<\/p>\n
About 50 amateur chili and salsa judges lined up to taste test dishes entered in the 2015 Chili and Salsa Cookoff at the Montezuma County Fair on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The event lets locals\u2019 home recipes compete for a chance at $480 in cash prizes.<\/p>\n
The second-annual event was a big draw last year and made its triumphant return again, drawing more judges and competitors this year.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s categories were green and red chili, and vegetable and fruit based salsa.<\/p>\n
Those interested in this year paid one dollar for all access to the spread, money that gets reinvested into next year\u2019s event, explained event coordinator Kathi Marler.<\/p>\n
While taste was an obvious factor, judges were also asked to rate their favorites based on color, spice, texture and overall flavor.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery one is different, so this is going to be tough,\u201d said Judge Shelley Williamson. \u201cSome have heavy cilantro, some have heavy chili. There are some really great flavors.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the ballots were counted and judges announced the winners, Tamara Samora took home first place and $100 cash for her vegetable salsa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI make it at family events and everyone loves it, so I decided to enter,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Stacy Clark took first place in the red chili category, and Rosa Sabido took first in the green chili category.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
a day, friends, neighbors take part in heated contest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":110549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[947,281,21,438,13],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-110548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-4-h","tag-agriculture","tag-cortez","tag-food","tag-frontpage-lead"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110548"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=110548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}