Cook-Off Recap

As part of our week-long family reunion/celebration of my Grandpa's 80th birthday my highly-competitive, cooking-inclined family decided to have a cooking competition. This stemmed from a "friendly" rivalry between the East Coast and West Coast Annual holiday cookie baking traditions. Each group claims their cookies are better, traditions older, decorations more elaborate, etc. Since I grew up in the East Coast tradition, but am now a West Coast transplant I was deemed untrustworthy by both sides and charged with orchestration of the event. It was a hysterical affair with great fun had by all. All week long in the lead up to the actual Cook-Off there was much joking, secret meetings, accusations of cheating and intimidation, questioning of the rules and regulations, and just general revelry and chaos.

In honor of his birthday, Grandpa got to choose the key secret ingredient for the competition: peanut butter (a la Iron Chef). Each team was then tasked with creating three menu items containing peanut butter for the judges' consideration: one entree, one dessert, and a third entry of their choice.

Here you can see both teams in their color-coded aprons (custom made by Aunt Sue) at the kick-off of competition.


The East Coast team showed their over-achiever tendencies with matching aprons and tee-shirts. In the same vein, they had their menu items printed up all fancy on stationary for the judges' consideration.

Aunt Molly and cousin Alison hard at work on perfecting their peanut butter glaze.

Aunt Sue puts the finishing touches on her Moosewood inspired Indonesian salad with a peanut dressing.

Grandma dishes up the West Coast's entree: Thai Chicken Tenders.

Aunt Molly and Mom dish out the Zesty Peanut Sauce on the grilled chicken breast. The entree results were very interesting in that both teams independently came up with very similar Asian inspired dishes, owing to the peanut butter restrictions. It was a slight challenge for my cousin who is a less-adventurous eater but most everyone else enjoyed all the entries. Except for poor Matilda hasn't had peanut introduced into her diet yet; she was stuck with a can of soup for dinner.

The judges gather round to fill their plates

The West Coast dessert submission: Double Peanut Pie. It was later garnished with fresh whipped cream and chopped peanuts, upping their presentation score. This pie tasted even better than it looks.

The East Coast dessert: "Peanut Butter Explosion". Just fabulous. One layer of brownie and two layers of chocolate cake with peanut butter mousse sandwiched between and chocolate drizzled over the top.

Serious deliberation going on here! Really the judges were very concerned about declaring a clear winner. I think they were afraid of jeopardizing their chances of future family feasts.

In the end we (myself and the judges) didn't have the heart to declare a clear winner but each team won distinctions in a variety of categories. Here the West Coast team shows off their hard-earned medals.