Chapel Hill senior Isabel Gray and junior Erin Malloy won second place in the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America (FCCLA) Food Innovation competition in early April, qualifying for nationals.
Competing at the highest level of the Food Innovation competition, Gray and Malloy were tasked with developing an indulgent main-course salad.
Their dish, a chicken pot pie salad, qualified them for nationals in California over the summer.
“I’m on a paleo diet, and my family was eating chicken pot pie,” Malloy said. “It made me wonder, ‘How I could take a normal Southern comfort food and deconstruct it into a healthier version, a salad?’ I started off by eliminating the fried-food aspect.”
Going into the conference, Gray and Malloy had far less time than some of their competitors; while most teams had more resources and around a year to prepare, they had only a few months.
“We did not think we would place as high as we did. We especially did not think we would advance to nationals,” Gray said. “When we heard our names called and that we were going to nationals, Erin and I looked at each other shocked.”
As stated on its website, part of the FCCLA’s mission is to “promote personal growth and leadership development,” which the Food Innovation Competition did for Malloy.
“I actually have a learning disability, which gets me to second-guess myself and have lower confidence than others would. This experience was a big eye-opener for me. And since I want to do cooking in the future, this was great for me,” Malloy said.
She walked away from the competition happy to have been challenged by something she loves: cooking.
“The best part,” Malloy said, “was preparing for something I love doing and hanging out with my friends. This was overall a great experience that I will treasure.”
For Gray, however, the best part came when the competition was over.
“We could just relax and not have to worry about practicing and worrying about if we were going to do well,” she said.
