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 would also like to take this opportunity to share my decorated cake entry that won best overall exhibit this year!

Now that the precedent has been set that it is not necessary to taste the item, we could have a 'Mumsnet Village Fete' in which aspiring chefs submit pictures and brief descriptions of the pastry to be judged and @Sweepies and @OnionTarteDisaster are nominated judges. Other MN users could throw in some 'constructive criticism' over the day before judging. The winner will be an entry chosen for an esoteric factor completely unrelated to the normal bounds of such competitions. The prize could be the honour of having a 🥮 (think that is a savoury pie) emoji after their user name for a week.

Stealing the idea of a Reece's peanut butter cake for one of my dc!

Our villge show is amazing. Highlight of the calendar is getting the magic rule book through your door. Took us 3 nights to read it this year!

my kids did well, especially dd as she won best in she category so now I have a trophy to look after (and engrave at my own cost if I want to), and remember to return 5 days before next years show. She did win £8 though. free for kid to enter.

adults it’s 25p to enter, but you get in the show for free, thus saving 75p if you just enter anything!! First prize is £3.

It looks a lot nicer in this photo. I take my previous comment back. Definitely right to have come before OPs.

I think this is the first time I have believed, actually believed, that a person referenced in a thread has shown up to give their side of the story — actual proof!! @OnionTarteDisaster, you may have broken the internet, or at least Mn. (I still think you should have torn into the OP and viciously insulted her entry, and claimed to have seen the President of the Mothers’ Union throwing up around the back of the marquee or something. Or had a Dark Story about how entries are never tasted since the WI gave itself botulism in 1956…😀

Do you two actually know one another, @OnionTarteDisaster and @Sweepies?

Op I very much appreciated your emoji detail on the picture.

Village fetes a melee of relations and wink winks nothing to do with talent etc. It's well known at my show that Mrs X always wins handicrafts no matter what for instance etc no morals or ethics

I've entered two items in our village show today for the first time ever - in the 'other craft' category. I will report back later!

In the photo you posted yesterday at 14.40 @Sweepies what is the burnt item supposed to be ?

I can understand why a judge wouldn't want to risk tasting it !!!!

I don’t think I fully appreciated the sheer dog eat dog ferocity of the village show until about 4 years ago when there were only 4 entries in the kids under 10 make something with vegetables (something like that anyway) and they gave prizes to 3 and on the 4th put “disappointing effort” 😯

I would have given all 4 a prize because kids but then im a soft townie by birth. Can only assume village kids are hardened up from an early age!

LadyEloise1

In the photo you posted yesterday at 14.40 @Sweepies what is the burnt item supposed to be ?
*
I can understand why a judge wouldn't want to risk tasting it !!!!*

It's a caramelised onion tart and you might want to read the rest of the thread. The actual maker of said onion tart has posted on here.

One of the kids make an animal with vegetables was discounted for cheating one year when I was little.

Their crime... They'd used raisins for eyes and Raisins Are Not A Vegetable.

I have spent my whole life in villages and have lots of experience of 'the show'. I used to enter everything as a child but never won a thing. There was a family whose four daughters won everything. All was obviously made my their parents, but I digress.

My mum, on the other hand, was queen of the jam making. Won first prize every year. My DH is a townie and had no previous knowledge of the show. He decided to enter the jam competition the first year we moved to current village (25 years ago). He made the jam in the microwave! How my mum and I sniggered. After 2 hours of stirring and pinging he ended up with a jar of red rubber. He entered anyway and has refused to show us the comments from the judges.
I, on the other hand have never ventured to enter. The local WI is fearsome and I value my life too much.
This years show is today. I may pop along for a laugh at the judges comments.

This could take years to get over. I am still spitting feathers over Spud in a Bucket 13 years on.

Parish Council gave all children a seed potato in March encouraging them to grow as many new potatoes in a bucket for village show in September.

My son (6) enlisted the help of neighbour Danny. Danny was renowned for scooping up all the prizes with his ridiculously oversized phallic vegetables.

