Tasting Their Way to a Blue Ribbon

Carole Olson was about to dip a tiny white tasting spoon into a stranger’s jar of homemade strawberry-kiwi jam. Intriguing fruit combo, but an odd pale pinkish-green. “Interesting,” she said, lifting the spoon to her mouth.

“Oh, puke!” Olson shrieked, gagging. She winced so hard that she covered her face with her hands. Saliva shot through her mouth like a water pistol. Her legs twitched. She swallowed.

It was Jam Judgment Day inside cavernous Building No. 4 at the Los Angeles County Fair. Four women judges, including Olson, presided at table. Their job was to award the red, white and blue ribbons in fair contests that are as American as a chubby Mason jar stuffed with strawberry preserves.

For the past three weeks, 300 winning jars have been on display behind glass cases in the fair’s main exhibition hall--the results of an intense, fast-paced six hours that unfolded in preparation for opening day. Nearly 150 contestants, mostly from Los Angeles and Orange counties, entered 600 jars of their best preserves.

It took chief judge Olson a minute to recover from her encounter with strawberry-kiwi, Division 2100, Class 7. It was the first but far from last foul taste of the day.

“What was this person thinking?” Olson asked. She cleared her throat, took a long chug of bottled water and announced:

“Next jar! C’mon, ladies, we gotta get to dried preserves by lunch.”

When the judges snapped open those jars, no telling what was inside until the food was toxin-tested, smelled and consumed. Think botulism.

“It can be scary,” Olson said. “But we have entry forms. We can track the people down.”

As the day wore on, the judges would spit up and burp, but also savor and sigh with delight. At the end of the day, Olson rubbed her full belly, stretched and declared that it was a bad year for apricots.

But the day held intrigue as well. The newest judge would leave miffed, particularly appalled by one judging practice.

Perhaps most revealing about Jam Judgment Day, fair organizers said, is that in the year 2001, the art and science of preserving food is an American tradition well-preserved. The dream of winning a simple blue ribbon is all it takes to send multitudes of cooks laboring over a pan of bubbling fruit, a row of jars and a pot of boiling water.

“The county fair still manages to maintain a core tradition that has stayed within American families for generations,” said Sylvia Bishop, coordinator of the fair’s “creative expressions” exhibits--formerly known as “domestic art,” “creative living” and, a long time ago, “home economics.”

This year, Bishop accepted a new judge, Linda Amendt, into the tightknit ranks of jam experts, who are paid a nominal fee for their service.

Amendt, 40, can best be described as America’s jam and jelly queen. She has devoted the past 15 years to home preserving in her modest Whittier kitchen, where she churns out precise and flavorful works that have won ribbons nationwide.

If Amendt is the queen, Olson, 57, is the empress and quizzed the new judge about her credentials.

“So tell us a little about yourself, Linda,” she began.

“Well, I’ve been the top competitor in Los Angeles for the past five years,” Amendt said. “I’ve won best of show the past two.”

“Good girl!” Olson said.

“I’ve been inducted into the Sure-Jell Hall of Fame.”

“Good girl!”

“I’ve just written and have had my first cookbook published. It’s called ‘Blue Ribbon Preserves.’ ”

“Excellent,” Olson said, cutting short the resume.

“Because Linda is new at judging, she will join us today as apprentice judge,” Olson said, decreeing what Amendt said later was an unfair ranking.

Amendt didn’t even get the chance to finish her resume. But then that would take some time: 315 blue ribbons for home preserving, 111 seconds and 69 thirds. She has been awarded six pewter mugs, seven silver platters and one silver bowl. She has been asked to appear on the Food Channel.

The three others, including Olson, are all FDA-certified “master food preservers” from the San Bernardino County Cooperative Extension. They are members of a sorority of canning aficionados who are devoted to standards of taste, appearance and, above all, safety. And they can preserve a flat of raspberries the way most of us microwave a bag of popcorn.

Olson’s three children have never eaten a store-bought can of fruit cocktail. Home-canning turkey, soups, stews and fruits “gives me freedom,” Olson explained, because she never has to worry about her family’s next meal.

Judge Lauria Watts boasts of turning a bulging, 47-cents-a-pound bag of peaches into a jam in three hours flat. She met her boyfriend, now husband, while picking apricots in Alta Loma. “We canned like crazy,” she said of their courtship.

