Last year was our first annual cook-off and it was a blast. The smell of homemade chili filled the air and the music entertainment literally had people dancing. Everyone who attended had the opportunity to taste each teams’ chili recipe and vote for their  favorite.  The winner of the People’s Choice Award had the opportunity to serve their chili s at the Messiah Village Fireside Grille (our on campus restaurant).

This year’s Still Kickin’ Chili Cookoff will take place on September 9. To learn more check out  MessiahVillage.org/chili

Be sure to check out our Chili Cook-Off album on Facebook. You might even find a few pictures of  my co-workers and me singing along with the chili pepper.

But once it was time to serve it up, I got to taste the Chili (not a bad side benefit eh?). So at one point I met up with my friend Ron Steficek and we compared notes as to what we liked and what we didn’t.

Our fabulous photographer Geoff happened to catch us noshing on a couple of samples. What do you think I was thinking when he snapped the pic???

WordNerd's cherry pie

Residents of Messiah Village may recognize this picture from our in-house TV channel 78. This is a photo of a sour cherry pie I made earlier this summer. People who know me well know that I come from a long line of uninterested cooks. When my mother passed away, she left, not a recipe book, but an address book full of caterers’ and bakers’ phone numbers. So, when I am occasionally inspired to do something in my kitchen other than walk through it to the backyard, I take photos.

My love of sour cherries goes way back. When I lived in Maryland, a friend and I spent every summer Saturday in a pick-your-own field at Larriland Farms. We would pick buckets and buckets of sour cherries, and my friend would make containers of sour cherry jam.

Longing for that flavor again when I moved to PA, I tried the less labor intensive endeavor of pie making, made even less labor intensive with two invaluable tools: the chef’s grade cherry pitter and Pillsbury pre-made pie crusts. The cherry pitter lay to rest an earlier monstrously tedious process of poking pits out of cherries with a shortened drinking straw. The Pillsbury pie crusts made the whole thing possible because, in the words of fellow blogger, KBiz, “I can’t be bothered” making pie crusts from scratch.

The pie in the photo represents two recent upgrades to my pie making process. This is the first pie made with the new pie plate my husband got me for my birthday. The golden sheen on the crust? You can thank my mother. A few years ago, we were having one of those lazy Sunday morning phone conversations. I told her I was making a pie and needed to remember to separate an egg so I could brush the crust with egg whites. “You should use the whole egg on the crust,” she corrected. “Because that’s how you did your pies?” I snarked to the backseat pie maker on the other end of the phone. “Food Network. Paula Deen. I saw it on TV,” she replied. And she was right. It did look better.

Have you surprised anyone with your culinary prowess lately? Consider showcasing your talents at the Messiah Village Chili Cookoff on Friday, September 10! Or, if you view cooking as a spectator sport, stay tuned for more information on Messiah Village’s Chef Face-Off, happening this fall.