Bon Appetit

'Master Chef' is everything but what I am.  In all honesty, I'm horrible at cooking.  Besides the fact that I don't enjoy it and think it's a waste of time, I've stooped so low as to have burned Campbell's soup not once, not twice, but three times in my life.  I get a little impatient, crank it up too high, and end up spending an hour scouring my scorched pot afterwards.  It's pathetic.


So a couple weeks ago when we hosted an office event at this Cooking School in Dallas, I was less than thrilled.  I figured I would not only embarrass myself in front of my co-workers with my severe lack of cooking skills, but I would also have a miserable evening.


I was wrong.  So wrong.  The whole evening was so legit.  We kicked off the event with a cocktail hour complete with yummy hor devours.  If you've been following my blog, you'll see that placing food and BCGers together seems to be a nice trend.  I'm not complaining. 

Cocktails and Hor devours.

One of the cooking teams.

The judges.

My cooking team!!

Following this we broke into our respective teams and engaged in an 'Iron Chef-esque' competition.  We had four "mystery" ingredients, a few staples to choose from, and a fairly limited number of cooking utensils.  We had 45 minutes to make our master piece.  

Running concurrently to this was our Shaker Competition.  Acknowledging that I lack talent in the kitchen, I volunteered myself for this aspect of the challenge.  A few members from each team headed into a separate room we had well stocked with every liquor, mixer, and drink ingredient imaginable.  The plan was to come up with a creative, tasty, complimentary drink to be paired with the meal the remainder of our team was creating.

So what did we come up with?  Pure deliciousness on all fronts, that's what!  For our meal, my team made a stuffed bell pepper with flat iron steak marinated in some special sauce one of the chefs cooked up.  Our drink was going to be some scrumptious tequila/vodka/pineapple/lemon/lots of other random stuff mixture until someone accidently dumped out our shaker and we had to start over with five minutes to spare.  Erring on the side of caution, we went with a simple vodka/lemon/soda mix.  Thanks to Laura for making a nice display, the presentation (and taste!) of it proved a solid showing.

The Smileys.  Chef and Drinks Master.

We clearly should have won.  We even gave a nod to our company!

We didn't win - bummer - but it was a close call I'm sure ;)  Other notable favorites from the evening included a corn chowder, stuffed fried avocados, and mini tacos as well as a variety of delicious drinks.

After the competition we sat down to a great Italian dinner complete with, my favorite, Tiramisu!!  The dessert was served in these little crystal cocktail glasses and had it not been a work event and had I not been hosting, I definitely would have indulged in two.  Or five.  They were that good.

Obviously it was a great night.  We even got BCG aprons as party favors and nothing beats a party with take-aways!  Although I probably won't be jumping into the kitchen to whip up my own stuffed bell pepper anytime soon, it was definitely a very fun experience!  Until tomorrow...bon appetit!