Our lovely friend Kathy (Amy's old boss), has taught Audrey the art of jam making and so it was with a combination of excitement and some trepidation that over the last few months we have been making jars of jam with the intention of entering them into the Canberra Show (which takes place this weekend). In total we entered six jars (plum, blackberry, lemon butter, apricot, marmalade and Christmas jam!).
I had high hopes for Audrey's entry as we'd road-tested some of the jars with friends and they'd all been well received. Indeed when you make your own jam you realise just how poor some of the shop jams really are.
It wasn't until I delivered the jams to be judged that I truly realised how serious it all was. I had been required to register some weeks beforehand but I was asked to sign all the jars in to the competition, and watched as the jars were placed carefully (and anonymously) in categories along with the many other entrants. The officialdom was Olympic-esque! Elsewehere in the pavillion I noticed that cakes and vegetables were being collected from hopeful entrants with equal earnestness.
I drove back to the tent for my lunchbreak to see the judging was going (judging condiments alone took almost the whole day!) and was amazed that (despite being entered in the under sixteen years old category) just how stiff the competition was and how meticulously each jam was being judged.
We landed a third place for our plum (I was surprised as I thought it was over-set..plum is a tricky one!) and I was delighted when I saw our blackberry (which we'd picked a few weeks previously) had scored second place in the 'berry jam' section. Audrey's marmalade was also placed (though in truth it was a bit cloudy). Meanwhile other jams did less well. Our apricot (which I had been so impressed with because of its beautiful golden colour) caused the judge to wince and exclaim; "not sweet enough!"
Our lemon butter was ruled out without even tasting "too stiff" (I thought it was pretty runny when we had made it the previous evening) and our Christmas jam (which friends had loved when we had given them jars in December) was scoffed at by the judge; "There's NO such thing as Christmas jam" our inclusion of nutmeg and cinnamon was also criticised "No need for unnecessary spices".
Nevertheless I think for her/our first effort Audrey did pretty well. There were definitely others who would have ended up empty-handed as most categories had 20 or so competing. Watching the judging was also very entertaining (and slightly intimidating) - you got judged down for having a speck of jam on the inside lid of your jars (who knew?) and the judges were also fastidious at tasting jam and knowing if it was over/undercooked. Filling the jars all the way to the top also seemed to be important.
I like to think we'll be back next year. Certainly Audrey was really chuffed at her result. We had fun making the jams and despite the harshness of the judging I learned enough to make sure we improve our entry for next year!
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