From baked goods to table settings, floral arrangements to special collections, people spend months planning and creating entries they hope will win a ribbon at the OC Fair.
It gets tense in Andrea Carmouche’s house as fair season rolls around. When Carmouche and her husband, Pete Galles, submit their barbecue rubs and sauces for judging, they are not only competing against other fairgoers – their biggest competition is each other.
“Competing with him, I think that’s really the motivation, and I motivate him, too, because I’m his biggest competitor,” Carmouche, of Carson, said. “So then he will hide his recipe, and the week of the competition, it gets really, really tense in the house. But it’s all in good fun.”
During the pandemic, Carmouche, who said she has cooked all her life, kept busy with baking. So this year, she wanted to challenge herself further by entering the brownie competition, a category she has never participated in before, she said.
She welcomes the constructive criticism that judges leave her after every competition and said she looks forward to learning from it. She is most driven to “get a stamp of approval at the fair.”
“This is kind of like the big test. If you win at the fair, you can say, ‘I did this at the fair and it’s a badge of honor,’” Carmouche said. “It requires you to do some homework and kind of go outside of your comfort zone and really test to see if you can bake or cook.”
More than 1 million people are expected to visit the fair, which is in its first full week of its 23-day run through Aug. 13 at the OC Fair & Event Center in Costa Mesa. And many will wander through the various exhibition buildings showcasing the entries from hundreds of people in the dozens of fair contests that are open, with categories in the visual arts, hobbies, horticulture, livestock, the culinary arts, wine and more.
Noah Alvarado, 11, who said he wants to be a chef when he grows up, also wanted to use the…
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