Every year, Royal Palm Beach Troop 111 celebrates the start of the holiday season with its annual Chopped Cooking Challenge. This event is for all scouts in the troop and Arrow of Light Cub Scout guests as well. It is a friendly competition between teams called patrols, whose members learn skills together, share responsibilities and take on leadership roles guided by the patrol leader.
Each patrol tries to make the best appetizer, entrée and dessert using three mystery items that are seen moments before the cooking begins. The patrols also get to select one item from the pantry to add to their dishes, making them truly unique and worthy of winning.
The Cub Scout visitors, who are preparing to move into the older scouting group, Scouts BSA, were able to prepare a balanced meal and learn about knife safety. They made meatball subs, Caesar salad and cinnamon sugar apples with the scoutmaster to fulfill a requirement in earning their next rank in scouting.
Along with the Chopped Cooking Challenge for scouts, there was also a gingerbread house competition, where the parents competed to create the best gingerbread house.
In the end, the competition had a nail-biting conclusion, with the first-place team having only one more point than the second-place team. Overall, everyone had an amazing time seeing the creativity and ingenuity of the scouts, as well as how well everyone got along together and worked as a team.
Youth ages 10 to 17 who are interested in becoming a part of the scouting adventure are welcome to visit Troop 111. E-mail troop111rpb@gmail.com to learn more.
— By Landon Girard, Troop 111 Senior Patrol Leader
