girl moved to the village.

This was 1970s and the latest fad in handwriting was italics. Our teacher had insisted we all get pens with italic nibs and we were gradually, and messily, trying to get to grips with this style. However new girl just ignored the italic fad and wrote in her normal handwriting, which I have to admit looked much better.

She walked it. Despite this we became best friends. I never learned to do proper joined up because of the teacher's italic craze and my handwriting remains terrible.

And I suppose the race to be the first isn’t a completion anyone would want to win.

That burnt offering won 2nd place?? 😟