Tonight we finally fulfilled our children's repeated requests to do a mock Chopped competition. Chopped is a mystery ingredient cooking competition on TV. We went in constrained expectations and...were pleasantly surprised.
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| The mystery ingredients were grapes, squash (which none of them like to eat, we were curious how they would treat it), a hot dog, and a cheese stick. |
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| Quinton, getting his ingredients chopped up. At first, he just thought he was making himself dinner, and went to town eating it after cutting it all up. |
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| Payge, ketchuping her dogs. |
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| Chayce getting into the freeze dried yogurt. |
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| Zachary, making jam. |
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| Quinton, getting inspired. |
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| Chayce made tako-chan hot dogs, sauteed squash fries with garlic powder grated cheese sprinkled on top. In the yellow cup was vanilla milk, and in the blue cup was pomegranate yogurt bites (dehydrated yogurt) with fresh squeezed grape juice, served chilled. Jillian indicated that everything Chayce made was something she would eat again. Stephen liked the drinks. |
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| Zachary made cheese stuffed hot dog, nuked with the squash on top. The squashed was re-cooked with chili powder, garlic, adobo, and butter. The sauce for the squash was made with ketchup, yellow mustard, dijon mustard, frank's hot sauce, chili powder, garlic, and adobo. On the buttered toast was jam made from grapes, sugar, cinnamon. In the cup was milk with brown sugar, white sugar, cinnamon, and freeze dried cherries, served heated. The judges both thought the squash was excessively seasoned, but liked the jam (Stephen kept eating it) and the milk. |
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| Payge made little squash bowls filled with cheese, dehydrated squash, and corn. Payge is the most vocal disliker of squash, and the judges critiqued her for not really using the ingredient. She made a pudding with milk, cinnamon, vanilla, lemonade powder, with dried cherries on top (the lemonade powder caused it to curdle, and Payge rediscovered ricotta! If she had just sweetened it more it would have been fantastic as a sweet dish). Toasted bread dogs with ketchup. Grapes with cinnamon water. |
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| Quinton made soup with hot dogs, cheese, and grapes flavored with cinnamon. He stirred it lots. The judges said good effort and even succeeded at eating parts of it. |
