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May 2008
GW Employee Competes for the ‘Dough’ in National Cooking Contest
By Julia Parmley Mike Briggs, director of information technology at GW’s Law School, took a couple days off work in April—but not for vacation. On April 14, Briggs competed against 100 people for the $1 million prize at the 43rd Pillsbury Bake-Off® Contest in Dallas. While his spicy mole pork burritos did not win, Briggs called the competition “a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” “There is a whole culture of people who spend a lot of their time entering cooking contests, so I was the novice there,” says Briggs. “It was a fascinating experience.” Briggs’ journey to Dallas began over a year ago when he submitted his recipe to Pillsbury with the encouragement of his wife Leslie Lee, a librarian at the Law School. Briggs incorporated Old El Paso chopped green chiles, mild enchilada sauce, and flour tortillas in his recipe to enter the Old El Paso Mexican Favorites category, one of five in the competition. The grand prize winner received $1 million and prizes, and category winners won $5,000 and prizes. Months after submitting, Briggs got the call from Pillsbury that he was one of 100 finalists. He says chefs at Pillsbury made his recipe to test its flavor and to calculate how much ingredients cost. Briggs then had to send the company a picture of his dish to show them how he wanted it to look on the Pillsbury Web site. Briggs says he likes to experiment with recipes and master them in his Alexandria, Va., kitchen. “I worked on the Pillsbury recipe for a while and kept tweaking it until I got it where I wanted it,” he says. Briggs also began fielding questions from local reporters and appeared on several local news stations with his burritos. On competition day, Briggs says the contestants had from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. to cook their recipes three times. The competition rules required Briggs to list all of the supplies and ingredients he needed to prepare his burritos at the competition, so Briggs says he had to be meticulous about what he needed. He sent his first try to the judges, the second to photographers, and the third to be sampled among the contestants. Twenty minutes into the competition, Briggs says reporters from newspapers across the country came in and interviewed contestants as they cooked. “The actual competition was amazing,” says Briggs. “There were 100 people cooking at once. After I was done, I could walk around and sample everyone’s food, and everything was just delicious.” That night, Briggs and the other contestants unwound with dinner and dancing at a local restaurant. “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen the Pillsbury Doughboy doing the electric slide,” says Briggs. The next day, Pillsbury announced Carolyn Gurtz of Gaithersburg, Md., who prepared “Double-Delight Peanut Butter Cookies,” as the winner. While the competition left Briggs exhausted, he says he is enjoying cooking for pleasure once again and fixing up his new house. But Briggs’ 15 minutes of fame continue. He says strangers have recognized him from the competition, and one woman even stopped her car when she recognized Briggs while he was mowing his lawn. Briggs says he is considering a submission to the contest in 2009. “I haven’t decided whether or not to do it again,” he says, “but I know so much more now that I think I’d have a much better chance next time.”
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