The last few weeks have really been appeasing to my OCD...Obsessive Culinary Disorder. :)
Prior to having Ty, I never really just sat down to watch TV. Nursing however has given me several 30 minute bouts throughout the day to do so. During the morning I started watching Good Things Utah, the local television program produced by ABC 4. Every day on the show they have a cooking segment featuring restaurant or other business chefs. During a particular time of wanting to get out do something out of the sometimes mundane norm, I thought to myself, " I wonder if they ever have joe-shmoe average viewers come on and do the cooking segment?" After a little thought I decided, what the hey, and emailed the executive producer and asked that very question. I quickly received a response saying that it was kind of rare but once and a while they did have viewers on the show. They also suggested I send them a recipe if I wished. I responded with one of my little family's staple dinner recipes, a cilantro lime chicken recipe I created after craving Cafe Rio flavors one day. Three weeks went by and after figuring that it wasn't a recipe or person they were interested in featuring, I forgot about it... that was until I got an email from Reagan, one of the hosts on the show, inviting me to come in two weeks and do the cooking segment. :)
I had a blast preparing for the show (I think Ryan may have gotten sick of the same dinner about 4 times in two weeks, however :) ) I was all ready to go when, the day before, I received a letter in the mail. At the same time I sent Good Things Utah my recipe for their consideration, my brother-in-law Matt suggested I send it to the Signature Cache Valley Cheese contest. While I thought I would be out to lunch at the thought of anything coming of that one, I decided to go ahead and enter.
The letter I received in the mail was a notification that I had won the first prize, along with four other people, in the contest and was now invited to a cook-off on August 21st against the others to compete for the grand prize! I couldn't believe it. I started reading the fine print just knowing that there was something I misunderstood. While I came to realize that I had indeed won, I also read something that made my stomach drop. Come to find out, should I accept the cash prize and the cook-off invitation, Cache Valley Cheese would now own all of the rights/privileges to my recipe with one of the stipulations being that it could not be published anywhere else.
What was I going to do?! I couldn't very well cancel a live TV show 24 hrs before but at the same time, being a young married couple with a child, $1000 cash prize with the chance of winning $5000 would certainly be more than helpful. I thought to myself, "oh, what are the chances that the judges of the contest would watch the show...I'm sure I'd be fine." While that's probably true, I could answer truthfully the temple question that asks if we are honest in all of our dealings with our fellow man. Soooooo, I put my thinking cap on and ultimately decided to do the show but alter it enough so that it could be deemed a different recipe and still be called cilantro lime chicken (the show had been advertising it as such for a few days so that was pretty critical.) Since I had to give the computer gurus time to post the altered recipe on ABC's website, I had all of 30 minutes to completely change things up and give them exact ingredient amounts/methods. So with a big prayer in my heart and a leap of faith, I gave em the recipe and spent the rest of the day trying to prepare to show thousands of TV viewers how to cook a meal I had only prepared in my head. :) Thankfully, my prayers were most certainly answered and everything turned out great. I truly had a blast and have been invited to come back again for a round two.
Here's the link to the video if ya have a hankering to watch the segment. Just click on the picture.
http://www.abc4.com/content/about_4/gtu/recipes/story/Cilantro-Lime-Chicken-Rice-Bowl/MqST_5xF9kGGuRSRdfqQag.cspx
