Themed Cook-Offs to Plan with Your Friends

Maybe you're sick of playing cards with friends as entertainment . Maybe you're sick of your own menu. Maybe you're just looking for some new entertainment to add to your lifestyle or even some new recipes to change your own menu. Whatever the reason, you might want to consider come of these cook-off idea as a way to liven things up a bit!

Calorie Creations: If you're on a diet, you might feel like you are eating the same things all the time. Host a cook-off with your friends with calorie creations as the theme. The idea is to use 3-5 foods (your pick) to create a dish that has a limited amount of calories. You pick the amount of calories allowed and the amount of foods used. You'd be surprised at some of the creations your friends might come up with! Make your cooking parties even more challenging by banning salads from the list of acceptable foods!

For drinks, try making a fruit smoothie using ice, yogurt with active yeast cultures and fresh fruits!

Splash of Spice: Do you enjoy spicy food? Maybe you just want to challenge someone or a group of people that do. Have a cook-off with your friends using spicy foods. This is an especially great theme if you are friends with a group of couples that like to get together and have a few drinks. Decorations for this party might include actual strung hot peppers and bright candles to remind you of the burn of spicy foods. The first dish to bring tears to a grown man's eyes wins!

Personally, I always make a spicy version of my Enchilada Casserole because it happens to be a favorite among my friends. This simple recipe involves baking soft corn tortilla shells between layers of cheese, peppers, mushrooms, ground beef and spicy seasonings.

Vegetarian Values: Lots of people who are tempted to choose the vegetarian lifestyle avoid doing so because they think that the menu is to limited. Prove them wrong with a vegetarian cook-off. The winner can even win a day of weeding the garden from the losers of the cook-off!

Include Bloody Marys as the drink of the evening just to add a bit more to the entertainment value! This is a great cook-off theme for the summer harvest celebration so that vegetables can be used straight from the garden.

Ethnic Eats: An ethnic cook-off is a great way to try new foods and learn about different cultures. If your group of friends includes a variety of different cultures, this is the perfect way to learn about the finer details of that culture. You can decorate your house for this cook-off by creating different ethnic areas in each room to represent the cultures that are being brought together.

To do any of these themes or another of your choosing, simply gather your friends together, decide on a theme and appoint responsibilities for each person. For instance, choose who is going to host the party, who is going to decorate it and who will be the judge for the winner. Keep in mind that those who submit to the contest should not share their creation idea with anyone who might be judging the contest. Otherwise, it makes the cook-off unfair due to bias.