Of all the appearances by Master Food Preservers at the LA County Fair, Chef Ernest Miller's demonstration on Friday, Sept. 7th was at the top of my list.  As a graduate of the most recent class of MFPs, I am deeply grateful to Chef Miller, lead instructor of the Los Angeles County branch of the Master Food Preserver Program of the University of California Cooperative Extension.  Those of us who have been lucky enough to have taken classes from Chef Miller know what a fun and engaging speaker he is.  

Sadly, I missed the event, but fellow MFP Karen Hobart was there and took these photos. (Thanks, Karen!) She reports that Chef Miller gave a great demonstration of classic preservation techniques, which included making strawberry jam, fermented dill pickles, and crushed tomatoes.  

If you missed Chef Miller's demonstration and you're still wondering what to do with an overabundance of tomatoes from your garden, check out this new resource page on Home Preserving Tomatoes from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. 

The Los Angeles County Fair closed yesterday for another year, but 2012 Blue Ribbon Sweepstakes Award winner Francine Rippy never takes a break from preserving food.  

Francine had 73 entries in this year's Preserved Foods competition and won the most first place ribbons this year, which earned her the prestigious 2012 Blue Ribbon Sweepstakes Award.  To honor her achievement, The Master Food Preservers of Los Angeles County presented Francine with a Thermapen thermometer, generously donated by Thermoworks.

Francine started entering the LA County Fair Preserved Foods competition in 1965 and competed for 36 years before she won her first Sweepstakes Award.  Francine joked, "I used to tell people I specialized in second place ribbons."  But that trend is long past.  

Francine has won the Blue Ribbon Sweepstakes Award nine times since her first win in 2001 and has become a living legend within preserved food competition circles.  During the short time I spent with Francine at the LA County Fair, a number of people stopped in their tracks when they realized that they had stumbled upon the elusive Francine Rippy.  One woman said she'd always wanted to meet Francine because she'd been losing to her for years.  Another woman interrupted our interview to offer Francine the fruit from her neighbor's fig tree.  Francine accepted these compliments with grace and left with a new source for fresh figs.  

Entering the Preserved Foods Competition at the LA County Fair is only a small part of Francine's food preservation efforts.  She preserves food year round, much of it coming from her four-acre property in Hacienda Heights.  When asked about her favorite preserved food, Francine said that she likes the boysenberry leather best.  Why?  Because it's good.  And she grows the boysenberries herself, just as her grandmother did.  

When Francine was a child, she followed her grandmother around in the boysenberry patch on the family ranch, eating the ripe boysenberries and putting the unripe ones in her basket.  When picking berries in her own boysenberry patch, Francine encourages young visitors to do the same.  "I tell them that's their job since that's what I did."  

Francine's grandparents' ranch has been turned into a museum-- The Hathaway Ranch & Oil Museum-- and Francine is the executive director.  In this role, Francine helps to preserve a small piece of California's pioneer past, but she lives very much in the present.  She's also always looking forward.  I asked Francine if she had any advice for people hoping to enter the preserved foods competition at the LA County Fair next year.  She smiled and said, "The judges have a sweet tooth."

 

From the Los Angeles County Fair website: “Deep-fried. On-a-stick. Battered. Breaded. Dipped in chocolate. Eating at the Fair is a unique experience. With more than 300 choices, undo the top button on your pants and dive in. If you’re a little nervous, we do have yogurt, smoothies, fruit and salads too!”

If your diet leans more toward the seasonal and DIY (do it yourself), this year’s LA County Fair offers you the chance to learn how to preserve what’s in season now, all year long, in your own home kitchen.

Certified volunteer instructors from UC Cooperative Extension Master Food Preservers for Los Angeles County (MFPLA) will be on hand for their second year at the fair, offering demonstrations, recipes and food safety tips.

Whether you’re a gardener swimming in excess summer fruits and vegetables or a savvy shopper who buys produce in bulk, you’ll learn simple techniques for food preservation that you can do at home.

New this year, MFPLA offers demos on two stages: The Culinary Styles Stage (part of The Village on Broadway) and the Farm House Kitchen (at FairView Farms) across from the Big Red Barn.

Also for the first time, the Master Food Preservers of Los Angeles County will honor the winner of the Food Preserving Competition Sweepstakes with a grand prize gift, the Super-Fast Thermapen™ professional model digital instant-read thermometer, donated by ThermoWorks.

At the Culinary Styles Stage (under the racetrack grandstand), MFPs will present on Wednesdays and Fridays, 9/5 – 9/28 from 12 to 3 pm. Learn to make jams and jellies at 12 pm; the art of pickling and fermenting at 1 pm; and how to preserve tomatoes at 2 pm.

Starting September 5th, a potpourri of preservation techniques will be taught by MFPs at the Farm House Kitchen across from the Big Red Barn on Wednesdays through Sundays, between noon and 9 pm.

A special feature will be MFP Liisa Primack’s giant solar dehydrator, on display at FairView Gardens from 9 am to 12 pm, Wednesdays through Fridays, 9/5 – 9/28.

Built from an Internet-based design by Vista Metals Corporation in Fontana, CA, the dehydrator will be on display throughout the Fair with special demonstrations on weekday mornings for the Fair Kids Program.

Among the MFPLA volunteer teachers on the Culinary Styles Stage are Antelope Valley-based former three-time Los Angeles County Fair Food Preserving sweepstakes winner Nancee Siebert; newly-named Hollywood Farmers Market Manager, Alexandra Agajanian; Hollywood Farmer’s Kitchen chef and MFPLA lead instructor Ernest Miller; LA Trade Tech culinary instructor Donald Warriner; from the original class of graduates (June 2011), Laurie Dill, Karen Hobert and Carol Ann Susi and 2012 MFP graduate Noelle Olson.

On the Farmhouse stage, in addition to some of the above-named MFPs, audiences will learn additional preservation techniques from professional cook Hae Jung Cho; Chicks with Knives co-partner Rachael Narins; University High School teacher Nance Rosen; and Fall 2011 MFPLA graduates Amy Goldman and Anita Ferry.

The mission of the Los Angeles County Master Food Preservers is to train volunteers to teach in low-resource communities, demonstrating how to safely preserve foods at home. Among the volunteer teachers are chefs, caterers, nonprofit leaders, homesteaders, bakers and breadmakers, farmers market employees, journalists, lawyers and a whole host of others concerned with re-skilling the community.

Some of the skills MFPs learn and teach are dehydration, fermentation, freezing, water bath canning, pressure canning, charcuterie, cheese and yogurt making, pickling, making jams, jellies and marmalades, and preparing emergency food. All graduates are certified as UC Master Food Preservers, utilizing USDA standards.

LA County Master Food Preservers answer questions from the general public and offer classes or demonstrations at various locations. In addition to their presence at the LA County Fair, volunteers are seen throughout Los Angeles at food festivals, civic events, community gardens and anywhere that they are called upon by the community to teach and demonstrate food safety.

To contact the Los Angeles County Master Food Preserver program and request volunteers, email mfpla@ucdavis.edu. To find more information and a calendar of events, please visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/mfpla, our blog at http://ucanr.org/blogs/MFPLA or the program’s website at http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu.