Community Corner
Kids Cuisine To Reign At Iron Chef Competition
Kids in the Shelby area will have the opportunity to match culinary wits in a dessert competition Tuesday at the Shelby Library.
The day after Valentine’s Day, kids will go head to head to see whose cuisine reigns supreme.
Kids will have the chance to let their inner chef out at the Shelby Library this Tuesday when the library hosts its first Iron Chef competition. Children in grades five and up are invited to come and compete with one another to make and eat desserts for fun, free of charge.
Participants will be split into a few different teams and compete to create three different courses, using chocolate, fruit, and all kinds of sweet stuff. The library has hosted cooking events for kids before, but this is the first competition.
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Just like the TV program, the organizers will present a theme ingredient that all dishes must contain. The ingredient is kept secret until the competition begins. Unlike the TV show, no formal experience in cooking is required.
Library staff will judge who has the best dishes and decide a winner. However, no prizes will be awarded; the food battle is purely for fun.
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According to Catherine Schmidt, children and teen services librarian for the Shelby Library, they idea came from other libraries that have had similar competitions. Schmidt said they saw a couple of libraries in the Grand Rapids area do the idea successfully.
Schmidt helped to organize the event locally. The Friends of the Library organization is sponsoring the festivities.
Kids are welcome to bring groups of friends to join in on the fun.
“We want to encourage people to bring friends so they can be on a team, but we’ll be able to group them if they need teammates,” Schmidt said.
Schmidt said recent events have brought in groups of ten to 20 kids, although sometimes they get as many as 40.
The competition will take place in the neighboring community center rather than the library itself. Even though kids will be working with sweet confections, the staff doesn’t anticipate things getting too messy.
Schmidt encourages kids to come out after school and show off their culinary skills. The battle begins at 3:30 on Feb. 15.
