COMPETITOR

Too Hot Comares

HEAD COOK: Lynn Beamer

COMPETITION: World Recipe Championship

QUALIFYING EVENT: Duda Farm Fresh Foods Runner Up in the Ultimate Celery Championship

As a home cook, this is my first foray into the competitive cooking arena. My husband and I retired a couple of years ago to a little piece of heaven on an agricultural island southwest of Charleston, SC. I have learned to throw a cast net and improve my fishing and foraging skills so that I can have fresh flounder, trout, redfish, oysters, shrimp, blue crab, pecans, figs, citrus and even mushrooms all from my own back yard. I have come to appreciate the use of local ingredients and enjoy the benefits of having a major family-owned organic farmer as my neighbor who sells his produce to some of the finest restaurants in the area. Oh yes, then there is Charleston. A great new restaurant seems to pop up every month. I have met and cooked with several downtown chefs who offer classes. We try a different restaurant each week and have tasted incredibly inventive dishes which I often try to replicate at home. But my greatest inspiration is my dearest friend, Lisa, who urged me to create and enter some recipes that eventually led to a Golden Ticket as a runner up in the Duda Farms Celery competition. We will cook together with lots of love and laughter and maybe even kick some culinary buttocks in the process.