Calling All CIEE International Students on the USA High School program...

Sharing a meal can be one of the best ways to bond with your host family. Do you love cooking and miss some of your traditional dishes from home? If the answer is YES, keep reading and enter the CIEE Cultural Cooking Competition!

How can I participate?

A competition was never this delicious! Follow the steps below and win a great prize!

1. Choose some of your favorite recipes from home and invite your host family to join you in a cooking lesson and meal.
2. While cooking the meal, take photos to document your host family's participation. Take photos of the steps you took to prepare the meal or your family around the oven cooking.
3. Once the meal is complete, be sure to take a photo of yourself and your family with the meal.
4. Send us your three best photos from the event, your recipe(s), and a short text describing why you choose the meal from you home country and how your home family liked the cooking experience.

What can I win?

• First Place: $100 gift certificate to Amazon.com
• Second and Third Place Runner Ups: $50 iTune gift certificate

Deadline

• Submit your entry by January 3rd, 2010
• The winners will be announced by the end of January

Photo and Writing Tips

Photo Taking Tips

Want to see what participants cooked with their host families? Click here to see last year's cookbook of recipes (PDF).

• Take photos that tell a story - show the steps you took to make your meal, family interaction, and of course, your finished meal masterpiece with you and your family included in the photo!
• Take several shots throughout the cooking lesson and meal. You can only send us your top three photos, but this will allow you to choose from many photos for the three best.
• Make sure the lighting is good as well as the digital photo quality.
• Experiment with your camera and have fun! Set your camera on a timer, take shots from funky angles - get creative!

Descriptive Story Tips

• Tell us about the origin and history of your dish-is it a traditional family dish, a cultural dish, your favorite dish?
• Where/who did the recipe come from
• Think about how you would explain the meal to someone who never had it.
• Tell us about how your host family liked the dish.

Recipe Writing Tips

• It is best to send us your recipe with the U.S. conversion rates if you know them. Click here for an easy to read conversion chart
• If you don't know the word for an ingredient in English, give us your best guess or an ingredient that is similar