BLIA (North Island) Father’s Day Cooking Competition

In New Zealand, Father's Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of September. On 5 September, BLIA (North Island) held a cooking competition to celebrate this special occasion and 8 teams, each with 2 or 3 members participated in this competition. Venerable Jue Guan, BLIA President Dolly Tsai, BLIA Vice Presidents and advisors formed the panel of judges and 40 BLIA members attended. The first prize went to East One sub-chapter, the ‘Mondo Grass’ team.
Using different kinds of vegetables and nuts to cook the dish “The five tastes of life”, Mondo Grass team received the best compliments in terms of taste, ingredients, plate decoration and creativity from the judges. The name of the dish also suggested Buddhist philosophy towards life which consists of both happiness and sufferings seemed to appeal to the judges as well. The joint runners-up were Cherry Blossom team with it’s spicy stir fried brinjal which has a stint of Malaysian flavour and the English sub-chapter Green Bamboo team’s spaghetti dish.

Other participants included the Willow team who completed the cooking of ‘Mapo Tofu’ within 5 minutes after the start of the competition, not to mentioned the Fo Guang Youth Ginkgo team who picked up the culinary skill only a day before the competition and had successfully produced the fragrant pineapple rice within the competition time frame. On the other hand, Camellia team had been trying hard to practise crisp-frying with syrup (sweet potato wrap in syrup) every day of the week up to the competition. Another team, the Pin Oak, wished everyone a prosperous year ahead by using the main ingredient of button mushrooms which symbolizes “prosperity”. Last but not least, 3 members from the vegetarian cooking class form Totara team demonstrated the dish “Braised beancurd skin” which was what they have learnt in class.

At the end of the competition, Venerable Jue Guan stated that life is an analogy of cooking. In order to produce ‘good food’(meaningful life), we must be courageous to take up life’s challenges. Life is best lived when shared, exploring the good and bad equally. This will ensure meaningful and fulfilled lives.