Eating/Team-Building
Way back, at the end of August, a colleague and I came up with a little idea for how to have some fun at work - Start a Taste-Off. A taste-off is our name for a taste-test. Since I've heard multiple reports of participants sharing this with family, friends, and acquaintances who wish to mimic it, I figured I'd tell you all about it too.
We started off with the idea that we'd stack up Dunkin Donuts against Krispy Kreme across several varieties. Week 1, we did a Boston Kreme taste-off (Dunkin Donuts wiped the floor with the poor Krispy Kreme showing), moving on to Chocolate Glazed, Jelly, Glazed, and Iced. At the end, the winners of each category competed against each other for a Donut Best in Show. The Dunkin Donuts Boston Kreme emerged victorious.
Although initially we had then planned on doing muffins, bagels, etc., we revisited our plans at the end of the Donut segment and decided to move on to packaged goods instead. You know, all those gooey Hostess and Drakes Cakes goodies we all grew up with. This time we changed our methodology. We're doing an elimination taste-off, starting with quarter-finals and ending with a winner-take-all championship round. We seeded the 12 contestants and had our first quarter-final match today. There was an upset, with Gonzaga Ho-Hos beating Arizona Twinkies. 12th-seeded Sno-Balls did better than you might think, but still finished last. Yeah, the quarter-finals are 3-way competitions. It was just easier.
It's been tons of fun. Lots of merriment and camaraderie.
BTW, we don't eat entire servings of anything. We generally cut things into halves or quarters so as to not completely blimp out. In fact, I just started Weight Watchers (I want to go back down from a size 10 to a size 6, my size prior to 9/11), and managed to stay within my daily points total even eating 3 meals and participating in the taste-off. Sticking to quarters of each treat brought me in at 2.5 points for the entire exercise out of a daily allotment of 22. So I skipped my afternoon tea with half and half. Tell me you wouldn't rather have a quarter of a Ho-Ho than a cuppa.