Orthodox "Iron Chef" Contest

From The Onion Dome


Since "Ekaterina" attends my parish, I thought I would post this very funny piece here.
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St. Euphrosynos (the cook) Mstslavvian Orthodox Mission in Atomic Flats, Nevada recently distinguished itself by hosting the world's first Orthodox Iron Chef Competition. This landmark event, sponsored by the Food Channel of Anaxios TV, was timed to coincide with the 2008 Beijing Olympics and pitted the formidable culinary skills of the most talented babushki and yia yias from all the local Orthodox parishes in a heated competition to see which team could produce the tastiest coffee hour trapeza using nothing more than the leftovers from the past twelve weeks' parish events - the ethnic food festival, the annual church school picnic, the parish patronal feast day, and the church school day camp.

The first challenge was to convert Dormition fasting food leftovers from the parish childrens' day camp into non-fasting, sumptuous feasting food for Sunday coffee hour. The teams were presented with an enormous serving pan filled with dried up, cold mashed potatoes, and a tray with the remains of partially eaten tuna fish sandwiches from the day camp lunch.

During the intense stress of this competition the team of yia yias from all the Greek Saints of Greece Very Greek Very Orthodox Greek Orthodox Church had an emotional melt-down and were disqualified after trying desperately without success to transform the glue-y mass of Mstslawian potatoes into something a Greek could yell, "Opa" for. They became highly frustrated, lost their cool and started smashing dishes.

The first prize went to Nadya Wuzdnik and her valiant team of babushki from St Euphrosynos parish, who consider it a mortal sin to consign anything to the garbage can if even a little bit of mold can be scraped off. "After all, the food was blessed once, and will be blessed once more before being served again. You could call it the 'second blessing' although this term is not exactly Orthodox," Nadya told this reporter.

With great panache and a little bit of shredded jack cheese and a few added noodles in their skillful hands, the babushki transformed the leftover tuna into an elegant casserole de pate au thon, and the spuds emerged from the oven as pommes de terre au fromage escollopes. It was a hit at coffee hour, but the jury is still out - in the restroom.

Unfortunately the competition came to an untimely end when it was interrupted by a surprise visit from the local public health inspector who promptly gave the church kitchen a "C" rating and shut it down.

This report was filed by Onion Dome guest reporter "Ekaterina from Las Vegas.
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