You Art What You Eat Food Challenge

Last month I received an honorable mention at our Publication Department's Semi Annual Food Challenge.  The theme of the April Food Challenge was: You Art What You Eat.  For this culinary event we needed to create dishes that were inspired by works of art.

Since I moved to the NC office and the rest of the department is in NYC I was faced with the additional problem of shipping my entry up to NY! After much thought I decided to ship  chocolate & bourbon pecan pies up. Craig and I had made pies like this once to take to my Aunt's house on Thanksgiving a few years ago and I remember that everyone really liked them. This time, I made them alone with a little over the shoulder supervision from Craig.  I followed the recipe for pecan pie that was on the Karo Syrup label and added chocolate chips and some Maker's Mark Bourbon to my taste. We didn't actually have enough Karo Syrup in the pantry so there was a tad less in the pies than  the recipe actually called for.

I decided on the pies because I thought they would ship well, and I could use my favorite Paul Friedrich piece with Dr. Strangegutt contemplating evil or pie.  I stopped at the party supply store to buy boxes and tissue paper and other items that would help with the shipping.  For 24 hours I was really nervous that they would arrive as one big mess.

Actually, they shipped so well that one of my coworkers emailed me to let me know that they were still intact even after the box had been sitting on its side in the reception area! I was happy about that but then I became nervous that they were actually as hard as rocks! After the challenge was over I  received lots of emails letting me know how good the pies were and I was relieved that they were edible. My honorable mention certificate is tacked up on my cubicle wall now, below my employee of the month certificate and next to my 2nd place certificates for the "Hair of the Dog" and the "Picking & Grinning" food challenges.

Create-A-Dog Day

This month at work we are having the second annual May Days events put on by the employee events team (EET). Last year we had a week of events (which, by the way, I headed up and subsequently was awarded Employee of the Month for). Last year, the week, called May Days, included handing out free sunscreen  to everyone; stocking some mail carts with snacks and pushing them around the building to deliver snacks and drinks to everyone at their desks; dressing up for a fiesta on Cinco de Mayo (we weren't allowed to serve margaritas like we wanted to); creating sculptures of dogs out of Play-Doh & having them judged by conformation judges as well as fellow employees, giving out Krispy Kreme donuts to everyone; and a grand finale of setting up two wii stations in a conference room so people could take their break by playing on the wii.  This year they learned from last year's trouble spots and decided to spread the events out a little so that the May Days are spread out throughout the month. I also learned from my trouble spots and opted not to be a part of the subcomittee that planned this year's events!

Yesterday, we had our "Create-A-Dog" event. Instead of making sculptures the team decided that people could use several art supplies such as construction paper, crayons, colored pencils, glue etc. to create a piece of dog artwork. The only major rules were, you could only use supplies that were provided, you could not trace anything and it had to fit on an 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper. For the second year in a row my friend, Karen, walked away from the competition as a winner. Last year she won first place with her pink play-doh Scottish Terrier. This year she won second place with a pink "hole-punch" poodle.
 
Let me back track for a moment. On Monday, my friend Jennifer who works in HR called me. She told me that she was signed up for the Create-A-Dog Contest at 11:00 and that I had to participate with her. Since, "no," was apparantly not an option I hesitated and said, "uh, okay, but Karen has to participate too then!" That is how Jennifer, Karen and I ended up participating in the contest.  While we waited for Wedneday to roll around Karen and I hemmed and hawed about not knowing what we were going to do for the contest. We also waxed philospohical about how we could create dogs that were 1D since the email advertisement for the contest said you could create 1D, 2D and 3D artwork.
 
Then, yesterday, at 11:00 a.m. we were sitting in a conference room, with our art supplies in front of us, waiting to begin. Karen, was giving the EET members in charge a hard time by asking if she could tear a page out of the Complete Dog Book they provided her with as a point of reference and then joked that she was going to glue some of the pages together (she is such the class clown!). When the signal was given to begin Karen picks up a piece of pink construction paper and a hole puncher and proceeds to rhythmically punch holes...Punch! Punch! Punch Punch! Punch! (Like a timer of some sort). She was driving the rest of us in the room crazy with her punching!  She did this whole hole punching bit for at least 5 of the 20 minutes we were given to create our dog masterpieces. At one point I even thought that she was just punching holes in that paper out of spite to annoy us all because she didn't really want to participate. In the end, she created a pretty polished looking cartoon poodle. She had glued the "pink holes" onto the paper so that it became the poodle's signature puffs, bracelets and pompons! I must say, I think it was pretty awesome.

 I made a pencil drawing of a Doberman Pinscher but it didn't place. I spent a lot of time penciling the shape of the dog but I ran out of time before I could really shade it very well. I decided to do a pencil drawing since I did a pretty good pencil drawing in a HS art class once and recieved accolades about it somewhat recently from a good friend of mine, Nina, who I consider a great artist. I think my sketch, yesterday, sort of resembled a deer more than a dobe, but my friends assured me that they thought it looked really good. I usually am my worst critic so I'll take their word for it. Maybe, if I have time, I will go out and buy a sketch book and try it again . . . this time without a time constraint and in a quiet peaceful place.