ELLERBE – Tuesday night found a special event taking place at the First Presbyterian Church in down-town Ellerbe N.C. It was the night of the annual Wild-Game Cook-Off.
Seventeen cooks had prepared their own special wildlife dish. Approximately ninety folks attended the annual event, tickets in-hand to taste and judge their favorite dish.
Included in the meat category, were a large dish of beaver, doe sausage, venison meat-balls, Armadillo eggs, Elk, rabbit-pot-pie and many other type meat dishes.
Some of the wild-fruit, nut and vegetable dishes included Jerusalem Artichokes, bread pudding, fresh wild salad, walnut layer cake, persimmon pudding, Yaupon and Sassafras tea.
As the wild dishes were spread out on the tables, each had a number placed beside it. Each person coming in the door also was given two tickets, a red one (for meats) and a blue one (for wild fruits, nuts and vegetables) with which they could place their vote. The individual had two eating plates, red and blue in which he wrote numbers around the side of the plate.
As the individual tasters went by the food, the servers would place a small sample of each dish beside the numbers on the plates. This way the tasters could identify each dish he or she tasted and would place his choice of winners in a box.
After the meal and while the tickets for the winners were being tallied, Azalea and J.A. Bolton entertained the crowd with some of their hunting and fishing stories. One of the stories was about OL’ Whiskers (the biggest and meanest catfish in Pee Dee River).
After the storytelling, the over-all winners were announced for each category of the wild-food that had been prepared.
The winner of the wild-meat category was Mrs. Kathy Allen (a first-time entry) with her dish of Rabbit-Pot-Pie. The winner of the wild fruit-nuts and vegetable category was Ms. Carolyn Quinn with her delicious Walnut-layer cake.
The winners of the Youth categories were- in first place with their Peter-rabbit roast – Hailey Belk and Jase Childers. Coming in with a close second was Ben Deoguilar with his dish of deer dipped in Mexican sauce.
Each winner received a nice prize and a big pat on the back.
Make plans to attend next year’s annual Wildlife Cook-Off and you too might be a winner.
