Something Challenging This Way Comes

"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients." - Julia Child


Well...what if I want to do both?

I recently watched a YouTube video about a dad in England who made his 6-year old son an Angry Birds cake. Not only is it decorated and built like the structures in the games (with the pigs and birds) but...it's playable!! He added his own slingshot and the little boy could fire the birds!!

Oh yes...it's pretty awesome. I highly recommend it if 1) you are a fan of (or addicted to) the game and/or 2) you like cool baked goods.

Anyway, this led me to thinking about that Food Network Challenge show and Iron Chef and how I like challenges myself. So I enlisted the help of my partner-in-crime, Andy, to help me create a list of challenges for me to do. As it stands, here they are (in no particular order):

1) Baking - this could be a taste, decorating, designing, characters, structures, etc
2) Duplicate - this is to duplicate a restaurant dish as closely as possible
3) Secret Ingredient - basically Iron Chef baby!
4) Instruction - instructing someone else to cook a recipe (without helping - physically)
5) Edible - reconstructing someones least favorite foods into something they will eat
6) Throwdown - head to head competition with another person (minus Bobby Flay) :-(
7) Distraction - making a dish while someone tries to distract you (safely)
8) Cocktail - creating an original recipe (use to do this all the time..but I'm a bit rusty)
9) Pumpple - taken out of the Baking category for its own challenge (tune in for that one!)
10) Lobster - cook my own lobster and create a dish with it
11) Outdoor - bring all ingredients to a park to cook with a grill only
12) Inhibited - still working the details out on this one, but safety would be watched here!

There will new challenges added as we think of them, but each challenge will have its own set of rules, supervision and I'm sure judging criteria. We will post photos and maybe even videos to show the successes and failures of these challenges...

So be sure to tune in!!

Christmas 2010 in Review

The morning began just like every other Christmas morning....the smell of bacon permeated the apartment as I fried it up. Better than coffee...I think. I was working on the finishing touches to my Christmas tradition...the breakfast.

For as long as I could remember, we would have a breakfast souffle that just could knock your socks off. Sure...its one of the simplest things you could make...but its not Christmas until I have it.

Anyway, I was cooking the bacon to top it all off...and Robyn emerged from her room...

"Mmmm, bacon.....Merry Christmas!" Well...I agree in the order of priorities!

Anyway...I put the breakfast in the oven, Robyn started her coffee...and the it was STOCKING TIME! Yes, stockings take place before presents and before breakfast...and its a free-for-all!

Once we finished were finished, , I played "elf" (as Robyn's father says) and passed out the gifts from under the tree. Then breakfast came out of the oven and we enjoyed the tastiness of the season!!! YUM YUM!

Now...down to business. Traditionally...in my family, we open gifts from youngest to oldest. With only two of us...we just switched off opening presents.

One of Robyn's gifts was 50 cookie cutters from Andy...which she was thrilled about, calling it "her own Animal Cracker set."


We continued to open presents, back and forth, and finally Robyn opened her final present...from me...that I told her she had to open last....and this was why...

That's right....her very own Kitchen Aid mixer...which ps, she hugged and didn't let go of for a while. She is now trying to decide what recipe to break it in on. Haha!

All in all...it was a very nice Christmas...

With a lot of dead wrapping paper left...displaying the battle that we won...

I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas...and won your own wrapping battles!