Maine Army National Guard hosts culinary challenge for students

BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – The Maine Army National Guard carves out time to present countless opportunities to local students.

A new program with SkillsUSA gives culinary students a tasteful challenge.

For the first time at United Technologies Center in Bangor, culinary students participated in the MRE challenge, or the meal ready-to-eat challenge.

These foods come ready to eat and are usually distributed to officials out in the field.

In an hour’s time, students had the chance to jazz up some entrees, desserts, and beverages with random food items like Pop-Tarts, beef jerky, or cornbread.

“I like to give them little tips and pointers,” said Staff Sgt. Jeffrey Paye, Maine Army National Guard. “We’ve all had our fair share of MREs, so we know how bad they can be, so we can kind of let them really be able to say, hey, we’ve had this meal before, and you’ve done a really great job transitioning this into something really great and making it look really great.”

The winners were Madison, Lily, Kylie, Naomi, and Mikaela.

They had to jazz up vegetable crumbles with pasta in taco style sauce.

They added a little razzle dazzle of chocolate to their cookie!

The program instructor said watching his students use their own creativity with the skills he’s taught them was the best part of the day.

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