Recipes
My husband, Rohn Butterfield, and my son, Hart Wilmarth, and I all love to cook. Rohn cooked his first Thanksgiving dinner at 15 for all of his relatives. Not to be outdone, Hart prepared a fabulous Thanks giving meal for more than a dozen people when he was 14.
One of our best family experiences is trying to win a ribbon every year in the culinary contests at Amarillo’s Tri-State Fair. Rohn and I started several years ago by winning third place (and $1 in cash!) for our first batch ever of wild plum jelly. Then we won 1st place (garnering a huge rosette and $100) in the blackberry cobbler contest in 2006. In 2007, Hart entered for the first time and won 3rd place and $50 in the adult dessert competition with a mouth-watering Amaretto cake recipe that he had never prepared before.
That inspired Rohn and I to enter the quick and easy casserole sponsored by Marty’s in 2007. The first prize was $250, but the dish had to use less than 10 ingredients and take only 1 hour from start to finish. We created and entered our Mexican Grilled Chicken Lasagna, but were disappointed to arrive at the fair and find 20 other Mexican casseroles along with many more innovative entrees.
We anxiously sweated in the heat of the Rex Baxter building, watching the expressionless judges as they sampled all of the casseroles and then sampled several a second time, but not ours. We would have been thrilled to place at all, but then we watched as a couple of the old pros took 3rd and 2nd place. Imagine our surprise when they called our names as the winners! Now, I am old enough to accept that I will never win the Nobel Peace Prize, I have never finished writing a book so the Pulitzer is out, and the chances of the President asking me to be a Supreme Court justice are pretty darned slim! But I felt as if I had won all of those when they gave us the big blue rosette and an envelope with 50 $5 bills for our casserole! I may have no future on the federal bench, but don’t be surprised if you see me pop up on the Pillsbury Bake-Off some day!
Update (9/15/08): It is Tri-State Fair time again. Hart and I both entered chocolate cakes in the Arrowhead Mills Dessert Competition on Saturday. I won 3rd place and $50 with a Chocolate Amaretto Cake with a Coconut-Pecan Glaze. But Hart was the big winner this time. HIs Devil’s Food Cake with Dark Chocolate Icing, decorated with raspberries, was the 1st place prizewinner in the youth division. He won $100 and bragging rights over his mom for the next 12 months!
9/19/08: Last night, Rohn won 3rd place in the salsa contest at the Fair. He received a $25 gift card to Abuelo’s (the contest sponsor). We’ve always thought the salsa competition was the most challenging, since there were so many entries and it is difficult to get a salsa to stand out, so Rohn and I were thrilled with third place. Another pretty rosette has been added to the side of the refrigerator!
Tonight I entered a cinnamon swirl bread in the yeast bread competition at the Fair. I had baked the loaf the night before but it didn’t come out of the pan very well. So I actually took this afternoon off of work to try again and made a better loaf. I know, I’m obsessed! But I won second place tonight and $50. Let’s see, at my normal hourly rate, I only lost about $500 on that deal! But sacrifices have to be made to go down in cooking history! : )
