Meet the Four Extended Stay America Away From Home Cooking Recipe Contest Finalists! The contest began back in May, when we opened the submissions process for recipes on May 19th. The submission phase was open until July 7th, and we received hundreds of recipe submissions. These recipes were narrowed down to the top 50 recipes. These recipes were then put up on contest.awayfromhomecooking.com where people could vote (one vote a day) from July 28th through August 22nd.
Four finalists were then chosen. 2 of the finalists were chosen based on which recipes received the most votes on contest.awayfromhomecooking.com. The other 2 finalists were chosen by a panel of judges. All 50 recipes were scored by the judge panel and the 2 recipes with the highest scores became the other 2 finalists.
Here are the finalists:
· Beth “Biz” V. from Cary, Illinois
· Lauren W. from Dripping Springs, Texas
· Megan H. from Greer, South Carolina
· Shauna H. from Roy, Utah
All four finalists will be flown to NYC where we will be hosting a final cook-off in Extended Stay America’s Secaucus hotel! The finalists will cook their dishes in one of our full in-room kitchens and then will have their dishes tasted and judged by our five judges:
– Sunny Anderson
– Tom Seddon – Extended Stay America CMO
– Kay Carreon – Extended Stay America Carry-On Chef
– Cara Eisenpress – Big Girls Small Kitchen Blogger
– Megan Sullivan – Lodging Magazine Editor
The winner will receive $5,000, a trip for two to the NYC Wine and Food Festival (October 16 – 19th) and their winning recipe will be featured in Extended Stay America’s next Away From Home Cooking Cookbook.
See their videos below!