Son spent a summer dutifully trotting over with his bucket to Danny’s greenhouse, where Danny would twiddle his moustache and ponder whether son’s soil needed a pinch more potash.

Anyway, the big day arrives. We are all ridiculously excited. Especially Danny who has decided he’s nurturing a protégée and treats my son with as much care as one of his overblown aubergines.

The bucket is tipped and spuds weighed. There were loads. Son is briefly in first place and super excited. His school friend comes along with her grandad, they tip their bucket and they just edge us into second on weight. Lots of good humour all round and jokes that maybe grandad has a secret that Greenfingered Danny doesn’t have.

Enter stage right fucking super competitive, PTA Chair school mum with her two kids and their fucking buckets - or fuckits.

Both fuckits tipped out at over three times the weight of my son and friend’s. All strangely washed and polished and a different twatting variety too boot, covered in just a sprinkling of compost. The bitch had clearly gone to fucking Tesco, bought bags of washed new potatoes and filled her kids fuckits with them.

Danny was outraged and called a steward’s enquiry claiming you couldn’t physically grow that many spuds in so little soil.

The chief judge without hesitation declared super competitive mum couldn’t possibly have cheated as her mother was treasurer of the parish council - a trusted position. They were after all an upstanding family.

I still see the bitch about the village today and have absolute spudding rage that she did my son out of the second prize of two packets of spring onion seeds. He’s 19 now and says it’s probably time I get over it.

We're pretty strict with the children's classes. It's a good lesson to learn, I hate when all children get something just for being children!

My chutney was disqualified this year as the jar I had used had a bit writing on the lid!
A lot of prizes went to families or friends of the committee 🤔.
It is also very difficult for the hobby gardener who proudly produces gnarly carrot to compete against the gardener who has 12 hours a day to spend tending his veg and produces perfect carrots.
Also what is with men and their giant veg?

🤣🤣😂

Ooh, I love this idea, I'll obviously have to wear some sort of fancy judge's hat and costume (that's a thing, right?!) whilst doing my online judging. I'll start practicing my passive-aggressive feedback phrases now. I did see one comment from the judges about a knitted item that said something like, 'This item appears to have been made with acrylic rather than wool. Shame.' which really tickled me!

Thanks @FuckoffeeBeforeCoffee ❤you can have a slice of my unpoisoned, overcooked tarte any time. But none for Gretchen Weiner/@LadyEloise1!

Haven't worked out if I know the OP actually, @ButterRoad but it's a tiny village so highly likely. Maybe we should orchestrate a meeting outside the local tea room. I could wave around an onion and she could be holding a wheel of brie!

I am LOVING all the tales of local village show drama and the fact that this happens up and down the country! I would especially like more details about the ferret/dog entry please.

I have to share my one moment of glory in a village show when I won best in show. It was a Paul Hollywood plaited loaf. I spent about an hour kneading (listening to The Archers Omnibus on catch-up) as I was trying to fulfil the windowpane test, so it was well earned. The joke is I am a rubbish cook and hate cooking. It was a jolly good loaf!

Oops @IHateWasps.

And apologies to @OnionTarteDisaster

YABU. It's a Village Show and you can't win. I refer you to Agatha Raisin, Midsomer Murders and assorted other tales. You're playing a dangerous game.

Big shout out to my local horticultural show. A young girl came in on the Friday night with her entry and they created a brand new class just so they could be judged.

If you can't read the comments, she won first prize for her plate of tiny radishes because they were "a consistent size and good colour" 🙂

DD came home with a haul of rosettes and we are busy growing a "saucer of cress" for another show next week.

@OnionTarteDisaster unfortunately I can't provide any more details of the Ferret... I saw her enter the arena on my way to my stint on the tea and cake stall, and saw her with a rosette later on... but no idea if she won the rosette in a competition. Shes regularly walked around the village on her lead.

I was taking DD to a Birthday Party so didn't have time to bake for the local show. I left DH with the ingredients and instructions for cheese scones. He'd never bloody baked in his life before, but he won FIRST against around 20 other WI member entries!! He won't even (competition) bake again now incase he loses his crown.