iron chef

today was the day of the epic battle. man vs. woman; engineering vs. arts and sciences; axis IOE vs. axis U-towers. the competition began with chairman doug taking a bite of a pepper and then unveiling the theme ingredient, chocolate. as the cooking commenced, tensions ran high as our kitchen was a "one fanny kitchen" and four chefs were quite crowded. the entire cooking process took seventy minutes as both teams agreed to have a ten minute extension in order to complete the dishes.

a reminder of the teams:
axis U-towers consisted of maggie and carrie, roommates who live in U-towers
axis IOE consisted of patrick and myself (yao), also roomies who also share the same major, industrial and operations engineering (IOE)

axis U-towers was the first to present their dishes which consisted of the following:
1. a yogurt based soup with pieces of mandarin orange and pineapple, topped with bits of chocolate
2. lasagna, with hershey bars and kisses and chocolate cherry mice on top
3. banoffee, a graham crust followed by a layer of banana toffee mix and then finished with a layer of fresh whipped cream. chocolate mice again made an appearance to complete the dish.

axis IOE presented their dishes second, again with a lineup of three dishes:
1. chocolate chip cheese balls, served with a graham cracker and a toasted bread cracker and several sprigs of mint
2. cocoa curry chicken, a subtle reminder of chocolate's bitter origins.
3. half of a pear poached in a red wine sauce, served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and topped with a secret chocolate rum sauce and dusted with confectioner's sugar

after a hard fought battle, the judges had quite the dilemma of deciding a winner. chairman doug congratulated the contestants on a hard fought match and proceeded to announce the winners. who will take it? whose cuisine reigns supreme?

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axis IOE!

it was a close victory. scoring was 2-1-1 for axis IOE (with one judge unable to choose a victor)

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the entire ordeal was quite exhausting, but we were able to record the ordeal to inspire future iron chefs. we even got each team simultaneously taking a bite of of their team pepper and smiling. chairman kaga would have been proud.