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Document 2.1: Company Picnic

According to the company's employee handbook, ACMECorp holds a big-ass barbecue every year for its company picnic. But apparently plans have changed, since one of the pages paperclipped to the scrapbook is a photo of your boss standing on the set of the TV show "Iron Chef." You cannot determine what he has in his hand but you are sure it is the secret ingredient.

Come down to Human Resources to pick your secret ingredient by random draw. From the time when you draw your secret ingredient, you will have four hours to prepare four servings each of an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert, all of which must prominently feature the secret ingredient. "Prominently feature" means that if someone were to taste the dish and give it a descriptive name, that name would necessarily include the secret ingredient. For example, if your secret ingredient is salt (don't worry, it won't be), you could not have ordinary oatmeal cookies as your dessert and call them "salted oatmeal cookies" (unless they really had a lot of salt on them; yuck).

You must put your food on the table at Human Resources before the time limit is up. Because we do not want two teams coming in at the same time, we require you to make an appointment for adjudication thirty minutes ahead of time. If you are late for your appointment we cannot promise you another one within your time limit. If you go over the time limit, you will draw another ingredient and do the whole thing again.

We suggest you put the dishes on disposable paper or plastic plates, so as to minimize the confusion over returning items to you. Please also bring disposable silverware or chopsticks if needed. We regret that the food itself cannot be returned.

HR will taste the dishes you have prepared, and make the final call as to whether the dishes meet the requirements. In addition, the team[s] that we judge to have made the best meal[s] will get a prize.


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