Ready, steady, cook! Oh… wait…

Maybe I’m just too competitive, but if you’re going to invite me to something that’s labelled a challenge, and there are other teams doing the same challenge, I quite like the idea that there’ll be judging of some sort – even if it’s just all in the name of fun.

I bring this up, because yesterday, having been dropped in the deep end by my friend, Sharon, I headed off to the Good Food and Wine Show  to cook a mystery box with her in the Woolworths kitchen.

I was a little nervous, I admit. But it turned out I didn’t have to be – all we had to do was cook breakfast, ensure we used coffee in our dish, and use the ingredients supplied to come up with a delicious breakfast. There were some odd ingredients, most of which were ignored by the ‘contestants’, so we came up with a pretty good plan – keep it simple and tasty – and commenced.

But here’s the thing. We had an hour to cook breakfast. An hour? Seriously? Halfway through, having sat down for a bit of a tweet break to pass the time, I decided to bake scones. Why not? We still had half an hour to go.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m no Masterchef. I’m just a home cook who’s used to having to make breakfast, chivvy sleepy kids along, make school lunches, write excuse notes for Phys. Ed., remind same sleepy children about violins and sports kit and music books, and yell at the dogs – all in less than an hour. Oh, and I usually tweet a bit while I’m doing it too. An hour seemed positively luxurious.

And then – get this – there was no judging? We just kind of plonked our food on the table, half-heartedly picked at some of the other teams’ food and then shuffled off to see the rest of the show.

Yes, the local Masterchef winner was there, and so was one of the finalists, but I’m not sure if that was supposed to be a thing? Were we supposed to be impressed and fawning, and thrilled to have met these mere mortals? Really? Really really?

To be honest, the most fun came from the Twitter folk who had come to support us. They laughed and cheered and offered us wine (after all, it was noon somewhere in the world) and generally made the whole thing a lot more fun.

Sharon made a deliciously toothsome omelette with sundried tomatoes and pumpkin seeds, and I made French toast with honeyed bananas and pecans, and a chocolate, coffee and orange sauce. Oh, and the scones  – which I couldn’t have done nearly as fast as I did without Sharon’s help. We made an excellent team, I thought.

And I suppose it was fun to cook something – in this case my sauce – without having to worry about whether or not the kids would eat it. But in the end, no-one ate it anyway, so it was a little like cooking at home in some ways.

When I finally got home late yesterday afternoon, I proudly showed my husband the pictures of our efforts. He took one look at my plate and asked: “Who splattered all over your plate?”

Sigh. Everyone’s a critic.