Spudfest - The Irish Potato Festival

Start growing your spuds anytime (March - May) but we're aiming for late earlies and second crops (or as we call it - about when the flowers start to fall off the spuds). The purpose of course is to determine the who wins the title of "Grower of the year" and gets to walk away with the "Mr. Potato head perpetual trophy" for recognition of this prowess. Competition Categories
1. we might just have a whopper or a funny shaped spud to enter into this category
2. Boiled
3. Mashed
4. Chip
5. Salad
6. Roast
7. Highest points overall

How the competition will work:
There will be and independant chef and arbitrator. His role will be to be driven to the location of each house and witness the digging of the spuds on the day of the fest. This way we can elimiate sneaky shop bought spuds and get a similar level of freshness. The chef has to do the cooking using the exact same process for each set of spuds so that no more or less ingredient is added to alter the flavour in favour of one spud over the other. There will be an agreed number of ingredients (consistent ones) eg butter,salt, milk and scallions ( and for the chips – vinegar –and for the salad – Hellmans mayonnaise) in each portion. There will also be a shop-bought “control” spud …. To compare how much better our spuds taste compared to shop bought crap – eg Tesco spuds

To judge the competition all competitors will vote on each others spuds and we will have Panel of judges made up of 3 people. A connossieur of spuds, a middle of the road spud eater and a person that isn't too bothered about spuds. Each of the panel will vote on each spud per category and the points will be combined to determine the winner of the category. Don't worry - there will be spuds for everyone so you will get to taste the fruits of our hard labour. Varieties
Competitors can enter 1 variety per categoy