State Fair judge excels at spotting minuscule flaws

In 32 years, she has found you have to get persnickety

RALEIGH -- Sixteen jars of green beans were lined up in front of Nadine Tope late last week at the N.C. State Fair.

To the average eater, they looked identical.

But Tope's trained eye saw differences.

One jar wasn't pressure-canned, the vital canning step that kills potentially deadly bacteria such as those that cause botulism. Others had too much liquid or not enough. Or the color was off. Or the beans weren't uniform in size.

Tope and Betty Cook, her fellow judge in the fruit and vegetable canned goods contest at the fair, found the winner: a pint-sized jar with the best green color, the most uniform size and filled just right.

Tope, 72, admits that sometimes finding blue-ribbon beans comes down to minuscule differences.

"You have to get nitpicky," she said.

For more than three decades, Tope has helped judge the canning contests at the State Fair. Hired as a food preservation specialist for the state Cooperative Extension Service in 1974, she first supervised the canned goods contests and would vote only to break ties.

After her retirement in 1991, she began judging as part of a team, deciding whose applesauce or canned corn deserved the blue ribbon. She will be among the panel of judges testing baked goods and dishes all week at the fair's cooking contests.

"She is so knowledgeable about so many things," says Babs Wilkinson. She met Tope as an extension agent in Jackson County in Western North Carolina and later worked for the state agriculture department and coordinated the cooking contests at the fair.

"She knows what makes a perfect pound cake," Wilkinson says. "She knows what makes a great pie. She knows how to tell whether something is under-baked or over-baked. She's able to look at a jar of jelly and tell why it's a good jar of jelly."

Teaching, writing

Tope, who grew up among the cornfields of northern Indiana, went to Cornell College in Iowa and majored in home economics. She eventually earned a doctorate in foods and nutrition from Purdue University.

She came to Raleigh in 1974, following her husband, Paul, who had gotten a job here.

She found a job that she loved -- teaching classes across the state on the proper way to can, freeze and preserve foods. She wrote books on canning and pickling and helped cooperative extension agents answer people's questions.

Canning isn't difficult, she says. Heat kills bacteria and prevents the food from spoiling. A vacuum is created as the jar cools and seals, keeping anything from contaminating the food.

But it does take some skill and a careful eye to ensure that food is canned properly. Otherwise, botulism bacteria could live and grow in the jar and contaminate the food, especially in vegetables -- sometimes with fatal consequences.

Tope once canned a lot, especially salmon caught in Lake Michigan. But not anymore.

"I just appreciate what people go through to can," she says.

These days, Tope has plenty of other things to do.

At her home -- where she lives with two dogs, three cats and several fish -- books sit piled on her coffee table. As she greeted a visitor last week, classical music played softly.

A full, varied life

Tope holds tickets to the symphony and ballet, as well as to Carolina Hurricanes hockey and N.C. State basketball games. Each semester, she signs up for two or three classes through N.C. State's Encore Center for Lifelong Enrichment, which provides short courses for people older than 50. She participates in a book club, volunteers at the state art museum, travels and is a member of several civic clubs.

"I get tickled every year when I call her to sign her up," says Lisa Prince, who coordinates the cooking contests at the fair. "Usually it takes me a little bit to get her because she's so on the go."