{"id":1192,"date":"2019-04-30T01:03:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-30T01:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/?p=1192"},"modified":"2019-05-26T00:00:57","modified_gmt":"2019-05-26T00:00:57","slug":"first-hunter-student-cook-off-goes-down-in-flames","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/2019\/04\/first-hunter-student-cook-off-goes-down-in-flames\/","title":{"rendered":"First Hunter student cook-off goes down in flames"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Hunter\u2019s first student cook-off kicked off what was intended to be an annual event in <\/span>disastrous style<\/span>. The competition, a team-based cook off sponsored by the Office of Student Activities and Grow NYC<\/span>\u2019s Fresh Food Box program<\/span>, was meant to bring attention to food insec<\/span>urity faced by Hunter students. By the time the night was over, after facing power outages and schedule mishaps,<\/span> a well-meaning event had turned into <\/span>a<\/span> debacle<\/span> that may prove to b<\/span>e irredeemable<\/span>.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Before the event was over,<\/span> t<\/span>he hot plates used to cook food and boil water <\/span>blew all the fuses <\/span>and an entire side of the room lost power. <\/span>T<\/span>he cooking stations were<\/span> then<\/span> moved to other parts of the room, until those fuses were also <\/span>tripped<\/span> and no food could be cooked further. <\/span>Two hours later, the security guards were long past their scheduled time and most of the organizers had gone home.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>After the event\u2019s eventual run time of three-and-a-half hours, Coordinator for Student Activities Dean\u00a0<\/span>Blake offered a parting appraisal. \u201cThis was my brainchild. It was a little deformed, but it\u2019ll get better with age.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>When the event began, e<\/span>ach team was equipped with <\/span>GrowNYC<\/span> produce and a budget to buy what they needed at the grocery store after the produce was revealed. The cook-off was initially supposed to be <\/span>four<\/span> teams, but after <\/span>three<\/span> dropped out, an odds<\/span>–<\/span>and<\/span>–<\/span>ends team was composed of solo applicants who wanted to compete but didn\u2019t have a team. This group, consisting of students Royce Chen, Karma Sherpa and Andrei Damon, took the moniker \u201cHot Tamales.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The opposing team, composed of friends Dina <\/span>Vokel<\/span>, Nada Terra and <\/span>Mersad<\/span> Redzepagic<\/span>, called themselves \u201cTeam Orange.\u201d They claimed to have never touched a cooking utensil between the three of them. \u201cI wanted to have a laugh on a Thursday, and I recruited my two best friends,\u201d Terra confessed.<\/span>\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

On Team Orange, both Chen and Sherpa claimed to only have ever cooked at home, while <\/span>Damin<\/span> worked in a professional kitchen. They planned to make a pasta salad and hash with home fries. \u201cPasta is great to be used as a base, and then you can add whatever ingredients you want,\u201d <\/span>Damin<\/span> said. \u201cYou can use your imagination.\u201d Given the semi-improvisatory nature of the event, this approach made sense.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Team Hot Tamales planned to prepare a salad of greens and fruits, <\/span>c<\/span>hicken and <\/span>b<\/span>roccoli <\/span>a<\/span>lfredo pasta, potato pancakes with cheese, and crepes for dessert.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Blake, after giving the teams time to introduce themselves, gave them 45 minutes to prep, and 40 minutes to cook and present the dishes. This amount of audience downtime seemed like a lot for a sparsely attended event on a Thursday night, and proved to be such, especially when the prep time was inflated to nearly an hour.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After prep, as the teams began to cook, disaster struck. The hot plates used to cook food and boil water were too much for the <\/span>f<\/span>aculty <\/span>d<\/span>ining <\/span>r<\/span>oom\u2019s electrical infrastructure to handle, and an entire side of the room lost power. <\/span>T<\/span>he cooking stations <\/span>were<\/span> then<\/span> moved to other parts of the room, until those fuses were also <\/span>tripped<\/span> and no food could be cooked further. This caused the cooking and presentation time to last nearly two hours.<\/span>\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

Both teams were forced to throw together what they had and present it to the audience<\/span> members<\/span>, each of whom possessed one vote to cast. The Hot Tamales fared better on the cooking front than Team Orange, as they were able to present their salad, potato pancakes with cheese, and crepes. Team Orange had to throw out all intended dishes and present a salad cobbled together of fresh ingredients.<\/span>\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

At long last, and after the security guard had threatened to leave her long overdue post, the votes were <\/span>cast<\/span> and Team Orange took the win in a shocking upset. Perhaps due to <\/span>Damin\u2019s<\/span> kitchen experience, or perhaps due to the Hot Tamales\u2019 self<\/span>–<\/span>professed amateurism; Orange\u2019s salad of broccoli, kale, collard greens, oranges, cherry tomatoes, onions and mozzarella cheese with a lemon vinaigrette took the crown.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Before the event was over, <\/span>Tenei<\/span>a<\/span> Wooten<\/span>, the head of the Office of Student<\/span> Activities, <\/span>abandoned the event. It had gone on too long for her to stay.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>The event had the additional purpose of highlighting food insecurity among college students. <\/span>Grow<\/span>NYC\u2019s<\/span> Fresh Food Boxes provide 10<\/span> to<\/span>15 pounds of fresh, sustainable, locally sourced vegetables in several locations around the city. In partnership with Hunter, they offer weekly bags of produce on campus every Thursday for $14, a far cry less than one would expect to pay at a grocery store.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

A<\/span>t <\/span>the event<\/span>,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> Blake, acting as MC, frequently spoke about <\/span>food scarcity and issues of affordability<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re essentially trying to have students more involved with the food system on campus,\u201d Blake said. \u201cWe want to make them more aware of the food insecurity issues that students at Hunter face, and within CUNY at large.\u201d<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>As for next year, <\/span>neither Blake nor Wooten would return calls. But <\/span>GrowNYC<\/span> will still be distributing free food on campus.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The competition, a team-based cook-off ended hours later after facing low turnout, power outages and scheduling mishaps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":1235,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1192"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1526,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1192\/revisions\/1526"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brie.hunter.cuny.edu\/hunterathenian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}