Right now I'm totally psyched. I always love the day I've got my Ventura County Fair entries in and I can garner all the blue ribbons in my head. Tomorrow, when the fair opens and I actually learn the results, I may be crushed, so today -- well, today is the blue-ribbon day.
These are my leftovers from all the baking I did for this year's entries. Last year the best I got was a second place ribbon and a bunch of honorable mentions. I HATE honorable mentions. What? This-didn't-poison-me-but-it-wasn't-very-good-mention? Forget it, just tell me I suck.
But rather than tucking my tail between my legs, I came back, bigger and better than ever this year. I've been doing some researching and did some major tweaking of my recipes. I was able to make a real woven lattice crust for my peach pie and I was able to use my own peaches from my own tree this year -- they've been too late in ripening the past two years. Actually, I was only able to get enough peaches for one pie and a couple of those had to be force-ripened. (BTW you know that to force-ripen fruit, you put it in a sealed paper bag with a ripe banana and the banana will release that fruit-ripening gas that will ripen all the fruit.)
I made sure to use the best ingredients: Plugra European-style butter, which has a higher butterfat content, and King Arthur flour -- widely belived to be the best around. I used fancy Vietnamese cinnamon from Penzey's spices and I had a couple of types of sugar -- extra fine and organic, crunchy sugar. I couldn't find extra fine grain salt, which is better for baking, so I ground the salt by hand in a mortar and pestle. I put actual vanilla bean in the sugar cookies. So we'll see if any of this is noticed by the judges.
There is one kind of amusing aside: When I went to enter my stuff, there was the usual contingent of older women processing the entries. It takes a while, so we got to chatting and before you know it, we were all swapping notes on our surgeries -- my knee replacement, the other woman's hip replacement. I was able to counter -- and trump -- the eye problem story with Rob's eye surgeries.
As I left, I realized: These are my peeps these days. Me and all the other old ladies, sitting around talking about our surgeries. If I'd stayed longer, I'm sure we could have moved on to grandchildren and pets.
Sigh. When did I get so old and why did it happen when I'm still so -- relatively -- young?
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