2015 State Fair - Live Well, Eat Well Contest

Wednesday August 12th
Wednesday was the Eat Well, Live Well Recipe Contest sponsored by the Little Red Door Cancer Agency. The "goal" of this contest was to prepare a healthy tasty dish that contains proven cancer fighting agents. The dishes are scored as follows:

40% - Taste/Flavor
25% - Creativity/Originality
25% - Number of documented cancer fighting ingredients
10% - Appearance and Presentation

This is the second year for this contest. I didn't enter it last year. I perused the list of cancer fighting ingredients on the Little Red Door's website and settled on making lettuce wraps. Salmon was on the cancer fighting ingredient list so that would be my protein. I also knew quinoa was a cancer fighting ingredient. Now to put it all together...

I perused different websites for ideas on Monday. I found a Orange Ginger Salmon recipe I liked on The Healthy Foodie blog. I then got the idea of using mangos with quinoa from a Tropical Quinoa Lettuce Wrap recipe I found on Simply Quinoa. I tried the sauce from that recipe too but I didn't like it so I made my own. I bought all the ingredients late Monday night, buying the last salmon fillet that was available at Kroger that night and did a test run. Tasted like a winner to me.

Tuesday morning I went and bought more salmon and Boston lettuce before going to work. I got home from work at midnight and made more quinoa, put the sauce on it to blend the flavors overnight and put the orange ginger rub on the salmon before going to bed.

Wednesday morning I cooked the salmon. I then decided I needed more Boston lettuce so I could have enough leaves that were just the right size for a nice presentation so it was off to the grocery store again. After that I packed up everything and went to the fairgrounds.

The contest was open judged on the Main Stage of the Home and Family Arts Building. There were two judges this time - one was the director of the Little Red Door Cancer Agency and the other was a local food blogger/consultant that does food demos for the agency. So two really qualified judges. One of the other competitors who had entered last year told me that last year the judges had no clue so she was glad there were "legitimate" judges this year.

The judging started. Yes, I really liked these judges. They actually were not afraid to critique the food. So many times now, the judges seem afraid to say anything critical so all you get are varying degrees of "oh, that was good." These judges actually said something if they didn't like it. Most of the dishes that were presented were either salads or vegetable casseroles with just a kitchen sink full of cancer fighting ingredients. When I heard the ingredient list in many of the dishes my opinion was that there were just too many different ingredients in the dish. There were two soups. One pizza. Other than maybe the pizza I don't think anyone else had a stand alone main dish like mine. Mine was different. The director thought my salmon was cooked perfectly. I started feeling pretty good about my dish.

Honorable Mention went to the Gluten Free Kale Pizza.
Third Place went to one of the soups.
Kenda got Second Place with her "Soy-ful Salad."

It was all or nothing now. My heart was beating out of my chest again. I'm such an adrenaline junkie it's pathetic...

I won.

 

 

This was a fun contest and I enjoyed making something other than dessert. Cooking is also so much more forgiving than baking. By that, I mean you can really play around with your ingredients when you cook. You have to be much more careful with proportions when you bake.

Next up, pies!