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Thursday, November 27, 2014
Wednesday, November 12, 2014
Our Grilled Cheese Open 2014
Every year my family throws a Grilled Cheese Open in our backyard. It's our one big get together of the year. I shut down soapmaking in lieu of party planning and cookie making! I spend all week making cookie dough for a cookie bar and spend the day before at the oven baking around 1000 cookies! In addition to the cookies, I have a bloody mary bar, tomato soup, chips, fruit salad and a salad bar. For entertainment, the Adam Holt Duo played and we had the ubiquitous bouncy house.
This year I made 7 types of cookies: Tollhouse Chocolate (no recipe necessary), Mexican Wedding Cookies (aka, vanilla crescent cookies), Pumpkin Sugar Cookies, Glazed Lemon Cookies, Oatmeal Craisin Cookies (from Lisa G.'s Autobiography), and hands down the favorite of the day, Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cookies.
The bloody mary bar: you could make your own bloody marys from scratch (V8, horseradish, celery salt, clamato, hot sauce etc...) or use one of the popular mixes: Zing Zang, Whiskey Willy's, etc. We had Tony Chachere's to rim the glass and to put inside, lemon/lime, carrot, celery, GIGANTIC olives, dill gherkins, cocktail onions (which no one ever used), pickled asparagus, pickled green beans, pickled okra and my special touch, SLIM JIMS! I add colorful swizzle sticks and straws to the mix and no two bloody marys made were alike. Of course, there was beer, wine, soft drinks, water and juice boxes but everyone seemed to be carrying around a bloody mary all afternoon.
We had 10 contestants cooking this year. I separate the voting between child and adult because children don't have the same palate as adults do and are more likely to vote for a grilled cheese that looks like a pumpkin than a grilled cheese with brie and tomato chutney. So kids had white vote tickets and adult red vote tickets. Also, parents tend to have the kids stuff the ballots so I wanted it to be a fair contest. Popular vote counts for 30% of the winning total, the remaining 70% is by chef judge. This year Chef Doug Kerr from Dragonfly Foodbar helped us out and professionally blind tasted and scored the grilled cheese contestants. We had grilled cheeses with lobster, crab, steak, pepper jelly.... an amazing array of creative grilled cheese!
Winners had had custom cutting board trophy and gift cards to Dragonfly Restaurant. The first place winner also had a tiara and sash saying "THE BIG CHEESE 2014." The winning grilled cheese? The one with the lobster! :)
This year I made 7 types of cookies: Tollhouse Chocolate (no recipe necessary), Mexican Wedding Cookies (aka, vanilla crescent cookies), Pumpkin Sugar Cookies, Glazed Lemon Cookies, Oatmeal Craisin Cookies (from Lisa G.'s Autobiography), and hands down the favorite of the day, Salted Caramel Dark Chocolate Cookies.
The bloody mary bar: you could make your own bloody marys from scratch (V8, horseradish, celery salt, clamato, hot sauce etc...) or use one of the popular mixes: Zing Zang, Whiskey Willy's, etc. We had Tony Chachere's to rim the glass and to put inside, lemon/lime, carrot, celery, GIGANTIC olives, dill gherkins, cocktail onions (which no one ever used), pickled asparagus, pickled green beans, pickled okra and my special touch, SLIM JIMS! I add colorful swizzle sticks and straws to the mix and no two bloody marys made were alike. Of course, there was beer, wine, soft drinks, water and juice boxes but everyone seemed to be carrying around a bloody mary all afternoon.
We had 10 contestants cooking this year. I separate the voting between child and adult because children don't have the same palate as adults do and are more likely to vote for a grilled cheese that looks like a pumpkin than a grilled cheese with brie and tomato chutney. So kids had white vote tickets and adult red vote tickets. Also, parents tend to have the kids stuff the ballots so I wanted it to be a fair contest. Popular vote counts for 30% of the winning total, the remaining 70% is by chef judge. This year Chef Doug Kerr from Dragonfly Foodbar helped us out and professionally blind tasted and scored the grilled cheese contestants. We had grilled cheeses with lobster, crab, steak, pepper jelly.... an amazing array of creative grilled cheese!
Winners had had custom cutting board trophy and gift cards to Dragonfly Restaurant. The first place winner also had a tiara and sash saying "THE BIG CHEESE 2014." The winning grilled cheese? The one with the lobster! :)
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