Chopped

We currently have cable - it came free for the first month when we signed up for Charter internet. We have managed to find a few shows we like, and one of them is Chopped. It's a cooking competition, and the boys love it. There are 3 rounds (appetizer, main entree and dessert), and they have mystery "basket ingredients" they have to incorporate into each meal. 

Spencer had the idea of having our own Chopped competition, so we did that over Christmas break. The three oldest boys participated, and Dave and I were the judges. We just had 2 rounds: lunch and dessert. The basket ingredients we gave them for lunch were: bacon, sugar snap peas and rice noodles. Plus they could use anything we had in the kitchen. This was Dallin's creation: bacon-wrapped rice noodles, spiced snap peas and a noodle salad. The snap peas were delicious, but I didn't like the bacon bits in the salad - real bacon would have been better.

Tyler made bacon and eggs with fried noodles. The bacon and eggs were cooked and seasoned perfectly, but the noodles were too crunchy. I think we gave them 40 minutes on this round.

Spencer made fried potatoes, onions and bacon over noodles with citrus snap peas. The potatoes were very good, and he had a beautiful presentation with fresh rosemary, but the snap peas were too sweet.

We didn't actually chop anyone, but we kept score for taste, presentation and creativity. We took a bunch of things out of the cupboard for each round. Obviously, this is for the dessert round. The basket ingredients were candy orange slices, pretzel rods and chocolate-filled wafer cookies. They had 30 minutes for the dessert round.

Dallin's dessert: brownie-topped wafer cookies with pretzel crumbs and brownie fudge with orange slices. That one would have worked better if he had longer to bake it. He wanted to cook it in the microwave, but I didn't let him after he severely burned some orange slices and stank up the kitchen. We tried to monitor them without interfering. They made everything completely by themselves.

Tyler went the extra mile and actually made chocolate chip cookies from scratch! He also melted chocolate and dipped the pretzel rods. He planned on making a sauce from the orange slices, but he ran out of time.

Spencer's dessert was delicious! He made a pretzel crust with brownie and chocolate mousse topped with berries, almond slices and softened orange candy pieces. He had a major advantage, though, because he makes dessert every week when we're on our date. Seriously, I didn't want it to be gone - it was that good. He was our Chopped champion! This was such a fun family activity, and the kids keep asking when we can do it again. It was helpful to see which cooking skills we still need to work on, but overall I was very impressed with their creations.