Forums » Art & Creativity » Official Contest: Cooking 2026

What’s a birthday without a special meal and a cake? Treat the RPR to a special something for its 16th birthday!

To enter:
In this contest, you must bake or cook something. Post pictures or the recipe -- bonus points for both! Please explain in your post why you chose the meal, and how it relates to the theme.

Your entry must somehow be themed to fit one of these categories:

• The RP Repository
• Fantasy
• Science Fiction
• Science, Gaming or other Nerdly Pursuits

A cake with an RPR slogan in icing? Yes please. Your recreation of the “coney stew” that Samwise Gamgee prepared for Frodo while they were on the long path to Moria? Absolutely. Rock candy you somehow crafted into perfect d20s? Genius!

You cannot enter pictures of food other people created, nor post copyrighted recipes; ie something you got out of a cookbook or magazine. Make sure it’s truly your culinary creation.

You may use molds and other special tools, so long as they are in support of a larger effort, not just something you purchased and submitted. For example, if you were to simply submit a picture of a chocolate millennium falcon you made by pouring white chocolate into a purchased mold, you would be disqualified. If on the other hand you used the resultant chocolate spaceship as part of an asteroid-field battle themed scene cake, that would be okay.

Prizes:

• 2026 RPR tote bag - (Real life prize - we’ll ship one to you) Totebags won in contests have some surprises inside them! Please note that I won’t be able to ship this until after the genre mascot art contest completes and we know what this design will be.
  
• Greater Wand of Epicness - Grants 6 months of Epic Membership
• Wand of Epicness - Grants 3 months of Epic Membership
• Dragon's tooth - 5 extra permanent character slots
• 3 Enchanted Silk Cloaks - 3 extra permanent character slots

The first place winner will get to pick any one of these prizes. Then second place picks from the remaining prizes, then third, etc.

Deadline:
The last day to post a submission is June 7th

I have several surgical procedures scheduled for right after Epic Week, so you’re all getting a LOT of time to enter the contests while I recover this year!

Hehehe I was hoping for this one I recently came across a culinary monstrosity I'd like to recreate.

I made some really awful stew once. Your mention of Sam's coney stew had me consider trying to make the stew again, only I'll call it 'Eowyn's Stew' (from the 'stew scene' in the extended Two Towers movie)

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Ok... I made 'stew' on Sunday because it was a chilly rainy day. What I came up with is probably a cross between Eowyn's stew she tried to serve Aragorn on the road to Helms Deep and Samwise's coney stew he made in Ithilien. I didn't have rabbit so I used chicken. I tried to document what I did. I sort of do my cooking instruction a little in the style of 'Nat's What I Reckon' cooking YouTube videos.

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(Mordor?)


Make sure it’s truly your culinary creation.
It was. I sort of used what I had on hand mixed with a quick grocery run. I know there are a lot of variations on chicken stew out there. I hope this qualifies me.



Eowyn and Samwise's 'On the Road' stew.


Stuff

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 or 3 (or as many as you want) rashers of smoked bacon, chopped into roughly 1 centimetre bits.
• 2 yellow onions, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 4 boneless skinless chicken thighs
• 2 fair-sized potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly (Creme Royal or Yukon Gold work best, but I used basic bulk Russets for mine)
• 1 carrot, peeled and diced
• 2 celery stalks, diced
• 1500 ml chicken stock (I used three cartons of the Campbell's salt-reduced stock which are 500ml each. That's roughly 6 cups)
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
• A handful fresh chopped parsley (My parsley was yellow and wilted so I didn't add this)
  
• Salt to taste. (Mine was salty enough with the bacon)

What to do

• Heat the Tablespoon of Extra Virgin Olive Oil in a large sauce pan (or pot) over medium heat.
• Add the smoked bacon and cook until it starts to brown.
• Add the chopped brown onions into the pot and stir until they start to soften.
• Mince the garlic cloves into the pot and stir.
• Saute the mix for a minute or so. Don't burn the garlic!
• Place the chicken thighs on top of the bacon-onion-garlic mix in the pot.
• Add the sliced potatoes, carrots, celery, chicken broth, thyme, and black pepper.
• Let simmer on medium until the potatoes become very soft and the broth thickens. It took 35-40 minutes for me.
• Remove the chicken thighs from the pot.
• Use two forks to shred the chicken. Add it back to the pot and stir.
  Taste and salt if you think it's needed. I didn't add salt as I used enough bacon to make it just about right. My dad salted it a bit in his bowl.
• Serve in a bowl with buttered crusty bread. Add a sprinkle of chopped parsley over the top of the served bowl if you have it.

Here is my finished product for lunch a day later as I forgot to take a photo of it fresh. Don't mind the chipped stoneware. A result of moving so much. I suppose I could have put the spoon handle over the chip...
Oh my. I do hope all goes well and you recover swiftly.

[img]https://ibb.co/qL662ZdR[/img]
[img]<a href="https://ibb.co/qL662ZdR"><img src="https://i.ibb.co/rK99XWmZ/Dream-Patoes.jpg" alt="Dream-Patoes" border="0"></a>[/img]

What you will need:
~2 medium-large potatoes (russet works best, but any large brown variety will do) or a pound of baby potatoes
~ A skillet or frying pan
~ cooking oil (I prefer olive oil for its health benefits)
~ seasoning salt
~ garlic powder (or fresh if you have time and want to be fancy)
~ onion powder
~ bacon bits
~ goat cheese (I recommend about 5 Oz or half a log, but measure with your heart)
~ fork
~ wooden paddle for cooking



Recipe:
1)Wash and dry the potatoes
2) Cube the potatoes
3) Heat the skillet/frying pan with oil, then toss in the cubed potatoes
4) Cover the potatoes in the skillet with a lid and let them cook, turning them over occasionally, until they are soft
{4.5) optional step: dice fresh garlic}
5) Once the potatoes are soft, add the seasonings and mix
6) Add the bacon bits and mix until potatoes and bacon are crispy
7) Transfer the beacon and potatoes into a salad bowl
8) Use a fork to crumble the goat cheese into the bowl with the potatoes and bacon, then mix to combine
9) Enjoy!!

This dish is best served hot and is tied to RPR because it's something more or less specific I craved, like a particular story, and it's reminiscent of something I had once and enjoyed but couldn't find again, at least to my satisfaction, and so I made it just like we come together to make stories based on cravings and desires here on RPR.