PORTLAND – Food writer Amy Sutherland was sent to cover a Maine contestant’s chance at winning the world series of cooking contests: the 2000 Pillsbury Bake-Off contest in San Francisco.

Sutherland wasn’t sure what she’d find. Midwestern housewives with beehive hairdos, perhaps?

What the Portland Press Herald writer saw was far from what she expected.

There were postal workers, a junior high school student, and a funeral director. There were people from all ages and walks of life, each competing to win a $1 million prize for the best recipe.

What began as a lark and a great way to take a trip to the West Coast turned into a yearlong journey on the cook-off circuit with people trying their luck at a chance for glory, bragging rights and, of course, cash. The result is “Cookoff: Recipe Fever in America” (Viking, $24.95).

“Ultimately, it’s a people book, and food is the glue,” said Sutherland during a recent interview in Portland. “It was a great way to see people from all walks of life, and that’s what’s so cool about cooking food.”

With its wit and quirky stories, Sutherland invites readers into a world of “heartbreak, glory and big money on the competitive cooking contest.”

Throughout the book, she manages to unlock the humor and inherent Americanness in competitive cooking contests.

“These were everyday people who, thanks to an often thankless task, cooking, had something big happen to them,” she writes. “From the confines of their kitchens they had catapulted to a national stage.”

Sutherland found that cook-offs, instead of being destined to go the way of aqua-green kitchen appliances, were flourishing.

Over a year, she went to a dozen cook-offs – garlic, beef, chicken, chili, barbecue, jambalaya, cornbread and others – culminating in the Pillsbury Bake-Off Contest and its $1 million grand prize. She followed contestants along the way.

“These people still keep cooking as a hobby, and few of them are true full-time cooking professionals. So they’re both serious and having fun,” she said.

Pillsbury gives away the most cash, but there is a long road leading to it. A dozen or so national cooking contests are held each year, and most offer substantial prizes, from $5,000 to $20,000 or so. Below that are recipe contests with no cooking involved, which can offer up to $10,000.

The book was picked by Barnes & Noble for its Discover Great New Writers program. The fall Discover selections are discounted by 20 percent and receive prominent display in more than 600 Barnes & Noble stores across the country through the holiday season.

In the end, the temptation to compete was too much to endure. Sutherland couldn’t resist and entered the Southern Living Cook-Off.

She thought she’d have an advantage, having spent a year traipsing from one cooking contest to another. She entered a category called “new twists on Southern classics” with a “Cranberry Pumpkin Cornbread Coffeecake with Pecan Streusel” recipe and hoped for the best.

It was a disaster.

She violated one of the most important rules she had learned along the way: always read the recipe carefully – and many, many times.

There was pumpkin in the title, and pumpkin in the directions. But there was no pumpkin in her ingredient list. She had forgot to list it, “a classic newbie mistake.”

But don’t worry, says Sutherland, there’s always another contest to enter.