FORTVILLE — Debbi Green waited patiently Wednesday afternoon as judges at the Indiana State Fair sampled her homemade dressing, which she had entered in the Heritage Recipe Contest featuring recipes that are over 50 years old.
“It’s the recipe I used the very first time I fixed a turkey the first year I was married, which was over 50 years ago,” she said. “I’ve tweaked it over the years with the way my mother did it, and my mother was a very good cook.”
Green is no stranger to winning cooking and baking competitions at the state fair.
The Fortville woman has won close to 300 ribbons over the past 33 years, including many bright purple ribbons for Best of Show.
“It feels good to win, knowing that something you took the time to make excelled,” said Green, 72, who recently completed a two-year term as president of the Hancock County Extension Homemakers.
Green often submits between 15 and 20 entries at each year’s state fair but had cut back this year due to a recent shoulder surgery.
She’s submitted six items so far, and has already won two blue ribbons, one red and two honorable mentions.
Even the baked goods she’s not sure about tend to perform well at the state fair. “Three times in recent years I have gotten a best of show in something I almost left at home,” she said.
Her yeast cornbread, multigrain bread and cinnamon rolls have each won Best of Show several times at the fair.
Green said she doesn’t use any fancy equipment to churn out her award-winning baked goods — “just a run-of-the-mill oven and two really good Kitchen Aid mixers and a good food processor,” she said.
Green taught her daughter, Laura Lewis, how to cook growing up, and has since passed the skill on to her five grandchildren, who have all been active in Hancock County 4-H.
This year three of them — Jaysen, 17, Lydia, 16 and Audi, 11 — have entered culinary competitions at the state fair.
“She’s taken my kids under her wing and taught them all to cook. That’s been their bonding thing,” said Lewis, who fondly remembers growing up on home-cooked meals.
Lewis said it was great learning her way around the kitchen from such an accomplished cook.
“My mom’s name is definitely well known in our community. Whenever her food is going to be on sale (at local festivals), there’s people lining up to be the first ones to grab it, especially her cinnamon rolls,” she said.
Ironically, Green said it was an allergic reaction to some fruits and vegetables that first prompted her to spend a lot of time in the kitchen as a little girl.
“My mom had huge gardens and preserved everything, but I broke out whenever I touched some of the seeds. So I got to stay inside and cook while she preserved,” said Green, who started cooking the majority of meals for her large family when she was around 10.
Green said that while growing up in Boone County, she and her family attended the Indiana State Fair every year when she was a kid, typically spending the entire day at the fairgrounds — from dawn until the fair closed around 10 p.m.
“I haven’t missed a state fair since I was 4 years old,” said Green, who now enjoys going at least twice a year with her grandkids.
Green started submitting her culinary creations in state fair competitions when she was around 40 years old, at the prompting of a friend.
“I used to be the music director at (Fortville Christian Church) and I would have a banquet each year to thank the choir members. I always made my homemade rolls, and one lady kept telling me that they were state fair quality and needed to be entered at the fair,” Green recalled.
She did, and she won, and she’s been racking up the ribbons ever since.
Green’s passion is baking various kinds of bread, which she’s known for at the state fair. This year, she submitted a bread in each class, including cornbread and honey bread that both won first place. Her multigrain bread placed second.
She first started baking her own bread in the mid-1970s when her father battled colon cancer and was encouraged to eat whole grains.
“Back then they didn’t have a lot of treatments so they told people to eat a high-fiber diet, but you couldn’t just go out and buy whole grain breads,” Green said.
So she started making whole grain breads from scratch, and her passion spread from there. Eventually, so did her passion for entering culinary contests at the state fair.
“I guess the 4-Her in me likes that competition,” said Green, who participated in 4-H as a kid.
“She also enjoys the camaraderie. When the state fair was canceled in 2020 due to COVID, Green joined a group of fellow state fair culinary competitors and held a “faux fair” at one of their homes, with each bringing a few of their best dishes to share.
Green watches for the state fair’s entries to open up each spring and entered a number of culinary categories each year.
Her grandkids have even entered a few state fair cooking contests in recent years, and have often placed in the top three.
“When you enter a contest you get six state fair tickets, so it makes it a little bit cheaper for everyone to go,” she said.
Ribbons are given for first, second and third place in each category, with a purple ribbon awarded for Best of Show.
She’s submitted fewer items this year due to a recent shoulder surgery,
On Wednesday, she attended the fair’s heritage cooking contest, which focuses on recipes that are at least 50 years old. Contestants must submit a story about the history of the recipe along with the food.
While she’s won hundreds of ribbons at the state fair, it was a national award that Green considers to be her biggest accomplishment.
“The award I am most proud of is winning a Fleischmann’s Yeast contest in 2012. The contest was honoring the 200th anniversary of the Earl of Sandwich, and I created a cranberry pecan chicken salad on homemade croissants,” recalled Green, who won $250 for her effort.
