Culinary Showdown - Chef Lynn Crawford and more Celebrity Chefs compete

COOK FOR THE CURE
CULINARY SHOWDOWN

This week I was invited to go to Chef Lynn Crawford's restaurant Ruby Watchco in downtown Toronto for a Fundraiser for the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation's fundraiser the Culinary Showdown which takes place on December 7, 2013.

At this special event we got to nibble on some of Lynn's partner Chef Lora Kirk's great appetizers and sip some wine.   The food was great as I knew it would be because I have been to the restaurant in the past.  It's a great restaurant that I wish I lived closer to and could afford to go to all the time.

Here are some photos of some of the nibbles that were served.


We were all encouraged to sign up for the Culinary Showdown which I had already done at a previous event but now it's time for me to try and build my fundraising goal to reach the required $2500 to be able to join Lynn Crawford's team or one of the other Celebrity Chefs like Chuck Hughes ( another one of my favourite chefs)  or the West Coast Rockstar Vikram Vij or Top Chef Canada Judge Mark McEwan or Restaurant Makeover/Takeover chef Corbin Tomaczeski and Dean McDermott (Tori Spelling''s husband) and the great Tyler Florence will be on hand to host the event.

I need to raise $2500 to join one of their teams to compete, but if I raise $1000 I get to go to the event and watch the battle.

I need lot's of to reach the $2500 goal and every little bit helps.   

Click here to donate if you are able to and you will receive a tax receipt.  

If I am able to raise enough money to participate I will blog about my experience after the event.

If you are able to help sponsor me I want to thank you very much for helping me to do something good for a lot of people and help me sharpen my culinary skills.

Top Chefs cook up a showdown to Crush Cancer

Do you know someone that is dealing with Cancer or have you lost someone to some form of Cancer?  I bet everyone that reads this is saying YES right now.  In my life I have lost my father to Cancer,  I have lost most of my aunts and uncles to Cancer and have had close friends lose their relatives to cancer as well. I also have a few friends who have either had their own Cancer challenges or are dealing with it now.

 It is a horrible disease that I would like to see disappear one day.  Chemotherapy ravages the body and makes most people suffer a number of side effects that put a strain on their quality of life.

I worked at Sunnybrook Hospital for many years and would walk into the Cancer wing to get my lunch sometimes.  You realize how much it has increased when you see a whole wing of a hospital being built to deal with the treatments.   While research has been great in detecting the diseases earlier and the treatments have been getting better, there is still an increase of people getting Cancer due to environmental factors and I believe because of our diets and stressful lives as well.   There are lot's of people that don't smoke, eat well and exercise that get Cancer so it sometimes doesn't care who it affects but we can try and do our best to try and raise money to help further research on how to manage it or better yet cure it.

This week I went to a private event of chefs and foodies that was an encouragement to get more people to sign up for the Celebrity Chef's Culinary Challenge that will be held at the Royal York in December.   I decided to take on the challenge of trying to raise funds to participate in this challenge.  I have the time now and would like to do something in honour of my Dad and the people that I have lost to Cancer and friends that are in the midst of it now.

There are several levels of fundraising goals but the main goal is to reach $2500 to be able to join a Celebrity Chef and compete with their team against other Celebrity Chef teams in a Culinary Challenge.  While I am not a trained chef I will get some Chef training/mentoring before the competition.

If you want to see me cook with some of the best Canadian Chefs like Lynn Crawford, Mark McEwen, Chuck Hughes, Vikram Vij or Corbin Tomaszeski then drop a little bit of cash toward the cure.  Tyler Florence and Dean McDermott will be the Host and Emcee for the Event.

You can donate through this link and you will receive a Tax Receipt.

Click on this link to Donate:
KitchenAid Cook for the Cure

Top Chefs stretch their noodles for a good cause

Rockstar Vancouver Chef Vikram Vij and me

http://www.culinaryshowdown.ca/

I had the pleasure of being invited to an Invite Only event at Cirillo's Culinary Academy because of my Gastropost involvement.  It was a last minute invite and I didn't get confirmation until this morning but I jumped at a chance to go to this event because I knew it would be full of Chef Rockstars who are great chefs and really fun people.  I think there were only a few of the many Gastroposters in the room and it was mostly filled with people that are involved in some way with Breast Cancer Foundation fundraising.  The small but mighty group of Gastroposters were armed with camera and ready for some fun.

As we arrived we were presented with some beverages and beautifully presented and very tasty food.  You can see by the photos here that I probably spent more time photographing the food than I did eating it.  I did try the shrimp which was delicious and planned to go back for more but that never happened because I was busy taking photos and "mixing and mingling: as they called it.  After a bit of the mix and mingle there was a presentation about the Chef's Challenge happening in December and how the funds raised go toward Cancer research.  There were personal stories from a Cancer survivor and from the Chef's as well.

They encouraged everyone to sign up to raise money to join the Chef's Challenge.   I decided to sign up because I would love to go and watch,  less pressure than actually doing the cooking.  These chef's are mighty competitive.  Will see how much money I can raise.  I will post the links to the donation page in a future post.   I kind of felt like it was my way of contributing to a disease that touches everyone.  In my life it took my Dad away at 65 and most of my aunts and uncles,  and has touched a few of my friends as well.

After the speeches it was time for a little Chef Challenge.  Chef Lynn Crawford took on the reigns as Host/commentator and it was East coast vs West Coast in a Longest Noodle Challenge.   Which team could crank out the longest pasta noodle on a kitchen aid mixer machine.   It was Mark McEwen and Chef Corbin on one team and the West coast represented by Dean McDermott and Vikram Vij,  and a few recruits to help them stretch out those long noodles.  There were a lot of noodle jokes in the explanation of the rules of this challenge.  You had to be there....  Anyway at a certain point I lent a hand or 2 to the West Coast team.... they were the fun team, although Dean was taking it very seriously and trying to kick the East Coasts chef's butts.   Well the East coast won the challenge but I don't know about that since their noodle split in half and Chef Corbin was holding it together in the middle.   Oh well... no prizes but just a whole lot of fun with pasta noodles.

Dean photo bombs Vikram

Seriously

                                             Chef Lynn wrangles the "Ding Dongs"

                                                                      Noodle Challenge

                                        Me and Dean McDermott with the Noodle aftermath.

                 What do you do with leftover noodles.... put them on your head of course.