Robert Fisher
Staff Reporter
BARRY’S BAY – Two teams of culinary students brought home top awards from a district trades competition last week.
Samantha Pecarskie and Miley Burgess, and Imogen Durrant and Asha Holly from Madawaska Valley District School took third and first place respectively in their categories. Samantha and Miley competed in cupcake decorating. Imogen and Asha were in the culinary competition. All four are in Grade 11.
The competition was a Renfrew County District School Board-wide held at the Pembroke Memorial Centre.
The competition, called Options, is a trades competition, Samantha explained. Students compete in categories like, “culinary, woodworking, automotive and my partner Riley, we did the cupcake decorating.” Both Samantha and Miley take culinary class at school and Miley tutors in the class. Imogen and Asha are also taking the culinary class.
“We start with nutrition programs,” Asha said. “We learn about how much protein intake we need. We do assignments on that, then we have certain tasks on certain days. (The teacher) will give us a budget of $8 and we have to make a meal.”
“We also learn about the danger zones for food,” added Imogen. Different foods have to be, “above a certain temperature and below certain temperature so bacteria doesn’t grow.”
The culinary teams were given a list of ingredients they had to use to make a meal. One main ingredient was rice and they chose pork as their protein. Asha said they were tight on time at the end and had only about a minute to get their dish to the judges. Members from the military were helping at the competition and, “our army guy took it from us right away and ran it over,” said Asha, to make sure they got in on time.
Asha and Imogen watched as the judges talked about the dishes. Asha said they kept pointing to their dish. She spoke with the military member after. “He was like, ‘as soon as you guys fried the pork, I knew you guys were going to win.’” Asha and Imogen’s secret was they breaded their pork and no one else put a coating on theirs.
Miley said their cupcakes were pre-made when they arrived so they just had to concentrate on decorating. Teams had to decorate four cupcakes with a specific theme. They had to come up with a filling and an icing. Their filling was raspberry lemon and vanilla buttercream was the icing.
Samantha said they didn’t get to talk to the judges to get any feedback, they just found out when the awards were announced.
The four decorating themes were culinary, automotive, construction and photography. “The one that we didn’t want was photography,” said Samantha, “which is what we ended up with anyway.
“I am proud of us for making do with what we got, even though we didn’t want it,” she admitted.
“We were least prepared for that one,” added Miley.
“It was definitely very rewarding, especially because we put in a lot of time and effort,” Samantha said.
Imogen said she and Asha had a bit of anxiety because they announced the awards in reverse order. “We heard the third and second and we were, like, ‘What if we don’t place at all?’ Then we heard it. Were just both shocked. My hand was shaking. Asha’s hands were shaking. Our teacher was almost crying. It was so shocking and very surprising. But I was really happy.”
None of the four have plans to make the culinary arts their profession. Asha works with a local baker and hedged that maybe she would consider it. Imogen’s mother owns a restaurant.
Samantha and Miley both work at Vito’s in Barry’s Bay. Miley said working in a restaurant is fun but the kitchen seems a little stressful. Samantha thinks cooking will remain a hobby for her.
Tyler Phanenhour also took second place in his cabinetmaking category and was unavailable for this interview.
robert@thevalleygazette.ca
This story has been updated to correct the name of student Miley Burgess.
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