Cooking and Dancing

You have recently participated in two intellectually and emotionally stimulating taping sessions….Ron Boucher’s French Cooking School Competition and Arthur Murray’s Dance Competition. Share your feelings about each of these events…..what was going on inside of you before, during, and afterwards? Were either of these events what you had anticipated? If you could, would you do this again?

I’ll begin with the Bouchez Cooking School Experience.  I didn’t know wher we were going or what we were doing, so I had no expectations.  When Chef Bouchez began to explain what our challenge was and gave us the menus we were going to prepare, I began to panic because  I don’t cook very often or vey well.   Idon’t know what blance meant; I have only made homedae pasta once and it was over 20 years ago and cheese baskets looked great, but seemed impossible. I was working very hard the entire time and didn’t pay much attention to what my teammates were doing, other than to ask if they needed help.  I barely looked at the other team. I don’t know how a professional chef keeps everything and everyone in the kitchen going at the same time successfully. I tried to follow directions and work at the same time.  We didn’t have much time to spare, but we worked great as a team.  I was certainly experiencing sensory overload. Laurie was a great team leader; she let us work independently while keeping an eye on everything and eveyone to make ceratin we were on task and folowling directions. I apparently made great pasta, but since I had no reference, I didn’t know if it was any good or not until the end of the competition. I was really excited when we won; I didn’t know how it was going to go.  Both teams worked very hard and had the same time, directions and ingredients.  I found it very interesting that both our main dishes and deserts tasted very different considering we made the same meals. I would particiapte in this event again in a minute.  It was stressful, but it was also lots of fun.

The Arthur Murray Dance competition was fun also.  I think I enjoyed the preparationfor the competition more than the competitionitself. I was definately more nervous going into the dance competition because I knew what we were getting ready to do. My fiance had oteh commitments that day, so dancing withoout him felt like a disadvantage because I had practiced with him and only practiced the night before with my “teacher partner”. We chose to dance to a slower song and chose a slower dance than many of the other Ironbrides.   I was anxious about whether or not my dance had enough in it. when the judges said they were looking for something fun and daring I knew that my dance was less than what they wanted and I was a bit defalted before we began.  I felt like I had t wo strikes against me.  I liked my dance and I thought I did well, but again my dance didn’t fit what the judges were looking for. So, the lessons were more fun than the competitionand we really enjoyed learning our dance together; we did it more for our dance and less for the competition. I would take more lessons and may enter anothe dance competition.  If I were to enter anotehr competition, I would ask more questions regarding the criterionfor winning.  I think it would have been better if we each did both a slow and fast dance or all slow or all wuick dances.  Then again,we are far more likely to use what we learned at other weddings and events than if we had learned a quick fun dance for the competition, so all is well that ends well.

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