Mesquite Dutch Oven Cook-off, Jan. 6-7, 2011

What a fun adventure. We went to Mesquite, Nevada for a Dutch Oven cook-off. It was a $60. entry fee. The Hotel was really cheap to stay at, the food was very reasonable to buy for dinners and breakfast. The company was great. And MaryAnn and her family happened to be in town to take care of their bees...so it was even better. They stayed at the same hotel as us, The CasaBlanca. And their room was just across the hall for us. So, the boys Jake & Clay stayed in our room at night time, so everyone got a bed to sleep in.
We got there, the parking guy came up to Mark and asked him about the rope hanging out the back of the truck. You can only imagine what Mark said, "Oh, my gosh! Buffy!" And then he started to laugh. You know the movie about National Lapoon Vacation?
Then when Addie got to the hotel, she came in our room and with a huge smile on her face, and eyes wide with excitement, she said, "I love hotels!!!!" What a hoot.

Friday morning we got up early and headed down to the cooking area to get setup. Everyone was so excited to get set up. We were set up for about 2 1/2 hours before we could start to cook. We went around and talked to everyone and introduced ourselfs. Lots of new people at this one. There was 16 teams, the top 8 would go onto the next day.

Landscape pictures Mark took while we were there. It looks cool to see the palm trees against the mountains with snow on them. The temp. during the day was about 56 - 59 degrees. Compare that to 20 back in Salt Lake. Ya, we loved the weather! Didn't have to wear a coat or anything. Didn't have to worry about the bread rising. It was warm.

Our table menu for one of the days. We were lucky to be able to go onto the 2nd day and cook in the finals. For the 1st day we made, Beef Wellington, Lemon Tart, Garlic Herb rolls.

Second day menu, Herb Roast, Ambrosia Cake, Onion Braid.

We have problems making the meat every time. It seems like I don't give it enough time to cook, I think it should only take what the recipe says, and it always takes longer...so at the last second we are cramming the coals on to make it cook faster, and that is not good for the meat. Every cook-off we learn something new. We need to work on cooking our meat better and garnishes. They really make your dish look good. Like the quilting on a quilt...it just finishes off the dish.

These are from the 2nd day cooking, I think Mark forgot to take pictures of everything from both days. Ambrosia Cake and the roast. That cake is pretty plain, really needs something else to make it look good. And the roast, they put a comment on the score sheet that the parsley was wilted and didn't look good. It looked good for a little while. Need to work are garnishes....

This is the cake that took 1st place. Now that is garnished pretty. When they walked by us with that cake, I just went WOW, that is beautiful.

We came in 8th from the 2nd day cooking, we won $100 dollars. That was pretty cool, that we went onto the 2nd day of cooking. We had fun together cooking. And the best part is that I started walking around in our cooking area without crutches. And it has only progressed from there. We had lots of fun cooking with friends and in the evenings spending time with MaryAnn, Bryant and the kids. Fun, Fun times!