NOV Potjiekos Competition 2013

 So back in May I got pneumonia. Who gets pneumonia?!? Freak-show. Confined to bed for quite a few days with nebulizer and the whole works.

Jeff and the kids took great care of me, many friends stepped in to help with shuttling and other things and I had a good snuggle buddy who kept me company through the entire thing.

 In fact someone got a little TOO comfortable with being in Mama's bed. Days later I couldn't find her and looked all over the house. She was tired out and was fast asleep in the middle of MY BED! When she woke up she just looked at me like "What?!? This is where people sleep!"

 It's not like her normal sleeping accommodations are so terrible....

As I was on the mend Jeff and I were asked to judge the 2013 NOV Potjie (say poy-kee) competition. Who loves Potjie??? We do! Of course we said yes..... Showed up around noon on a gorgeous day and had a blast hanging out while everyone cooked.

They had a huge area set-up with lots of entertainment for the kiddos.

At the beginning of the day all the teams drew lots and then were randomly assigned a protein. Some got chicken, others fish or beef, you name it. After that they had to grab whatever ingredients they wanted to use from these 2 tables. And then they had a few hours to make the best potjie pot they could with the ingredients they had.

 

Teams hard at work:

Distracting some of the cooks:

I knew we were in for a real treat when the teams began setting up their tables. They took incredible care to make them picture perfect. Each one was set for 2 and I realized that skipping lunch was probably a good call!

Presentation is everything:

Another set-up...

The sales team is ready for us to taste!

Jeff said a few words and then we got out our notebooks and headed into the tent.

Each of the 8 teams had also set us up with a wine-pairing. Uh oh..... I get pretty silly on like 1/2 a glass of wine these days so I knew I had to pace myself and do little sips. There was NO WAY I was going to stay standing if I downed 8 glasses of wine!

Team 1 tells us about their pot...

Cheers! Here goes nothin'!

That's a loooooong row of pots to taste!

Working our way down the line and getting briefed by different teams:

Hard at work...

And then they told us that there was a ROUND TWO!!! What?!? I'm not a huge eater to begin with... more of a 5 little meal a day person than a 3 big meal a day gal, so I was already pretty darn stuffed. I rallied a little when they told me it was dessert!

Each dessert had to be prepared over a fire in some kind of metal pot. They came up with some pretty incredibly creative (and delicious!) creations!

Crepes filled with nutella:

Soooo full... must. keep. tasting.....

By the end we had tasted some incredible food and we were loosening our pants. We also had a potjie pot winner, a dessert winner and an overall winner. And we didn't have to feed the kids because Sasha had scrounged a meal off of someone and Teddy pretty much followed us from table to table polishing off the rest of the dessert round after we had moved on. You can tell in this pic that I ain't givin' up that wine glass either. Yum!!

The dessert winners.

And then they gave us both a bottle of wine for being the judges. So we got rewarded for having an amazing meal with 8 courses of dessert. I love this country.

It was a full day of fun, and the festivities continued on into the night. Something tells me next year we'll be expected to ante up and cook so this is probably a one-time experience. Take my word for it. If someone ever asks you to judge a potjie competition say "Yes!"