Sharon Thomas is the quietest judge. She tastes, she tells. “Ah, this is good” is about as animated as it gets with Thomas. She was one of Olson’s star students at the extension courses. She knows that every apple picked from a certain Yucaipa farm will carry a unique taste.

Thomas and her colleagues sat at a long folding table, tools of their trade at hand: spoons, can openers, crackers, water and lemon wedges. Standing in rows on shelving units around were the contestants themselves, hundreds of jars of home-canned preserves: blueberry, pear, green bean, cucumber dill, chutney, loquat.

A team of six fair staffers assisted, lining up jars according to division and class. Jam is a division, boysenberry a class--the preserve equivalent of genus and species.

The judges tasted each group and made snap rulings while staffers tabulated the winners. “We don’t have time to debate and visit and make it a party,” Olson said.

Specter of Botulism Looms Over Judging

While taste is important, it is not the only way to win a blue ribbon. Some low-acid categories, such as preserved vegetables, are judged on appearance only--good color, firm pack--because of the poison potential.

The specter of botulism, which is most commonly found in improperly preserved foods, hung over the judgment of every category.

Fruits with high acidity and plenty of sugar are the safest by their chemical makeup. But judges took no chances. Each was given a dispenser of inch-long Ph testing strips and a color guide. Olson tested nearly every jar for her panel. Green was safe. Purple questionable. Blue really questionable.

No test strips turned blue in the 2001 L.A. County Fair competition. But there was one jar of packed pears that turned Olson’s test strip greenish-purple. It was as if an alarm had sounded.

“Throw it away; it’s starting to spoil. AUTOMATIC DQ!” Which is judge-speak for disqualification.

Around 3 p.m., with perhaps 200 jars left to go, the competition got even tougher. Take Division 2120, Class 9: Plum Jam.

“We need to get really picky here,” Olson ordered.

The judging unfolded fast. Of 25 entries, a slew got knocked out because the inside lid was sticky or dirty. They weren’t even tasted. One jar had a serious seal violation: The lid popped.

“Yank it,” Amendt said. Others were pulled for incorrect labeling.

Then the judges measured “head space”--the distance between the lid and the top of the preserves. For jams and jellies, fair regulations call for a quarter inch. More eliminations.

Finally, just six jars of plum jam remained. Out came the spoons and their judges’ subjective opinions on flavor. They dipped. They tasted. They dipped. They tasted.

They were, in fact, double-dipping.

Amendt was secretly appalled. She had been all too aware of the double-dipping since the early morning hours, but the apprentice judge said nothing. When asked about the practice later, she sent a detailed e-mail titled “For the Record.”

“The judges did not make a reasonable effort to keep the contents of the entry jars from becoming contaminated during the judging,” she wrote. “It was disquieting to watch.”

What’s more, these jars would be returned to their owners.

Amendt, however, double-dipped herself. She said she had no other choice and did not want to offend the others. And another thing, she wrote, speed-judging is not fair to contestants who deserve better. The judges should have been divided into teams to allow for more debate.

Olson, days after the judging, sought to put Amendt’s concerns in perspective.

“This isn’t rocket science. It’s supposed to be fun. If it’s peach jam, it should taste like a peach and not an onion,” Olson said, explaining that it doesn’t take long to figure out a winner.

As for double-dipping, “Gimme a break,” she said. “Who is stupid enough to take home their opened jar of jam and eat it? I always tell my students to throw the entries away.”

‘I’m Salivating . . . I Really Am’

On judging day, when the panel tasted the finalists in the plum entries, it took only seconds to select the winner. They pointed, they nodded in agreement.

“When it’s good,” Watts explained, “it speaks for itself.”

The winner was royal purple. It tasted like a fresh, sweet, juicy plum--not too sugary with an even spread. It makes store-bought jam taste artificial.

Disputes aside, the unanimous winner of the day was not a jar of jam. It was a pie filling, a creamy light pineapple pie filling.

“I’m salivating. I really am,” said Olson.

“I can almost taste the pie crust, the whip cream, the sprinkles of coconut on top,” swooned Amendt.

It was an example of preserve perfection, the judges said, as they made their final decision of the day--naming the pineapple pie filling the 2001 Best of Show.

For this achievement, Sandra L. Cabana of West Covina takes home one blue ribbon.