Chopped–Yoh Edition 2020

The girls (ages 8 and 10) have been watching MANY cooking shows – Chopped, Chopped Jr, Sugar Rush, Nailed It, and Crazy Delicious to name the top contenders.  They asked if they could do Chopped here at home.  At first, I said, no.  They asked again.  I said, maybe.  They continued to ask.  I said, yes, I would work to make this happen, but they needed to give me time.  (This should not be a lesson that persistence pays off when you want something, just a lesson that summer maybe needed something fun added to it.)

So, here is the low-down on Chopped if you have never watched it.  (Although it is an enjoyable show on Food Network, and I recommend watching it.)  Contestants go through 3 rounds – an appetizer round, an entrée round, and a dessert round.  Each round the contestants are given a baskets with 3-4 ingredients that are revealed when they open up their baskets.  They are usually very unusual ingredients or flavors paired with maybe on normal ingredient that would be used in cooking.  At the end of each round, judges taste (and judge, duh) the dishes they made.  A contestant’s dish is then “chopped” at the end of each round, and that person is eliminated. 

I looked on Pinterest and on the internet (because, you know, Pinterest doesn’t have everything) for ideas on how to host your own Chopped.  Actually, I wasn’t even looking for how to host it; I was looking for ideas to put in the mystery baskets.  Well, many of the blogs, articles, and sites talked about how to host it, but they did not share what they used when they did the event.  So, I had to use my own brain to come up with ideas – that’s called the “good ole fashioned way”!  I managed to make a list of 6 possible entrée round combinations and 4 dessert rounds.  Then, I sent the list to family and posted on Facebook to allow votes for the final combination for the night.  It made it fun and took the decision out of my hands.

I called in some judges  - Lilli and Emma (Lilli’s cousin) and me.

I called in some consultants to allow the girls to bounce ideas off someone and also make sure we didn’t eat raw meat and help with handling things in and out of the oven if needed.  (The show doesn’t have consultants, but they made our night go more smoothly.)  They were Steph R. and Grandma E.

The girls selected the host – Jeremy.

And we allowed some audience members – Sam and Grandma Y.

The girls were excited all week and all the day of.  It was probably as exciting as a birthday party for them.  They picked their aprons, their outfits, practiced techniques with play-doh, and watched a few more shows to prep for it. 

On Thursday, July 23 at 5pm the show began.  And it was so fun!  And so good to eat!

Being introduced by the host

    

Basket #1: Pillsbury refrigerated biscuits, 1 lb ground beef, and Chihuahua cheese (check out this link for our Mennonite connection!)

The girls had 5 minutes to consult.  They both came up with similar ideas, but the end product ended up being fairly different. 

They had 40 minutes to prepare the food with a 5 minute cushion for plating it for the judges.  They finished with at least 5 minutes to spare. 

    

Entrée Round: Madison – Open-faced hamburgers with chihuahua cheese with a side salad of lettuce, carrots, and garbanzo beans topped with ranch

    

Entrée Round: Ellie – Hamburger sliders seasoned with paprika, oregano, salt and pepper topped with chihuahua cheese with a fruit and green side salad with raspberry vinaigrette and salt and vinegar chips.

    

After much deliberation, Madison’s dish was chopped; Ellie had a slight edge on the seasoning of the meat. 

Basket #2: Instant vanilla pudding, fun-size Butterfinger bars, and saltine crackers

5 minutes to consult; this time with a different consultant.  Again, they had similar ideas, but they looked and tasty a bit different from each other in the end.

40 minutes to fix a dessert.  They both had plenty time to spare on this round. 

     

Dessert Round: Madison – Vanilla pudding parfait with layers of saltines and Butterfinger topped with strawberries, blueberries and a dollop of whipped cream

Dessert Round: Ellie – Vanilla Pudding Pie in a bowl with a toasted saltine and butter crust and topped with Butterfinger crumble and whipped cream

Judges determined that Ellie’s dish was chopped due to the burst of fruit flavor in Madison’s dish.

The night was a success and not as crazy as I imagined (although it was a bit of a production).  One thing I am glad I did was include the consultants.  I think they had to work pretty hard :)  But it freed me up to take pictures, wash dishes during/between rounds, and answer questions as needed.  At the end of the night, most of it was done and I didn’t have hours of clean up.

The food turned out good enough to eat.  In fact, it was all devoured on the judges plates and whatever was leftover on trays. 

