During the early days of COVID, Therese Lowrie and her moms group weren’t making banana bread. They were canning fruit and vegetables from backyard trees and gardens.
“We started canning during the pandemic,” Lowrie said. “It was basically getting back to the basics because we had time.”
Lowrie was at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds on Saturday, March 2, dropping off items for one of the fair’s most back-to-basics events: preserved foods.
Those are primarily jams, jellies and marmalades. But the contest also includes conserves, juices, barbecue sauces, chunky relishes, vinegars, cordials, jerky and other items with a very long shelf life.
Lowrie was entering roasted red pepper sauce, habanero barbecue sauce, “dirty martini” giardiniera and, a bit more traditionally, blueberry-peach jam on behalf of her group of five friends from La Verne. It’s their third year entering the contest.
“Our spicy mustard won Best in Class last year,” Lowrie, 59, told me. “It motivated us.”
The Home and Culinary Arts building is always a must-stop for me in covering the LA County Fair, which this year runs May 3-27.
Based as it is on participation, Home Arts is arguably the fair’s homiest spot. Ordinary people from children to retirees enter their photography, drawings, quilting, cakes and cookies for blue ribbons.
And nothing seems homelier than people entering preserved foods like homemade jams, jellies and marmalades.
These are the skills that allowed families to enjoy summertime foods in wintertime, often from backyard produce. These farmhouse-kitchen skills got earlier generations through the Great Depression and other lean years.
Nothing quite evokes “grandmother in an apron” like jars of preserved foods.
Paperwork was due in mid-February with drop-off of items on March 2. That’s so that entries could be judged Sunday and the displays can be prepared.
That clears the way for the next competition, for baked foods and confections, which will be brought in near the end of April because they have a shorter shelf life.
Some of the preserved foods were made nearly a year ago from late-spring fruit, according to Chris Stoner, the competition coordinator. “That’s what it’s about,” she said, “preserving.”
I was at the drop-off point, the Culinary Arts area under the Grandstand, for an hour or so on that rainy morning as people trickled in, wearing rain gear, toting umbrellas and carrying glass jars to be checked in.
Therese Lowrie of La Verne checks in Saturday for the LA County Fair’s preserved foods competition with volunteer Matthew Mejia. Lowrie was entering jars of homemade preserves, including a roasted red pepper sauce. (Photo by David Allen, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG)
While some entrants have been preserving foods for years, the women who arrived when I was present tended to be newer at this.
Carol Allen, no relation to yours truly, never made jam until recent years. The process was familiar to her, though, because her brother and father did it.
Allen spent 27 years with the Los Angeles Police Department.
“I’m retired and now I make jam,” joked Allen, 64, of Pomona. “I entered last year for the first time in a long time.”
She’d brought in peach pepper jam, plum jam, strawberry peach jam, orange marmalade and spruce jelly. Spruce jelly? She’d turned spruce boughs brought back from Alaska into tea and from there into jelly.
“It tastes like a pine tree, actually,” she said. “I got a Best in Class last year for corn cob jelly. You have to catch the attention of the judges.”
Susan Gass entered in 2023 for the first time and got a ribbon for her blood orange marmalade. “Beginner’s luck,” she said modestly.
This year she was entering three marmalades: orange, tangelo and tangerine-lime, all from trees in her Upland backyard.
“I like that it’s kind of a vintage process. It tastes so much better than commercial,” Gass, 69, said. “When I go to a restaurant, they have those little Smuckers packets. They’re too bitter. Homemade always seems better.”
Entries this year numbered 277, less than last year’s 300. One veteran contestant, Francine Rippy of Hacienda Heights, accounted for almost one-third of the entries.
Most of the competitions hold steady from year to year. Preserved foods is the only division to decline slightly.
“Every year it’s a little less, a little less,” Stoner said. “We’re trying not to let it die off.”
You might say they’re trying to preserve preserved foods. Seasonings is a new category. Jerky was added a few years ago.
Entrants must bring in one jar for display and a smaller jar for the judges to open and taste. Judges taste the jams, jellies and marmalades straight, a tiny spoonful of each.
Perhaps 10% of the entries are “questionable,” said Leslie Sassaman, who handles the food competitions and maintains a generous attitude. “Some are discolored, overcooked, too mushy, which comes from overcooking, or don’t have enough sugar.”
Sassaman said: “We always try to keep in mind that these are amateurs.”
The rain was pouring down at this point. I decided to stay inside and dry a few minutes longer.
In walked Rebecca Hopkins. She’d come the farthest, from Los Angeles’ Pico-Robertson district, to submit a cocktail-grapefruit marmalade. It’s her first time to enter.
Hopkins, 45, has been attending the fair since childhood, with the culinary area always a highlight. “I’m excited to see how my marmalade stacks up to the experts’,” she confided.
What does she like about the contests?
“It’s just a very wholesome event,” Hopkins said. “It’s a glimpse into people’s private lives. They get to share their hobbies in a very public way. It’s a way for the community to come together over their private enthusiasms.”
I wish the competitors a long shelf life.
Columnist about town
I’ll be among those discussing the challenges and responsibilities of covering the news at 7 p.m. Thursday, March 7, in Riverside.
Under the auspicious title “With Great Responsibility,” our panel of five journalists — is Peter Parker one of them? — will appear in the community room of the Main Library, 3900 Mission Inn Ave. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Books will be for sale, including mine.
Bring your curiosity, questions and criticism. We can take it.
David Allen types Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on Twitter.
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