California State Fair...Here We Come

Brothers are notoriously competitive.  Twin brothers are even worse.  My twin would always try to turn everything into a competition growing up.  "Let's see who can sink the longest basket.  Let's see who can throw the farthest.  Let's see who can run the fastest."  That competitive nature still transcends most things in our daily interactions and seems to seep into my life at the firehouse. 

As you may have read in a previous blog...the Lodi Fire team, which consisted of Captain Mike Harden and myself, took second place at last year's State Fair, "Firehouse Chefs Competition".  With my competitive nature taking over I was severely dissatisfied with last years second place...I consider second place; the first loser.  Maybe I shouldn't be so hard on myself since that happened to be my first ever cooking competition, but I couldnt' help the feeling of leaving there empty handed.  All in all we didn't do that bad, but there were a few tweaks that could have been made that would have given us the minuscule three points that we needed to eclipse first place.  This year those will not be overlooked...I promise that!

The main thing is that we worked well as a team, especially since my teammate and I had never cooked together before.  This year however, I feel that the stakes have been slightly raised with my recent appearance on the Food Network, and I sit here and hope that I will be able to match up to this years competition and make dishes worthy enough of the "Golden Bear" (the prize awarded to the first place team).  Our first and foremost goal is to dethrone the two year reigning champs from Woodland who have proven to be very worthy competitors.  Second is that we take the golden bear and a blue ribbon back to Lodi where it should reside at Station 1 for a long while if I have any say in it.

Bottom line is that team Lodi is coming prepared and looking very forward to this years competition.  I know it will be a hard fight, but as long as the victor that is chosen is:  worthy, deserving, formidable...and us, then everything will be just fine!:)