Hot, Sticky, and Sweet...

No, it's not def leppard, it's banana jam--tonight's culinary adventure. Here's the story.

Growing up, we would always enter something in the Tulsa State Fair every year. My entries included: a gumball machine I made in 6th grade woodshop (1st place), a macrame and a leather collar that were from Camp Fire (1st and 3rd, respectively), brownies, angel food cake (1st), and several photographs in the junior division (assorted prizes). Honestly, I thought it was normal to enter things in the fair--why wouldn't you? And ok, maybe my blue-ribbon winning angel food cake came from a box, but I made it with my grandma, so if it was good enough for her, then its good enough for me and the judges.

So when I came to Dallas, I went to the Texas State Fair and looked at their arts and crafts section and thought "I could do that." And last year, I convinced my coworkers that we should all enter something in the fair. Seeing as how I take pictures as part of my job, I thought I'd try photography. Well, sorry, all I got was a letter telling me to come pick up my entry even before the fair began and a dinky little "participant" ribbon. Seems as though a lot of folks in the Dallas area want to be blue-ribbon winning photographers because the division was saturated! Well, no thanks, Big Tex, I'm going for the gold!

This year, when my fine arts handbook arrived, I decided to enter a more obscure category. Surely if there are fewer entrants, then I have a better chance of winning--that's the point of probability, isn't it? So, the chosen category: Jams, Banana. There was a whole range of jams, jellies, butters, or other canned goods that I could enter. Flavors like strawberry, raspberry, dewberry, hot jelly, sugar free jelly, apricot jelly, you name it, it could be a jam or jelly. So banana jam it is!

I pulled a recipe off the internet, tweaked it to give it my own culinary spin and started boiling. 12 bananas, 4 cups of sugar, 45 minutes of simmering, and a couple of burned fingers later and I've got 5 jars of banana jam ready to take to the state fair this weekend. I'm determined to come home with a blue ribbon from the Texas State Fair one day.

Anyone else enter your local state fair?? anyone?