Dairy Day

I had the pleasure of helping at Dairy Day at the Marin County Fair on Saturday.  My job was to help with the cheesecake, butter cookie, baking with yogurt or sour cream and brownie making contests that happened throughout the day.

The cheesecakes were first up, and what an assortment.  The categories were flavored, plain, Marin cheese and the divisions were adult and junior (5-18).

There were only two judges for everything but the brownie sundae competition.  They were good sports about it all but by the end of the day, after sampling EVERY single entry, all they wanted to do is take a long walk and maybe have a taste of something salty.

The cheesecake line-up.

Butter cookie line-up.

The two judges, Lawrence Lavagetto, Kitchen Assistant Ramekins Cooking School, Sonoma AND

Bertha Maier, Gourmet Cook, Fairfield judging the "Baking with sour cream or yogurt" entries.

Towards the end of the day the CA Ice Cream Brownie Sundae competition took place.  This is where a team of two, family members or friends, create a brownie sundae, using all CA grown ingredients that they bring along with them.  The ice cream and whipped cream was provided by Ben & Jerry's and Clover Stornetta Farms.  They had 10 minutes to complete their sundaes.

It got quite messy.

The judges for this competition were Erik Hom from Ben & Jerry's and our District 3 Dairy Princess, Emilie Strand and 1st alternate, Regina Camozzi.

The theme of this year's fair was 'Going Global Connecting Cultures', which could have been incorporated into the brownie sundae design. 

And the winner is...........

A few of the other competitions that go on at Dairy Day are:  Various ice cream eating contests, obstacle course while eating an ice cream cone and The Vermonster Sundae Eating competition - this is where a team of four compete for the fastest time eating 20 scoops of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, 4 bananas, 4 scoops hot fudge, 1 fudge brownie, 3 chocolate chip cookies, 2 scoops of M & M's, 4 scoops sprinkles, all topped with fresh whipped cream.   

About 14,000 calories!

A team of 4 finished it off in 1:55 minutes!  That's a lot of shoveling!

I wasn't able to go over an watch the competition because I was busy taking care of the butter cookies but this is what a Vermonster looks like:

photo borrowed from Bay Area Bites

Dairy Trivia

• Americans eat the equivalent of 10 acres of pizza (and Mozzarella cheese) every
day.

• Just ate spicy food? Milk is better than water for cooling your mouth A protein in milk
called casein cleanses the taste buds.

• Cheddar cheese was first developed in the town of, yes, Cheddar Gorge, England,
more than 400 years ago.

• A gallon of milk weighs 8.59 pounds.

• A cow has four stomachs and 24 teeth.

• The most common breed of dairy cow in the United States is the Holstein; Jersey
cows produce milk with the highest butterfat content.

• Plastic milk bottles were first introduced in the United States in 1967.

• McDonald’s® and Wendy’s® introduced single-serve plastic milk containers in the
summer of 2004.

• The tradition of making Swiss cheese in 200-pound wheels began in the Middle
Ages, when the Swiss government taxed cheese makers on the number of pieces
they produced, rather than according to the total weight of the cheese they made.

• To get the same amount of calcium provided by 8 ounces of milk, you would have to
eat 2 1/4 cups of broccoli, 6 3/4 oranges or 6 slices of wheat bread.

• If you open the refrigerator in 96 percent of all households, you’ll find a container of
milk; 94 percent of all households have cheese.

• Total cheese per capita consumption was 31 pounds in 2004.

• Forty percent of all cheese is served at restaurants and cafeterias.

• An average dairy cow weighs 1,400 pounds and consumes about 50 pounds of dry
matter (e.g., hay, grass, grain) each day.

• The average cow drinks from 30 to 50 gallons of water each day — about a
bathtub’s worth.

• Cows have an acute sense of smell, and can smell something up to 6 miles away.

• Most cows chew at least 50 times per minute, and spend 10 hours a day chewing
their cud in order to aid in digestion.

• Cows arrived in America with the Jamestown settlers in 1611.

• Tank trucks for transporting fluid milk were first introduced in 1914.

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