How did we come up with FoodFu?
Well, it all started because we were trying to plan Christmas. My family was congregating in Portland, OR to celebrate the holiday so we had a week to fill with outings and activities. While brainstorming ideas, Jim said, “why don’t we do something like Chopped. Everyone in your family likes to cook, so it could be really fun.” I immediately said, “Yes!”
Saying yes was easy, then came the hard part. We had four people who would want to compete, a limited cooking space, 2 vegans, and one picky eater. We had to decide how to divide up the family because everyone couldn’t cook at one time. So we decided to have two rounds of two chefs and the winning chefs from those rounds would compete in a final food battle. And to accommodate the picky eater, we let her choose the secret ingredient. This is what the battle looked like:
Round One: Heather vs. Lisa in Battle Wonton
Round Two: Paula (mom) vs. Scott in Battle Black Bean
Round Three: Round One Winner vs. Round Two Winner in Battle Vanilla
Figuring out the Rules:
We decided since we aren’t professional chefs that everyone should know their secret ingredient in advance to have time to prepare. We also don’t live life with fully stocked kitchens so we needed to go shopping for the battle ingredients. In the show Chopped the appetizer round is 30 minutes. Again, us lacking real chef skills, decided that 45 minutes to create an appetizer was more realistic. Before we started the first round I decided that we were allowed to clean all of our uncooked ingredients, have all necessary pots, pans, and gadgets out as well as preheat the oven or have a pot of water boiling going. Each competitor had to complete two appetizer sized dishes highlighting the secret ingredient so that our two judges could rate our food. Jim and Ed (my dad), were judges. Out of our entire group my dad was the only person who didn’t want to cook at all so it was perfect that he could judge so he could still participate.
The Competition:
The first round was the most exciting because it was the first time any of us had done anything like this. Jim went around interviewing us and asking questions like, “how do you feel about cooking today?” and “do you think you are going to win?” We answered nervously and rushed because we were terrified we wouldn’t finish our dishes on time. We did finish on time and in the first round the judges were fully engaged. We got responses like “both of these dishes were creative with the ingredient” and “this is a really pretty dish.” I surprisingly won round one!!!!
Then we had to clean the kitchen. Once everything was reset we started with round two. This is where we started to lose steam. Each battle took 45 minutes, with judging it took an hour and then cleaning the kitchen took another 30 minutes. So we ended up having our food fight for over 5 hours!
Scott vs. Mom in Battle Black Bean
We had a great time and this is how the battle played out:
Round One: Heather vs. Lisa in Battle Wonton – Lisa Won!
Round Two: Paula (mom) vs. Scott in Battle Black Bean – Scott Won!
Round Three: Lisa vs. Scott in Battle Vanilla – Scott Won!
After the holiday was over Jim and I went on one of our usual walks around the neighborhood. We reminisced about how fun our game of Chopped was over Christmas and Jim said, “Wouldn’t it be cool to turn that into an app?” I said “Yes” and FoodFu was born.
