Never Too Soon to Start Thinking About the Iowa State Fair: AllSpice 2019 Contest Categories Announced

There’s still snow on the ground as I’m writing this. Snow has been on the ground continually since sometime in January, I think — mostly it seems like winter has been here forever.

We’ve tried to distract and amuse ourselves by watching seasonal, wintry-but-not-Christmas-y movies, and we probably watched “Fargo” and “Groundhog Day” a dozen times.

Then we switched it up a bit, and decided to watch “The Shining” instead. But then I got scared when my spouse started building a “topiary” maze out of snow in the front yard and trying to get me to go outside and “play hide and seek” with them.

We need to stop thinking about winter, altogether, and turn our attention to the warmer days ahead.

To help you do think of warmer days, today we are giving a “sneak peek” the AllSpice food contests at this summer’s Iowa State Fair!

2019 AllSpice State Fair Contests:

• AllSpice Unique Cookie Contest – a unique spiced and/or olive oil cookie
• AllSpice Ice Cream Contest – an original olive oil and/or spiced ice cream
• AllSpice Snack Mix Contest – two categories: sweet snack mix, savory snack mix
• AllSpice Chili Contest – two categories: vegetarian chili, traditional ‘red’ chili
• AllSpice Jerky Contest – beef jerky [new for 2019]

The opening day of the State Fair (August 8) is still 150-something days away, but the official booklet of categories (and prizes!) is coming out soon — on April 1.

We’ll have more details about each of our contest categories coming soon. Watch this space. For inspiration, in the meantime, take a look at past years’ Iowa State Fair contests and winning recipes,  on the AllSpice blog.

And remember: warm weather is just around the corner.

Photo credit: State Fair Oreos, Steve Garfield  
[Has anyone seen these “State Fair Oreos” anywhere in Iowa? This photo was taken by an acquaintance who saw – and bought – the cookies in Massachusetts.]