Annual 24th of July Cook Off!

It is that time of year for my family's Pioneer Day Cook Off. This year will be our second time around. My family likes to cook and eat almost as much as I do, so we decided to have a little competion. This year we are having a burger cook off. My wife and I have planned our burger and we are sure it is the winner, but I can't post it until after the contest--no sense in giving the family any ideas.

Last year, we combined elements of the food network shows, Chopped, Iron Chef America, Throwdown, and Dinner Impossible. Everybody put four random ingredients (two for an a entree and two for dessert) in a hat and we drew out two ingredients for each course. We had to use the two ingredients in our dishes--the two ingredients we drew for the entree were polish sausage and cabbage. I am not sure who suggested those items, but I was hoping for something a little more exciting to work with--same goes for dessert. The two ingredients for dessert were pineapple and raisins.



After we drew the ingredients, we had five minutes to discuss what we wanted to make, and then we had half an hour to buy what we needed for our meals. After we returned, we had one hour to prepare our meals and present them to the judges.



My team consisted of me, my mom, my sister Sadie and her husband Danny. The other team was my dad, and my sisters, Sara, Jennie and Hannah. My wife Stef, and Kurt and Becky, our friends visiting from Michigan were the judges.



My team decided to make cajun style cabbage wraps. We brainstormed the best way to do this, and decided to use polish sausage, onions, peppers, and black beans and rice. We also made a buffalo brown sugar sauce to drizzle over the wraps. For dessert we made a cinnamon raisin french toast, with a pineapple caramel sauce and whip cream. Because there were so many of us, our team made the backyard our kitchen--we used the Camp Chef stove and picnic tables as our work area.



The other team made a polish sausage sandwich with coleslaw, sun dried tomato sauce and roasted peppers and onions. For dessert they made a fried wanton with grilled pineapple and raisins.


My bro-in-law Tom, filmed the entire thing and kept a running commentary. He has even put it on a DVD, but unless you are part of the family (and probably not even then) you wouldn't want to watch us cook. With all of our filming, you think we would have thought to snap a few pictures of the food we presented, but alas, we forgot.

We presented our food to the judges, and when the dust settled the judges ruled that the other (inferior) team won. What ultimately sunk our team was the ill-fated decision to use Zatarain's Black Beans and Rice instead of making our own. Frankly, I though our food tasted better, but we lost. The judges did say that our french toast with the pineapple caramel sauce was the best dish of the day, but it wasn't enough for us to beat the other team. I think that the judges were trying so hard to appear unbiased (the judges were my wife, my law school buddy and his girlfriend after all), that they actually favored the other team. Oh well there is always this year.

We had a great time, and the food was pretty good. We had a Dutch Oven cook off on Memorial Day (where I proudly redeemed myself) but that is a post for another day.