AUBURN, Maine — These days, it seems, everyone loves a good cook-off.
With much less yelling to and be had than on your average TV competition, teams gathered for the ninth annual high school farm-to-school cook-off, held at Central Maine Community College. A staff member and student each from Edward Little, Lewiston, and Mt. Ararat stepped to the table to compete.
"I love being in the kitchen," smiled Mt. Ararat senior Jazmyne, already taking culinary arts classes. "It makes me happy, and there's just something about being in the kitchen. And I'm planning to pursue this in the future. I'm going to Johnson & Wales."
It's about the nicest cooking competition you'll find, and the reigning champion team, Lewiston's Alicia and Jesse Smith, are a mother-son duo.
"It's amazing," Alicia, a cook at the school, said. "We have fun at home, we can have fun in the kitchen."
Each team prepared a vegetarian and non-vegetarian dish, using locally grown tofu and chicken. The schools then added their own flair.
"Because we have such a diversity here in Lewiston, I'm doing jerk seasoning. The broth will have some curry and turmeric in it," Alicia added.
"We have a lot of vegans, a lot of dietary issues," Wayne Napples, Jazmyne's Mt. Ararat teammate and the school's head cook, explained. "We have a lot of folks who are gluten free. So, I don't just put food out that is, kind of, there. We put out food that is wanting people to come in the door every day and try new things."
The competition is part of a two-decade effort to integrate more Maine-based foods into school cafeterias. Stephanie Staumbach is the state's child nutrition supervisor at the department of education and organized all nine cook-offs.
"Small steps to incorporate local food can be a big win for them," she said, adding that the department and schools used the food to help educate kids.
Three judges graded multiple aspects of the process, including teamwork. In the end, Jazmyne and Napples took home first place.
But all three recipes were to be included in this year's version of an annual cookbook Staumback's department publishes, free for all to download.