ALTAMONT — Cooking can be competitive, and it can also be fun.

Fair-goers can see both ends of that spectrum at the Blue Ribbon Culinary Center next week. The center is hosting events each day of the Altamont Fair for cooks of all ages.

All year long, Lori McCormick, the assistant superintendent of the center, looks for ideas for projects kids can make and for competitions. She often looks on Pinterest and also consults a book left open at the center for fair-goers to share their ideas. “We ask people, ‘What would you like to do?’” said McCormick.

She fills the book with pictures she’s taken of the various contests and activities at the center.

More than a decade ago, McCormick said, when Monica Busch became superintendent of the center, Busch scheduled activities and competitions. “It’s grown every year,” said McCormick.

While Busch, she said, had a career in the field, McCormick works as a registered nurse. “My hobby is baking,” she said. “It’s sort of like a therapy for me...I like to give away a lot of my baking.” Her church and her friends are frequent recipients of her concoctions.

McCormick speaks with great enthusiasm of the events that will unfold next week at the center.

Jim Haas, from Cornell Cooperative extension, will be there on Monday, the fair’s opening day, at 6:45 p.m. to teach people how to make salads without mayonnaise.

Some of those skills may be put to use the next day with the Potato Salad Competition for Seniors at 4 p.m. On Tuesday, people aged 65 and older are admitted to the fair for free until 4 p.m.

“Everybody brings in three cups of their best potato salad,” said McCormick. Participants can sample each other’s salads and a prize for the best one will be awarded by the Chuck Wagon Diner on Route 20 in Duanesburg.

On Thursday at 2 p.m. whomever has been crowned Miss Altamont Fair on Monday will help kids younger than 13 make ice-cream piglets. “I got Stewart’s to donate the ice cream,” said McCormick. She had wanted the bubblegum-flavored ice cream her children had craved 30 years ago. “They don’t make it anymore,” she said, so she chose cotton-candy flavored iced cream instead.

The piglets’ ears will be made of bubblegum.

“We’ll have up to 50 kids,” said McCormick. “It’s fun.”

Later that day, at 6:45 p.m., is a Tiramisu Competition sponsored by The Cheesecake Factory restaurant.

Tiramisu, which means “cheer me up” in Italian, is a custard dessert, usually made of ladyfingers dipped in coffee and layered with a mixture of whipped eggs and sugar, and cheese.

“We picked tiramisu this year because it’s very hard to make,” said McCormick. “For the people who bring these things in, it’s serious stuff. Last year, during the judging, you could hear a pin drop.”

She fills the silence with a trivia contest for the audience. “We have a lot of fun,” said McCormick.

Cooks who bring tiramisu into the competition are admitted to the fair for free, she said. The contest will be judged by the general manager off the Cheesecake Factory, and the winner gets a $75 gift card to the restaurant.

On Friday, kids under 13 will make a “Campy Kid’s Dinner” with Miss Altamont Fair. “It’s very cute,” said McCormick of the edible art the kids will construct. “Picture a hotdog bun as a canoe.”

The two paddlers have arms made of pretzels, which are stuck into the hot dog. The boat sits in blue corn chips, “which look like water,” said McCormick.

Later on Friday, at 6:45 p.m. is the King Arthur Flour Chocolate Cake Contest.

On Saturday, kids under 13 can compete in a chocolate-chip cookie contest sponsored by Anne Marie’s Candy. “It’s judged by other kids,” said McCormick.

Also on Saturday, at 6:45 p.m., there’s a pie-eating contest for kids and adults, sponsored by the Home Front Café and by Grandma’s Pies.

“The pie-eating is absolutely hysterical,” said McCormick. “They have to eat with their hands behind their backs.”

Since it’s a messy competition, she said, “We cover them up.”

Some competitors cheat the rules. “Sometimes people push the pie out of the pan to make it look like ate more than they did,” said McCormick.

If a contest is too close to call, the audience gets involved. “They clap for the winner,” she said; the contestant with the most applause gets the prize.

On Sunday, the last day of the fair, at 2 p.m., Greg Giorgio will preside over a tasting of New York State-made hard ciders. Giorgio, a sommelier and wine educator, has a website, Winesolve, highlighting his three decades of studying and tasting wine, cooking in restaurants, and consulting.

Throughout the week, baked and canned goods made by people living in one of the three counties served by the fair — Albany, Greene, and Schenectady — will be on display at the center.

“People bring food in on Sunday and it’s judged by professionals on Monday,” said McCormick “Then it’s displayed in cases all week long.”