“If a picture can paint a thousand words, recipes can tell a thousand stories,” says Kay Fenton Smith. It’s a truth she endearingly illustrates throughout her new book, Baking Blue Ribbons: Stories and Recipes from the Iowa State Fair Food Competitions.

A few years ago, Smith, a passionate cook and avid State Fair enthusiast with a professional background in marketing, was surprised that while there are many great books about the Iowa State Fair and cookbooks with State Fair recipes, no one had ever told the history of the fair’s food department and competitions.

“Here we were, the No. 1 state fair food competition in the nation,” Smith says. “Why wasn’t there a book about it?”

So she decided to write one.

For help, she teamed up with Carol McGarvey, who worked for the Des Moines Register for 33 years as a features reporter on the food, gardening and home beats.  Each August, she reported on the food competitions at the fair. She also has served as a State Fair food judge for 36 years and counting.

Together, the duo dug deeply into the archives of the State Fair’s Blue Ribbon Foundation, read through hundreds of pages of Iowa newspapers, and spoke with dozens of judges and ribbon-winners and their descendants to uncover the history, recipes and stories of “Iowa’s greatest treasure in food.”

The resulting tome brings more than 150 recipes that will get avid cooks rushing to the kitchen. But first they’ll have to tear themselves away from the compelling stories that each recipe tells, not only of the talented prizewinner who crafted it but also of bygone days and of the 168-year history of the competitions themselves.

Artisan Gallery 218 is located at 218 Fifth Street in the historic Valley Junction of West Des Moines.  Beaverdale Books partners with them to produce monthly book events and will have books available for sale and signing.