Bring your A game, because only the best will do!!

Shrimp Ceviche by Team Fashionista

Wow!! i'm so impressed with the results of this year's Fall Harvest Smackdown. The theme for this year's competition has to be redemption with Team Fashionista making up for their first year tupperware faux pas with some excellent presentations and Team Mo-Rizzle taking away not one, but two trophies after last year's disappointing fizzle!

Team Fashionista's entries (can you tell who's been watching food network)!

I think L-Ro actually wanted to drop the pointer finger and just give the artist the one-fingered salute!

Despite the almost no-show of one of the judges (who will remain anonymous, but is also known to have a huge fear of bugs flying in her ear) who almost slept through the meal and arrived after everyone had finished eating and the votes have been tallied ("what, i'm too late to judge?"), we pulled off a great event, thanks to all the participating teams, Luke who hosted this year, and T-dub, Camstar, and Sher "middle finger" Mo-Rizzle who reorganized the judging and tallied all the votes. Despite some grumblings that the judging had been fixed this year to throw the victories to the Swenson/Romero participants, we had a great time, ate amazing food, and had a fair amount of sweating as a result of the spicy dishes: three different flavors of habanero ice cream, waffles with a habanero steeped maple syrup and whipped cream, fondue, peach habanero triffle, two different version of ceviche, two different versions of sweet potato fries with a habanero dip, chocolate raspberry habanero cookies, mango habanero salmon, and the list goes on and on. Great creativity and great food and some good laughs with the premier of the artist's film JellyMeloned (available soon through a fine video distributor near you).



But most importantly, here are this year's winners:

Best Appetizer:
Team Dink (they chose the name, not me) for the habanero-raspberry jelly spread on toasted baguettes.

Best Drink and Hottest Dish:
Team Vero and Lu for, well the only drink entry, and Lu's amazing chili.

Best Salad:
Team Fashionista for the habanero shrimp ceviche

Best Main Course:
The artist and the flogger for the Waffles served with Habanero steeped cinnamon syrup and whipped cream.

And best side dish and best dessert:
Team Mo-Rizzle for the Habanero-spiced corn and the Peach-Habanero Triffle (which i have to admit was pretty much to die for; spicy, sweet, and creamy all at once).

I'm not sure what T-dub is doing in this photo!

See you all next year!!