The Champion Chef Challenge

“Welcome back to Champion Chef Junior! We’re down to our final two teams.” Celebrity chef Rocco Balsamo turned to the contestants: the Wander kids and two sisters from Los Angeles named Sasha and Polly Polosky. “Chefs, you’re 30 minutes away from $10,000. What are you going to do if you win all that money?”

“My brother and I are saving up for college,” Eva said.

Andy cracked a smile. That might have been the correct answer for the cameras and for Dad and Mom, but it was certainly not the answer they’d been chanting between themselves for the last three months.

“No more chores! No more chores!” Eva had shouted the day that the producers called to tell the Wander kids they had made it onto the show.

“No more chores! No more chores!” Andy sang every time he cleaned the kitchen after one of their practice meals.

“No more chores! No more chores!” The kids whispered to each other when Mom and Dad drove them to the production set at five o’clock that morning. Andy and Eva were great cooks, but they absolutely hated cleaning up after themselves. The only reason they ever cleaned the kitchen was the allowance they each received every week if they did their chores well and without grumbling. But $10,000 could change all that. In fact, they figured $10,000 would probably be enough money for a lifetime of chore-free weeks.

“It’s time to reveal the mystery ingredient for our dessert round,” Chef Rocco said. He dramatically lifted the lid off a platter, revealing a can of black beans.

“Beans?” Polly shrieked in disgust. Eva shrieked for a different reason. She spotted Mom in the audience and pumped her fist. Black beans might seem like a disgusting ingredient for dessert, but it just so happened to be the main ingredient in the first dessert Mom had ever taught the kids to make: frejol colado (free-hole kole-lah-doe).

Frejol colado was a black bean pudding recipe that Mom had learned from her grandmother in Peru. Everyone who’d ever tried it thought it was the best thing they’d ever tasted, even though most of them were a little weirded out by all the beans in their dessert.

“Go, chefs, go!” Chef Rocco yelled. While Sasha and Polly argued about their dessert, Andy and Eva were already pouring their second can of beans into a pot.

“You two look like you have a plan,” Chef Rocco said. The cameras followed him to their workstation.

“It’s gonna be pudding!” Andy said. “The toasted sesame seeds on top really make it. You’re gonna love it, Chef Rocco!”

Art by David Leonard

“Yummo!” Chef Rocco flashed a fake TV smile to the cameras before turning to Sasha and Polly. “And what about you girls?”

“Brownies, I guess,” Sasha huffed before running to the pantry. Chef Rocco nodded.

“And why—”

“Cuz they’re brown like beans!”

Eva giggled. The Wanders had this easy. “No more chores,” she whispered to Andy.

Andy gave her a mini high-five under the counter. “No more chores.”

Andy and Eva usually kept a tidy kitchen while they cooked, but not today. Today, they had a whole crew standing by, ready to clean up after them. Andy smooshed beans with all his might, sending goo everywhere. Eva stirred with a flourish that looked cool on TV but splattered with every stir. The kids could get used to the life of celebrity chefs.

What they couldn’t get used to was cooking next to the Polosky sisters. The Poloskys hoarded ingredients. They kept getting in the Wanders’ way. And their constant bickering made it tough for Andy and Eva to hear each other.

All that nonsense wasted a lot of time, turning the final countdown into a stressful experience.

“One minute!” Chef Rocco warned.

“Andy! Three bowls!” Eva called.

“Swirl the pudding into a little twirly Q on top!” Andy said while Eva spooned the pudding into the bowls.

“What twirly Q?”

“Like Mom does!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Thirty seconds!” Chef Rocco said.

“Let me try.” Andy twirled the spoon in one of the bowls. It did nothing.

“Twenty seconds!”

“Andy!”

“Stop yelling at me!”

“We forgot the sesame seeds!”

“Ten . . .” Chef Rocco started the final countdown.

Andy fumbled with the bowls.

“Nine . . .”

“Just bring the seeds over here!” Eva pleaded.

“Eight . . . ”

“No time!”

“Seven . . . ”

Andy picked up all three pudding bowls.

“Six . . . ”

. . . Spun around . . .

“Five . . . ”

. . . And slipped on bean goo he’d splattered earlier.

“Fo—”

SPLUT!

Pudding went everywhere—on the floor, the walls, and—yes—even celebrity Chef Rocco Balsamo.

The crew gasped. The crowd went silent.

“Sorry,” Andy squeaked.

Chef Rocco closed his eyes, trying with all his might to keep from losing his temper in front of the cameras. Finally, he pointed to the Polosky sisters. “Champions,” he whispered. Then he shuffled off the set.

“Ahhhh!” Sasha and Polly hugged each other and jumped up and down.

Art by David Leonard

Andy and Eva sulked toward their parents in the audience. Mom wrapped the kids in a hug. “You two did great.”

“That was the worst thing that’s ever happened on Champion Chef,” Andy moaned.

“Now we have to do chores for the rest of our lives!” Eva cried.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, you would have had to do chores anyway,” Dad said.

“Nuh-uh,” Andy said. “We would have had money.”

“That’s not why we work,” Dad said.

“That’s why you work,” Eva replied.

Dad shook his head. “I work because that’s God’s plan for me.”

Eva gave Dad a skeptical look.

“I’m serious,” Dad said. “Work is part of God’s design to give us purpose and bring him glory. It feels good to make something in the kitchen, right?”

“Sure,” Eva said.

“That’s the way God planned it. We always think we’ll be happiest when we get to be lazy, but the truth is that working often brings much more joy because it’s what we were made to do. When we fulfill God’s purpose for our lives by working hard, we bring glory to him.”

The kids sighed and glanced back at the crew cleaning up their mess.

“We should probably help out, huh?” Eva asked.

“What do you think?” Dad replied.

“I think it’s bringing them lots of joy,” Andy said.

“Andy!”

What’s the Point

Genesis 2:15 says, “The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” Work is a good gift given to us even before Adam and Eve sinned. In fact, God worked when he created the world (Genesis 2:2). It is important to work hard, not just so we can get money or praise, but so we can represent God well to the world and gratefully serve our Maker who has given us all things (Colossians 3:23–24).