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Cookoffs, contests & competitions with food


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Congratulations, Suzi!  Tell us how it goes.

On the attribution question, I just want to give a great recent example of the opposite effect.  A friend recently told me that a recipe of mine appears in Crescent Dragonwagon's Passionate Vegetarian.  I was dumbfounded, but it's true.  Crescent got it from a post of mine on another online cooking community that we both frequented abut 8-9 years ago, tweaked it a bit, put it in her book, and named me as the source.  I was astounded, and happy to see the recipe again, since I'd forgotten all about it.  It was very good, as I recall, and now I can make it again.  She sure didn't have to attribute that recipe, and I thought it was very classy of her.

Pretty cool Abra! Do mind telling what the name of the dish was?

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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My most memorable "win" was a contest sponsored each month by the magazine published by our Electric Power Company in the rural South. I had seen the food pages every month for years, and it was a veritable compendium of enough recipes using mushroom soup to make the Campbells rich beyond the dreams of avarice. The recipe which made me resolve to enter was an honorable mention: Rabbit and dumplings, which, in its entirety was something like:

Cook your rabbit, make dumplings just like for chicken, cook them in the rabbit broth.

I would read every month, wince, laugh, sometimes be pleasantly surprised, and was always entertained. So I typed up a recipe we had used for many years as a party fingerfood: Asparagus Rollups. The name itself was clever enough to merit honorable mention, I reasoned, since hardly an issue passed without a soup-laden dish titled XXXX Casserole. Ditto a salad recipe: XXXXXX Salad.

If anyone's squeamish, stop reading NOW. The recipe used grated cheese, Durkee's dressing, a little mayo, and powdered garlic, spread onto laboriously rolled-flat Wonder Bread. This flappy, preservatives-laden concoction was then rolled around a spear of CANNED asparagus, brushed all over with melted butter, and baked till crispy.

And people at parties ATE IT UP. Any invitation to one particular friend brought an instant acceptance, with "I hope you're making those AsPEARgus things."

And it was surprisingly tasty, served in a pretty basket on a linen napkin, alongside our special chicken salad.

So I sent in the recipe, and a month or so later, I got a phone call...I had won the month's contest, and a representative would be at my home to make my picture for NEXT month's issue, and to deliver my gift. And so I took off work, stayed home, primped a bit, and the young man rang the bell promptly at 9 a.m. He shuffled a bit on the porch, cleared his throat a few times, squinted in the bright Alabama sun.

I asked him in; he said they were not allowed to enter houses. I stood on the porch in that August heat, squinting a bit myself. I asked how they chose the recipe; he said it sounded good. He shuffled some more, asked how I came by the recipe. I said I made it up; he nodded sagely. As he nodded, I noticed for the first time that his scalp gleamed in the sun like chrome on a Buick. And it was gleaming in little regimented rows, perfectly spaced and perfectly delineated by tiny divots of hair in a pattern unknown to nature.

I tried to move my eyes, but the sage nodding and the shuffling did not serve to sway me from my fascinated stare at his hairline. The little shocks were so perfectly spaced, they looked like beautifully-plowed fieldrows whizzing past your car window. The sun bounced off his clean scalp; I tried again to avert---in vain.

The guy had DOLLHAIR. And his doctor---scalptician, whatever, had the steadiest hands in all the civilized world. It was PERFECT---a work of art, a stunning symmetry marching across his head like a platoon of micro-Marines.

I cannot say how long we stood there. He asked another question or two, filling up thirty seconds in that forever-morning, and I hope I replied with some semblance of sense. I occasionally chattered brightly, bringing in the weather and the crops and all the mosquitoes we'd been having; then silence would overtake us, and I'd mutely wait for him to ask something else, or hand me that little box and take his leave, or SOMETHING to get my mind off his hairline.

So finally he did; he presented the little B&D food-whirler with a flourish, snapped one picture (in which I presented an amazed, almost stunned DITH expression, whether from the unexpected flash or the odd morning I seemed to be having).

That was fifteen years ago, and I still have that little chopper, most recently used during the stay of our daughter and her huge land tortoise...I chopped POUNDS of green vegetables during Sheldon's visit.

And I still have that image of the dear young fellow, with his new hair immaculately parted in all directions, like a cornfield in the sun. I wish him well and hope he grew a beautiful crop.

Edited by racheld (log)
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God - it's all coming back to me now. I won a milk recipe contest about 20 years abo with a recipe that I sort of stole from somewhere (can't remember where) and anyway it must have been horrible - I can't imagine why I won. If I remember correctly, the recipe was for a casserole with cauliflower and cheese baked in a cream sauce with, like, olives or some other ridiculous thing in it. No really, it must have been awful - I can see that gooey whiteness, the slightly overbaked edges - ick.

I won a food processor, though. Used it for years until it died.

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When I was a kid, I helped my parents win many chili cook-offs. When I was 18 and already a line cook for over a year I won the career day cooking contest at my high school with a good ol' apple pie. I think the prize was fifty bucks.

Recently I competed in an event called Chocolate Fantasy in which local restaurants have booths set up in the streets and serve samples of food and desserts. People pay about eighty bucks each to sample the free food and drinks, and also submit votes for the best food. With some large parties scheduled that Sturday evening, I was only able to make the food (Potato encrusted salmon with a horseradish/honey/herb glaze and chocolate tiramisu) and send it off to the event with a few workers. We got third place out of about twenty five restaurants. No prize, just some complimentary wine glasses.

At a similar event called Food and Wine Under the Stars I got second place with butternut squash ravioli with parsley and nutmeg sauce, goat cheese bruscetta, and tirimisu. Again, no prize, just some wine glasses.

Kiss my grits

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Years ago (1970s) I won a prize in a Baskin-Robbins recipe contest. My creation was called Baskin Alaskan and consisted of a crepe smeared with lemon filling and rolled up with vanilla ice cream, slathered with meringue and browned. I won the then-new Doubleday cookbook, which I still have and adore.

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She called it Two Grain Abracadabra Pilaf. It was all white basmati when I created it, but she added kamut and made it brown basmati. It was yummy in its original incarnation, but healthier in hers, no doubt.

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Back in February I won a gold medal in the college level of a competition called the "Hot Competition Live!"put on by the BC Chef's Association. The three weeks of training leading up to it was super intense, but it was an amazing experience that was definately worthwhile.

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