Santa Rosa woman wins again with recipes for success

In mid-July, Amy Meiers of Santa Rosa and her family returned from their annual camping trip at Plumas Eureka State Park, where she and her 9-year-old son, Cannon, enjoyed barbecuing on the fancy camp stove she won in the 50 Campfires' recipe contest for Top Ramen.

During the two-week trip, Meiers also took advantage of another prize: a set of Camp Chef National Parks Cast Iron pans, which she used to heat up the pulled pork she smoked ahead of time in a smoker she won from a Smithfield Pork food photo contest.

You might say, some people have all the luck. But for Meiers, who has won so many, there's more at work. What is this cook's secret sauce for winning all kinds of crazy food contests? It turns out, she just tries to please herself.

“I try to do simple recipes that I'm going to like and not have a ton of ingredients,” Meiers said. “I have to like it, and my husband (a picky eater) has trained me not to go too crazy.”

Elevating her campfire cooking, however, is not the only perk this full-time working mother has reaped from her hobby.

Meiers, who has been entering and winning cooking contests for the past five years, has also leveraged her cooking skills into extra cash and vacations that have taken her everywhere from the Weber Big Burger Battle in South Dakota to the National Festival of Bread in Kansas. Last year, she went with Cannon to the White House after helping him become the California winner of Michelle Obama's “Let's Move” Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.

For Meiers, “contest” has become a verb that has catapulted her out of Sonoma County and into a wide world of flavors, food trends and friendships.

“As you contest, you get to know other people out there,” she said. “I've gone to places we would never have chosen to go, but it's been really fun, and it gives me different ways to think about food.”

This spring, Meiers hit the jackpot, winning a trip for two to the inexplicable destination of Fiji by reinventing the retro tuna melt sandwich. She won the grand prize of Chicken of the Sea's Best of the Sea Recipe Challenge by giving the time-tested sandwich a California twist, with toasted sourdough bread on the bottom and slices of a avocado underneath the cheddar cheese.

It's one of the sandwiches she often eats at the office at Fidelity National Title in Santa Rosa, where she and her boss like to share a simple lunch.

“We often share leftovers or come up with a dish,” Meiers said. “We always keep tuna in the pantry, and there's always some cheese in the fridge, and one of us usually has an avocado.”

The secret ingredient, however, was a Dill Me In seasoning from Berkmans Spices of Santa Rosa, which is available at Oliver's Markets and various farmers markets. She mixed the salt-free seasoning in with the tuna, some Greek yogurt and mayonnaise, for a healthier tuna salad.

“I really did not have high hopes,” she said of the simple but timeless sandwich. “But they are just so good.”

One of the reasons she didn't expect to win was that she entered a photo of her dish for the contest's daily, $50 prize, but didn't win anything. Then she entered a second recipe, for tomatoes stuffed with quinoa and tuna, and that didn't win a daily prize either.

But when the judges got together and chose the top 25 winners, her California Style Tuna Melt ended up at the top of the food chain. Then, on World Tuna Day on May 2, Meiers tuned into the streaming video at work as the judges randomly picked a winner from the top 8 finalists.

“It was really cool to hear my name,” she said. “I was really not expecting to win … Tuna melts? For my lunch?”

Meiers and her husband - volunteer fireman Aivars Meiers - recently renewed their passports so that they can go to Fiji in October to celebrate their 11th anniversary.

“We went to Moorea near Tahiti for our honeymoon,” she said. “They will pay for airfare and five nights at the resort, but we'll probably stay an extra two or three nights.”

Other prizes Meiers has won over the years have not been so exotic. For a photo of some French toast topped with Greek yogurt and berries, she won a year's worth of milk from the Milk Advisory Board, and she once won a year's worth of Celtic sea salt for being a runner-up to a cookbook contest.

In 2014, she was a finalist in Newman's Own Greens for Good Salad Recipe Contest, which snagged her a $1,000 donation to her son's school garden at Steele Lane Elementary School.

“They have a beautiful garden, with all heirloom and organic vegetables,” she said. “It was one of the very first school gardens.”

Meiers got her start in contests as a little kid, when she entered baked goods in the Sonoma County Fair's exhibits for kids and adults. This year, as always, she will enter her scones, plus some lemon cookies, a yeasted bread and a homemade granola.

“It's always fun to show up at the fair and see how I did,” she said.

As an adult, Meiers got interested in cooking contests after entering the first annual World Wrapped Competition during the 2013 Sonoma County Harvest Fair. Although she didn't win that year, she was mentored by Laurie Figone of Petaluma, another local food contest veteran, who encouraged Meiers to get serious about her cooking hobby.

Meiers went on to win the grand prize in both the 2014 and 2016 World Wrapped Competitions, then was a finalist for the Weber Big Burger Battle in 2014 and the National Festival of Bread in 2015. Last year, she hit pay dirt by winning the $10,000 grand prize from the Carl Buddig & Co. “Make It Delish” contest for a New Year's Eve appetizer she whipped together an hour before the deadline. She used the money to help the family subsidize an extended trip to Washington, D.C., where she and her son were invited for a “kids' state dinner” after winning the first lady's Healthy Lunchtime Challenge.

Beyond the cash and the chance to travel, Meiers said the cooking contests help her think outside of the box and expand her cooking horizons.

“I learn a lot about food trends,” she said. “I will notice, ‘Oh, they are doing the street corn thing,' or ‘There are a lot of recipes with harissa.'”

Recently, she entered a recipe for the National Lentil Festival Cook-Off in Pullman, WA, and is working on developing recipes for the Sutter Home Build a Better Burger Contest and the Gnarly Head Ribs contest.

“You're always trying out new ingredients,” she said. “I probably would not have done anything with lentils if there wasn't a contest.”

Because she works full-time, she has to narrow down the number of contests she enters to the ones she thinks she has a good recipe for, or the ones that offer prizes that appeal to her.

“There are some people who do it full-time and enter hundreds of contests,” she said. “I work full-time.”

Her work colleagues benefit from her hobby, however, since she often ends up testing recipes at night, then bringing them into work in the morning. Her neighbors in the junior college neighborhood have also sacrificed their diets for the sake of her baking and cooking experiments.

“My husband does not like sweets and he's very picky,” she said. “But when he likes a dish, I really know I've got a good one, even if it doesn't win.”

Meanwhile, Meiers has started to serve as a cooking contest mentor to others. including her work buddy Robby Morales of Santa Rosa, who ended up beating Meiers at her own game in a Campfire Marshmallows recipe contest.

“We both entered, and he won the grand prize with a two-tiered s'mores and funfetti cake,” she said. “I could not be happier for him … I think anyone who loves cooking should try.”

Staff writer Diane Peterson can be reached at 707-521-5287 or diane.peterson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @dianepete56.