STAUNTON – Ashlyn Miller fell to the floor and just started crying. The judges had announced that Team 106 had won. That was her team. They had done it. National champions. 

As 17-year-old Ashlyn told the story of her emotional response to winning, her older sister, Kylee Miller, 19, just looked at her. And when the younger sister finished talking, Kylee jumped in. 

“She’s a music theatre kid,” Kylee said. “It just comes out.”

But it was more than that for Ashlyn, a homeschooled student from Staunton. For the rest of the group, the 4-H Food Challenge had been a fun activity over the years, but for Ashlyn, this is, or at least she hopes will be, her life. 

“Cooking is my passion,” she said. “That’s what I’m hoping to pursue as a career. I want to be a chef now because of Food Challenge.”

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From a young age Ashlyn enjoyed helping in the kitchen. Her Christmas presents would be cookbooks and aprons and chef’s toques. It wasn’t, however, her lifelong ambition to be a chef until she began participating in Food Challenge.

“I was like, ‘Wow’, this is what I like to do,” she said. “This is my thing.”

That thing, Food Challenge, went from being a local event for the team to a national competition this year. 

Think of the television show “Chopped,” with a few twists and done at the largest state fair in the country. That’s the National 4-H Food Challenge, an annual event held in Dallas, Texas, at the Texas State Fair.

This year, Team 106, also known as the Spice Girls, won the event with their dish the Best of the Blue Ridge Veggie Pasta. In addition to the Miller sisters, the team included 14-year-olds Jessica Layman and Moriah McCaskill. 

The group received a bag of ingredients that, until they opened it, was a mystery to them. Inside the bag was an acorn squash and some penne pasta. 

The first thing that Ashlyn Miller thought — “That is a big acorn squash.”

Then the thoughts of all four went to what’s next. They had 40 minutes to combine those two ingredients with other ingredients they could find in the competition’s pantry. They had some freedom in what they used from the pantry.

Not only did they have to create the dish, but they also had to come up with a presentation for the judges that includes nutritional information. 

It was a lot of stress, but well worth it when they won. 

The rest of the group enjoyed being part of Food Challenge, although none of them are planning on making food preparation a career.

“I came and watched when the 2016 team from Virginia was practicing,” said Jessica Layman, a Fort Defiance High School freshman. “I thought it was an interesting activity to try to do.”

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Layman had never had much interest in helping in the kitchen before Food Challenge. Her mom said that really hasn’t changed too much since the competition.

“Hey, I’ve chopped for you,” Layman told her mom. 

McCaskill’s mom saw information about the event on the 4-H Facebook page. She showed it to her daughter. 

“My first thought was, ‘That’s just like the cooking shows. And I’ve really always enjoyed watching the cooking shows,” said McCaskill, who lives in Verona and attends The Covenant School in Charlottesville.

The Miller sisters’ mom also saw the information on Facebook and got them started. It was the first 4-H activity either had done. Since Ashlyn enjoyed cooking, it seemed like a natural fit for her. Kylee Miller, who attends Piedmont Valley Community College in Charlottesville, kind of got dragged along for the ride. 

“Cooking has never necessarily been an interest for me,” she said. “But I love science and there’s a lot of science behind cooking. Cooking is a form of chemistry. So I was excited to see the nutritional, sciency aspect of cooking.”

The group, which practiced every Monday for months at Hebron Presbyterian Church in Staunton, worked to raise more than $7,000 for the trip. Ashlyn Miller was a big part of that, making and selling more than $1,000 worth of apple pies.

“So many pies,” her sister said. 

There were days she was making as many as six pies. That wasn’t easy with school and work and other commitments. How long does it take to make an apple pie?

“A lot longer than you’d think,” Ashlyn Miller said. “Because I make them completely from scratch.”

She estimated it takes an hour for preparation and an hour to bake per pie. She thinks she made at least 30 pies total. Asked if apple pies are her specialty, she started laughing.

“It is now, apparently,” she said. 

Now that they’ve won the national competition they can’t compete again. So this was a good way to go out. 

“There’s so many good things that have come out of Food Challenge,” Ashlyn Miller said. “We have all worked so hard. There was so much built up there and it was just this culmination of that in this moment. When they said Team 106, I was like, ‘We did it.'”

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