WARNING: THE FOLLOWING IS A DIZZYINGLY LONG POST BUT WITH SEVERAL EXCITING TWISTS AND TURNS. KEEP YOUR HANDS AND ARMS INSIDE THE RIDE AT ALL TIMES...HERE WE GO!!



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