The deluge continued today. The news said about 5 inches of rain has fallen here in Orlando so far. Even had pretty hard spells today. So, what do you do when it rains all day on vacation? We started by doing the 1 hours "owners" presentation for the new Holiday Inn points system they're trying to convert all the owners to. Of course, their hour really equals 3 hours, but we didn't have anything else to do so let them talk to us and cart us around the resort for awhile. Then we got our $40 in OLCC gift certificates . With cookies and doughnuts from the tour being our breakfast, we were ready to head off to another pool. Today we went to the River Island complex. It was only about 68 degrees for the high today, so we didn't have to share the pool complex with many others. We hung out there for about 2 hours, then came back to the villa to get ready for the Iron Chef competition.
It cost $15@ to attend the Iron Chef competition, but it was raining so we figured, why not. Turned out to be the best $30 we've spent so far. Along with the competition, between 2 high ranking chefs of Orange Lake, there was a wine tasting (all the wine you want), plus appetisers of cheese, veggies, dip and hot wings. They also chose a helper for each chef and 3 judges. Here is one of the chef helpers flambaying for the audience. Turns out she had just graduated culinary school in Canada. She obviously knew what she was doing---even came up with the winning presentation for the appetisers.
Yep, I was picked as one of the 3 judges. That turned out to be really neat. The announcer was hilarious and made the 45 minutes contest time go by really fast. The plates in front of us in this picture were the Original Iron Chefs concoctions. The surprise ingredient was lobster. His appetiser was chunks of lobster over asparagus and covered with a fantastic butter/wine/garlic sauce. His entre was loster lomaine with a vinegar/honey/soy sauce/garlic/salt/pepper/.... sauce. Also had mushrooms and red and green peppers in it. Loved the noodles!
The other chef (Viet) had this great presentation for his entre---lobster in lobster with a cream sauce and garnish on top over fried ginger infused potatoes. His ginger potatoes were amazing! I wasn't too thrilled with his appetiser---a sweet and sour lobster. The sauce was made with catsup/vinegar/honey/pineapple/???/ .
In the end, the original iron chef won by 4 points. I had him winning by 1 point. AFter we tasted our dishes, a waitress placed the remainder of our dishes on a table behind us. I let Ken eat the rest of my 4 dishes. I came out of there feeling dinner was served! Even Ken liked it.
That's it for today. Now to go watch the pouring rain some more.
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