Food Challenge

Yesterday, Courtney, Karrin, and I all hosted a Food Challenge Workshop. The workshop lasted for 6 hours, and boy were we all full by the time the workshop ended! Food Challenge is a new competition for 4-H members where youth are given a list and some ingredients as well as a clue and they must figure out what they are supposed to make based on what they are given. There is a pantry that the children may go to and then they must prepare their dish, find and document nutrition information, and find the costs of the dish they prepared. A big part of this challenge is to include as many food groups as possible into your meal. This is where MyPlate comes in and introduces children to the 5 food groups: grains, dairy, vegetables, fruits, and protein. We had all kinds of dishes we made yesterday that had between 4-5 food groups present in each! We made: blueberry pancakes, french toast, turkey sloppy joe, a chicken nacho/taco salad, taco macaroni and cheese, chicken salad, and Italian pizza dip. Everything turned out awesome and was quite tasty!
We had a larger list of children who signed up to come to the workshop but we only had two children show up so Courtney and I joined our one girl participant and Scott, a volunteer, joined the boy participant and we did girls versus boys for each dish we prepared. Karrin had chosen the recipes so Courtney and I didn't know what we were making! It's harder than I thought it would be! It's like the tv show Chopped, only it's in real life!

Our rivals...the boys team! 

Taco Mac and Cheese and Chicken Salad

The girls' fabulous French Toast!

Chicken Nachos or Chicken Taco Salad, whichever you prefer!

Telling everyone about our dish's prep steps, nutrition facts, and cost.

As you can see in the pictures, we made a huge mess in the kitchen (which we cleaned up), ate tons of food, and learned about food safety and MyPlate nutrition. This was one of our most fun workshops we've had this summer!

Karrin is also looking at putting together a competition team next year if anyone is interested in joining a team and competing in the Food Challenge Competition. There are junior and senior teams, so it is open to lots of children of different ages! If they would have had this around when I was in 4-H I would have totally competed in this competition! It's awesome!