I had ordered pizza, made a barley salad, and had some chips for all participant to eat in case there wasn’t enough food or the food was not so amazing.  I ended up with a lot of leftovers, but that was fine. 

I was so proud of the girls.  I think they were so proud of themselves as well.  If I build their confidence in their cooking skills, I may be out of job… and that would be okay!

If you want to watch a video of the night, you can find it here.  (I have no idea how to edit it to make it super cool, but I did figure out how to string all my video clips together with imovie app; so, I figure I get a gold star for that!)

Florida (Part 2)

So, besides the beach, we did do a few things.  Jim and Diane treated us to a pontoon boat ride on the Matanzas River.  Alyssa, Jeremy’s cousin, came down from Jacksonville to join us for the afternoon and evening.  While the weather was a bit dicey, it was a good time.  We pretty much tried to outrun the rain for about an hour of the ride.  We actually did a pretty good job not getting caught in the drenching kind.  Then, it kinda cleared off and just remained a little cloudy and cooler.  I definitely didn’t mind the clouds; the sun would’ve made it pretty intense.  Jim drove a majority of the time; Diane took over for a time.

A bit of the crew…

Then, we were off and boating. 

We saw some small pods of dolphins on our way out and back.  It was extremely cool; it was hard to keep the boat moving and not just settle in for the show.  You can see a number of them surfacing here while the girls watch.  I have some video, but it always a trick to upload, so we’ll see if I ever try. 

We watched this tug boat maneuver this monster, too.

We made it to this fort before heading back.  It is Fort Matanzas National Monument which was built by Spanish soldiers as the back door protecting the city by preventing the British sailing through Matanzas Bay from invading St. Augustine.  You can access it via a ferry for a tour during regular times.  We also saw this cool sail boat, which looked like a pirate’s boat and seemed fitting to have anchored near the fort.

    

Diane had a few fun things planned for while we were there.  There was the painting of the toenails night.  They all had the bright pink beach color.  Diane confided that her mom never allowed that color on her when she was little, so she asked my permission first.  How times have changed!

   

I gave Ellie double French braids for the first time.  She rather liked them. 

    

She organized a painting night as well.  Jeremy and I worked together on one beach scene.  The girls both did their own.  While they are all a little different, there is not much variety – all beach sunsets/sunrises/moonlit.  It was fun.  I’ve never really painted before, so I had very low expectations for myself.  I was pleasantly surprised how it turned out… not good enough to become an artist by trade.  (I’ll leave that to my cousins and uncle; see some of their work here, here, and here.) 

Diane said she usually tried to walk on the beach most mornings.  Jeremy and I headed out the first morning and found a great bike/walking path that was almost entirely shaded.  I used it two mornings.  Jeremy went one day, and biked two others.  Diane and the girls beach walked and looked for shells.  They also saw turtle tracks from where the sea turtles had come ashore, laid eggs, and returned.  There were many nests protected by tape on the beach.  You can see the tracks to the right of the girls in this picture.

Jeremy and I went out on a date to JT’s Seafood Shack on our last night.  We ate outside on a patio with live music.  It was relaxing. (Ignore the poor photography; I am awful at selfies.)

While we were there, the girls had extra alone time with Diane.  (This was really the reason we were invited to come – so Diane could hang out with the girls.  Jeremy and I were just leeches in the big scenario.)  They baked brownies,

    

Witnessed a double rainbow from a hammock on a 3rd floor deck,

  

Finalized their artwork,

    

And Snapchatted some pictures.

    

Thank you, Jim and Diane, for being such gracious hosts.  Our memories were magical!

We headed home on Friday morning.  Entertained mostly by electronics.  (When they were little, I never allowed that much screen time – even in the car; I’m slipping.)  We did have a fun moment where we shared the Legend of Falling Rock with them.  It is still up for debate how much of it is true.

Then, we finally saw home (well, about 3 hours before home, but still…)

We were home by Saturday at 3pm.  Mom invited us over to collect the dog they graciously watched while we were gone.  She also fed us, which was helpful since there really wasn’t anything left in my fridge.  Welcome back from vacation, right?

This was a good break from life, from home, and from the same 30 mile radius. 

