Wednesday, October 28, 2009

(This is a long overdue post since Jamie said I would post it as a follow up to his blog and I never did...oopsie) :)

Family Friday night started as a ploy to divert the girls attention from something they were not going to get to do (I don't remember what, but I do remember we went for some ice cream special at Culvers for the first one) and it has become one of our favorite family occurrences. Admittedly, Jamie has come up with the most creative Family Friday nights and Chopped has to be one of his best. The girls and I love watching The Food Network together and we have managed to suck Jamie in for one of the shows. He explained Chopped on his blog, but basically chefs compete in an appetizer, entree and dessert round to create dishes from a mystery basket of ingredients. We decided to have our own version of the competition. Tori and Isabelle competed in a dessert round. Jamie and Macie were the designated judges and I was the kitchen helper (they are only 8 and 6). We all headed to the grocery store (always a fun excursion) and Jamie and I strategically picked some ingredients for the girls to use. At home we filled their "mystery baskets" (aka lunch bags) with the special ingredients for their desserts. Their ingredients were E.L. Fudge cookies, a roll of biscuits and marshmallows. I use biscuits to make monkey bread and homemade doughnuts, both of which they help me with, so I was hoping that would trigger some ideas in their minds. They had 20 minutes to complete their desserts. At the end of the time the girls threw up their hands, just like they do on t.v. :) Tori was laughing so hard as she did her presentation to Jamie she could not even get any words out.



Tori made a biscuit stuffed with melted marshmallow, chopped E.L. Fudge Cookie. She served it with a ball of peanut butter mixed with more E.L. Fudge cookies.






Isabelle made a deep fried doughnut stuffed with marshmallow, peanut butter, chopped E.L. Fudge cookies and jelly and topped with syrup.





Jamie got the pleasure of eating both desserts. He wimped out on a decision and made them co-winners-lame ;). He gave Isabelle the award for creativity and Tori the award for taste. We decided for future Chopped Championships we should not give them so many sweet ingredients, as eating their desserts completely would have made us very sick.

4 comments:

Full of JOY said...

AMAZING! Chuck and I should do this on our next date night!!! =)

Anonymous said...

that is awesome!

Richardson Family said...

Happy belated Birthday Mac! You Rock. Love Tori's Jonas Brothers lunchbox, even though I have no idea who they are!?!!!
Miss you guys.

Unknown said...

Oh my gosh! This is SO so SO fun Gretchen. I want to come to the next one. Seriously! : ) Are you going to do appetizers the next time. I thought Isabelle's was going to be ok but then the pancake syrup kind of threw me over the edge... : ) I can't imagine how wonderful it tasted. LOVE the hand throw up in the air. Love your family. Love you and your mad mommy skills! I just showed Kaish this and he was very excited to do one ourselves. We will have to make poor little Shoshi participate. So far, he has hated EVERY american food we have given him except for chocolate chip cookies : ) Maybe chocolate chip cookie dough can be part of our ingredient basket.

So, so, SO wish you were coming to Dallas with me. I am scared. And fat. I wouldn't be scared if you were with me. I know you would keep loving me in my fat state : ( but will these strangers like me? Probably not!