Baking Club
This Great-Grandmother Dominates Her District Fair Recipe Competition Every. Single. Year.
Linda Skeens is the GOAT when it comes to recipe contests.
Absolutely crushing the competition at the local fair is nothing new for Linda Skeens. This year, the Virginian great-grandmother went viral after winning more than 25 of the 80 contests at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair—and sweeping the medals in the Cake, Pie, Cookie, Sweet Bread, Savory Bread, Brownie, and Candy categories. She won for cooking, canning, and baking, and she even placed in the embroidery and wall-decor categories, per Today. But apparently she’s dominated the competition before, as TikTok and radio personality Mason Moussette learned after she tracked down the mystery champion for an interview.
“I usually win,” Skeens said. She’s a regular at the fair and often triumphs in pretty similar ways to this year. What made this year different, according to the humble winner who has no social media of her own (or even a cell phone or email address, her granddaughter told the Washington Post), was that the fair posted about it on Facebook.
While Skeens has been turning down most interview requests, her granddaughter has been keeping the public informed on how excited the champion is about the comments that have been coming in on the fair’s Facebook page, as well as the wildly viral reputation she’s gaining for excellence—which even includes a song written about her and posted on TikTok.
Along with making her category-winning treats like canned corn, strawberry fudge, spaghetti sauce, grape jelly, peach-raspberry jam, and sauerkraut, Skeens says she spends much of her time cooking for her family, which includes five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She is also currently in treatment for leukemia, which she told Moussette is working well. Her doctors say she could live another 10 to 20 years, meaning possibly into her late 80s—great news for her family and food lovers everywhere, but bad news for anyone hoping to snag a blue ribbon at the Virginia-Kentucky District Fair anytime soon.
Written by: Naomi Tomky
Popular on Food52
2 Comments
See what other Food52 readers are saying.