For competitive home cook Merry Graham, working with food is an art form with endless possibilities — one that’s filled with striking colors, flavors and textures just waiting to be “painted” onto the canvas of her cookware.

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“I love food because it’s artistic expression,” Graham told the KHTS Features team as they gathered around the welcoming kitchen of her home in Newhall. “You want these flavors and ingredients to marry each other, and to pop with color.”

Some may recognize Graham from her appearance on the Food Network’s “Clash of the Grandmas,” while others may have seen her on several episodes of the CBS daytime talk show “Rachael Ray” or in the top 10 of A&E’s “World Food Championships” three years in a row.

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Named “The Healthiest Cook in America” by renowned chef Bobby Flay in 2011, Graham has taken home more than $150,000 in prize money from over 50 different cooking competitions, and was even featured on the marquee in New York’s infamous Times Square.

“Not many people get their mug on the marquee shining in bright lights in Time Square,” Graham chuckled. “There’s always tons of wonderful recipes out there, and so for you to get the top recipe maybe in 10,000 entries, … it’s a nice validation and reward for the hard work you’ve put in.”

Before her rise to fame in the competitive cooking world, Graham first realized her lifelong love of cooking could become something more after winning a trip to the Aspen Food and Wine Festival in Colorado back in 2008.

Graham recalled walking around the prestigious festival taking in the sheer fervor of those around her, from celebrity chefs to everyday mothers and grandmothers like herself, and thinking, “Oh my goodness — I just found my tribe!”

Experiencing the festival ignited a passion Graham said had been long dormant while she raised her four children, and opened up the possibility she could find what she called an “avenue of total freedom in cooking.”

“I hopped on the airplane and was flying home, and I said to my girlfriend, ‘The minute I get home, I’m going to check Google and see how I can win another one of these food and wine festival trips,” Graham said. “And sure enough … up popped the world of what I call contest cooking.”

One of Graham’s favorite contest experiences was winning third place in “The Great American Cookbook Competition” in 2014, where talk show host Rachael Ray offered five finalists the chance at publishing their very own cookbook.

Although Graham originally fell just short of becoming a finalist for her proposal of “5 Sauces! 50 Recipes!” she found herself scrambling to get on a plane to New York just hours after an unexpected phone call from the show.

Graham got to be on the set of “Rachael Ray” for an entire week learning about the production of a cooking show while she competed in a series of creative challenges for the grand prize.

“I loved all the challenges they gave us,” Graham recalled, adding with a laugh, “Mind you, all the competitors had had a couple of months to prepare for those challenges — so I was walking in winging it.”

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For her first international competition, Graham traveled to Scotland in 2011 to compete in the Golden Spurtle World Porridge Making Championship with her award-winning black bean porridge patties, which she made no less than 19 times in preparation for the cook-off.

“That was a really fun one,” Graham said. “There’d be kilts, there would be bagpipe players in front us — they even had a little shot of Scotch before you started the competition!”

Graham’s most recent endeavor was to bake eight different kinds of bread as her entry submission to the 2017 National Festival of Breads in Kansas, and she expects to find out if she made it as a finalist in April.

Though Graham has seen almost a decade of success in the competitive cooking world, she’s hoping to step back from contests in the near future and instead become a brand ambassador for a few different food companies.

“I love competition — I have grown and learned a lot,” she said. “But from that, now I want to be a brand ambassador, which would simply mean that a company would hire me for every one of my recipes, for every one of those photos I take. I would really enjoy it, because what I’m really all about is recipe development and perfection of a really nice recipe.”

Follow Merry’s cooking adventures on social media using @amerryrecipe or on her food blog, AMerryRecipe.com.

All photos courtesy of Merry Graham, AMerryRecipe.com. Original recipe below by Merry Graham.

See the full collection of KHTS Feature Stories and Videos on hometownstation.com here.

Recipe: Merry’s Easy Game Day Chili with Homemade Tortilla Chips and Fresh Salsa Verde

Chili:

1 package (12 ounce) mild ground pork sausage

1 red onion, chopped

1 cup chopped celery

1 cup chopped tri-color mini pepper

1 cup chopped yellow squash

1 tablespoon ancho chili powder

1 tablespoon ground cumin

1/2 tablespoon smoked paprika

1/2 tablespoon ground coriander

1/2 jar (25 ounces) garlic pasta sauce

1 can (30 ounces) chili beans

1 can (40 ounces) black beans

Salt to taste

Salsa Verde

1 large poblano chili pepper (4-5 ounces)

3 cups (12 ounces) tomatillos, quartered

1 (3-inch) Jalapeño chili pepper

3 medium garlic cloves

3 green onions, chopped in 2 inch pieces

1 cup (about 1 ounce) cilantro leaves

1 teaspoon fine sea salt

Garnish: chopped cilantro

Homemade Tortilla Chips

18 (6-inch) yellow or white corn tortillas, cut into eighths

1 1/2 cup coconut oil

1 1/2 cup canola oil

Fine sea salt

To make the chili: In a large frying pan, over medium high heat, brown sausage, onion, celery, mini peppers, and squash for 3 minutes. Add spices and cook over medium-low heat for 4 minutes. Add pasta sauce, chili beans, black beans and water. Simmer on low for 10 minutes. Add ginger, garlic and cook 4 minutes. Pour in remaining ingredients, bring to a bowl and simmer for 10 minutes. Pour into bowls and garnish with fresh cilantro.

To make the salsa verde: Place poblano and jalapeño directly on a gas grill to blacken. Rotate peppers over flame frequently until all sides are charred. Place peppers under a clean kitchen towel to steam for 5 minutes. Scrape most of the charred skin off and into halves and discard seeds and membrane. Place both peppers into the medium bowl of a food processor. Add tomatillos, garlic, green onions, cilantro, and sea salt, and pulse 3 times. Scrape bowl and pulse one more time until salsa like consistency. Set aside.

To make homemade tortilla chips: Heat 2 inches of a blend of the two oils in a high-walled skillet to 360 degrees F. Fry the tortilla strips in batches until light golden brown. Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle lightly with fine sea salt.

Optional Bread Bowls: Heat oven to 400°F. Cut ¼-inch off top of pretzel rolls or French rolls and hollow the center leaving a ¼-inch wall. Brush rolls with whisked egg white mixed with ½ T of water. Roll rolls in crushed tortilla chips and bake for 5 minutes.

See the full collection of KHTS Feature Stories and Videos on hometownstation.com here.