April 4, 2012

April Culinary Smackdown: A Tale of Two Themes

Just so y'all know, I'm still glowing from the popcorn ball victory and all the kindness of strangers!  My nephew, niece and I had so much fun creating the spheres and I give both of them all the credit for the flair. 

I quickly began the theme-picking process on a rush of adrenalin and wrote an entire post announcing my theme for April's Smackdown; Battle Doritos.  I felt great about it, slept on it, still felt good but not great, Googled "Doritos recipes" out of curiosity, found out Iron Chef did their own Doritos battle, felt kinda like a copycat, comforted myself with a bag of Doritos and then started over from scratch.

I dabbled with the idea of cupcakes, an obsession of mine lately, but I've been up to my eyeballs in cupcakes. Then it occurred to me. But what about books?  Food inspired by books. But not cookbooks!  You see, a few of the novels I've read lately, while not specifically about food, have had the common theme of food and recipes woven throughout their pages.  Since food is one of the great equalizers, I'm certain this theme exists in many other works of literature as well. 
So the official April Culinary Smackdown theme is: Battle Literary Food, (or whatever you want to call it).  It doesn't have to be based on a classic work of literature or anything, just a dish that is somehow inspired by a written work of fiction.
 
Can't wait to see your creations!

The Rules:
- Prepare at least one dish centered around this month's chosen theme and include at least one photograph in your post.
-Recipes are helpful but not required, please respectfully credit the source if you're using someone else's recipe.
-In order to participate, your post must be up no later than 11:59pm, Monday, April 30th.  (Did you know April is one of only 5 months not to contain 31 days?)
-A host post will be up on my blog a couple days before the deadline, you can link to your post in the comments of the host post.  Got that?
-I will try my best to have a winner chosen and announced no later than Wednesday, May 2.
-Have fun! 

10 comments:

  1. What a terrific challenge, Katie! Can't wait to see where this theme leads our participants!

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  2. Oh, boy. This is just crazy. Possibly the ONLY think I like better than cooking is....reading! And I think I just thought of the book I need to find...

    What a GREAT theme, Katie. You rock!

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  3. I'm going to be on pins and needles until the end of the month when I can see what you both come up with!

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  4. Well, I missed last month's challenge and was dissapointed with myself for doing so. I have plenty of time this month, so no excuses. I do have this Soylent Green recipe I've been wanting to try...

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  5. Congrats on your win and pretty ingenious theme! Really excited to participate this month and I've already got some plans in the works! [=

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  6. Katie, not trying to bend your rules. You won fair and square - or round-ish :) Just wondered if this Smackdown month's entries must be inspired by works of fiction or if memoirs would count. Thanks.

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  7. I love this challenge!!! I also would have loved Doritos as a challenge and I can't believe Iron Chef thought of it first -- sigh. Many great ideas. Do you know about the edible books festival at UC? http://www.uc.edu/news/NR.aspx?id=15503

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    1. Thanks for the heads up on the festival- had no idea! Doritos (much like rainbow sprinkles)make the world a better place:)

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  8. Okay, I'm up! I had to go ahead and get it done tonight or I would probably miss the deadline and I couldn't do that. Can't wait to see what the rest of the contestants were inspired by.

    http://grumpygranny.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/literary-smackdown-inspired-by-non-cook-books/

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