My Other Art

The State Fair is over and what a fair it has been! For those who don't know, I love to cook and especially love to invent new recipes. That is my "other" art - creative combinations in the kitchen. Every year I enter contests at the fair and have won quite a few ribbons. At the Oregon State Fair, entering the "daily" contests give you free admission, which was the initial reason I started entering 10 years ago.

This year I entered 7 contests - 6 for food and one Trash-to-Treasure (see Aug 27th post). Of those, I won a 3rd place ribbon for my fresh Tropical Salsa,

1st place ($200, apron, tote bag ribbons and entry into the national competition) in the Hidden Valley Ranch "Fresh Taste for the Family" contest with my Summer Confetti Slaw


and 2nd place ($50, apron and ribbon) in the Great American SPAM appetizer contest with my Sunday Brunch Shooters.

In addition to the cash, aprons and ribbons, I occasionally have extra "winnings." This year, the call came right away to demonstrate my salad live on the morning news show in Eugene, Oregon (about 65 miles to the south). I had to bring everything prepped and ready to go and be there at 5:45 am, then be back in Salem ready to work by 7:30 am. I had about 2 minutes to talk about and demonstrate my dish. Here is the link for the video and recipe: http://kezi.com/infocus It works currently, but I know eventually it will be replaced with more current news.

When I got home work that day, I had a message from the local newspaper. My recipe will be featured next Wednesday in the food section. They want a photo shoot of me making the salad and the finished salad to run with the recipe. After a few rounds of phone-tag, we have scheduled the shoot for next Monday.

Imagine my surprise when a coworker approached me at work today saying she had seen my name in the paper this morning! They ran a feature article about the Trash to Treasure contest in the home section of the paper today. Though I didn't win anything, my purse was pictured and described. How random was that?


It has been fun having all the attention. I'm so glad people like my stuff. Of course I am beginning to wonder where the riches are that should go with all my "fame!"