Florida (Part 1)

We were supposed to take our great trip outside. Our “exploring the national parks” trip.  It was going to be epic – 15 days, 5 national parks, a flight to Denver, thousands of miles traveling in the west, and grand memories.  But, we weren’t sure about flying these days – and our flight was delayed by day throwing off all my plans.  The parks are on a phasing in reopening and we weren’t sure if all the things we wanted to see would be opened. There would be multiple hotel rooms in many states – albeit the western ones with low COVID-19 numbers. And we just were a little uneasy when we had to make the decision. 

So, we canceled.  I called Frontier Airlines.  Waited for an hour on hold, only to be accidentally cut off.  Waited another hour on hold.  Worth my wait when I received a full refund for our flights.  I contacted the 5-6 other reservations I had made.  Most refunded.  One did not.  It was a sad feeling to have it all wiped out with no possibility of returning to it this year.  But, what’s done is done.

We started considering other options.  Not because we HAVE to go somewhere, but we thought that maybe there was some place to go that would be a good getaway without much risk. 

We contacted Jeremy’s aunt and uncle who had bought a house in Florida a little over a year ago to see if we could come down for a visit.  They were more than generous and opened their home to us.  So, we made the plans, picked our dates, the girls got excited, and then Florida’s numbers started to go up and up and up.  We kept our eye on this county’s numbers – lower than Wayne County, moving at a slow crawl.  We declared it safe. 

So, on July 4th, we loaded up the suitcases – packed a “sanitary bag” to house Clorox wipes, masks, hand sanitizers, etc – and hit the road.  902 miles (one way), 13 hours + stops (one way), 7 states, and 8 days.  It wasn’t epic, but it was still pretty big.  (Especially when the farthest you have traveled in the past 6 months is about 45 minutes in the car!)

                    

We made it there with a few stops.  Rest areas for bathrooms this trip.  Gas stations for, well, just gas (no snacks).  Sonic for a special boost (lemon berry slush for the win… throwback from 1998 when I lived in Kansas for the summer).  Krispy Kreme for a HOT NOW doughnut – the only way to eat Krispy Kreme.  A hotel with an OUTDOOR pool; we were the only ones enjoying it for over an hour.  It was magnificent.

    

And then, we were there – Palm Coast, Florida. Home of Jim and Diane.  They had hamburgers and hot dogs ready for our first night’s supper served on their back deck.

Clean sheets on the beds. 

   

And a tour which included a trip to the upper deck.  This was where the girls had wanted to head “first thing” … it looked pretty cool in the pictures, and it lived up to the hype.

It was a beautiful location – just a tiny little walk to the end of the road, over the small dune, and right onto the beach. See that blue house on the right.  That was our place as seen from the dune.

See the dune? That’s how far it is from our place.

The beach is where we headed right after supper to enjoy the waves and sand

        

And the wildlife… dead crabs, lesser egrets, egrets, and a sting ray!!  (The guy said he caught a 6 foot spinner shark – yes, shark!! – at this spot the night before.  He let the sting ray go, not sure about the shark.)

              

Our one and only family picture was taken this night because I said, “If we don’t do it now, we will forget.” (and we did).

From then on, the week was a blur of cool retreats inside, slathering sunscreen, walks on the beach, catching waves, slathering sunscreen, carrying umbrellas and chairs, digging in the sand, eating supper, talking together, slathering sunscreen, and sleeping. 

Beach and sand made for good walking, good building, and good sitting.

              

The girls played and played in the waves.  Waves that crashed on the shoreline.  And as they got braver, they ventured out past the break and rode up and down on waves with Jeremy and I farther out.  It was so fun to watch them become more courageous both with the ones that crashed on the shallow water at them and with the deeper ones.  They also learned to “read” the waves to know when they would crash.  We only misread a few… :)

            

Madison was really good at grabbing shells as the waves sucked back out and revealed their treasures.  Jeremy shell hunted with her some, too.  She found a lot of scallop type shells.  She also started finding parts of a more spiral-like shell.  She spent a lot of time doing this.  Ellie spent most of the same amount of time digging/cooking in the sand.

    

I made supper a few nights for all of us.  I tried to recreate the magic of the rice bowls from Father’s Day.  I just used the chipotle chicken recipe with the avocado crema; I think a sauce is what makes the bowl.  Jeremy did a great job grilling the chicken – juicy and perfectly done.  They were amazing.  The girls felt the chicken was a little spicy, so maybe the milder chicken was better for them.  Either way, no one really complained :)

    

Intermission…. because this is a lot of pictures!