October 17th, 2014

George Bernard Shaw: "There is no love sincerer than the love of food."

This week we continued our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture in history, and watching them all in order.  We watched All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) which was really slow for a war movie and like most war movies, it didn't have a very happy ending and that sucks!  Last night, we watched a western, Cimarron (1931). While it isn't going to be added to my list of favorite westerns, but it was okay.  Tonight we watched Grand Hotel (1932) which has to be my favorite of all the ones we've watched so far, it was just a little more upbeat, it had a better story line, and better acting.  

Anyway, It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our eleventh Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  We talked about it after completing ten challenges and decided that we would turn things up a notch.  We talked about various ways to do that, including doing some just awful things to each other such as on the TV show Cutthroat Kitchen but we decided that we might not be ready to go that far just yet.  So, instead we just decided that we were going to be a little more devious on what we give the other person and see how that goes.  We figured we had been a little easy on each other for the past 10 challenges, so we wanted to see if we could still make an awesome dish when we turned up the heat a bit. 

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.

And here's what Damon ended up with for tonight!

 

Okay, so I gave him two pork cutlets, a green apple, balsamic vinegar, and honey!  

You're probably thinking that this isn't a big challenge but I know that Damon likes his meat and he doesn't think there needs to be any fruit associated with it, period.  I've been waiting to do this challenge to him and now I finally get to give him meat and fruit!

Damon expected to get something like this at some point so he wasn't totally surprised but he still has to figure out what in the world to do with the ingredients since he hasn't done this before.  

After a few minutes debating what he wanted to do, he cleans the fat off his pork, searches for some ingredients in the cabinet, and gets to work!

He decides that he's going to sear the pork and then throw it in the oven to pan roast while he gets started on his apple and begins thinking about presentation. 

Now he's got his pork finishing in the oven and he starts to making a glaze of some butter, honey, and cinnamon to poach his apples in.  

  

 

Doing great on time, he finishes up his apples, makes some mashed potatoes and is getting his plates ready for the big finale.

It turned out great, he made his mashed potatoes with adobo peppers, glazed the pork with a balsamic vinegar reduction, and added the yummy cinnamon sweet poached apples on top!  He had just under two minutes to spare, and his dish was delicious!

 

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, he ended up with an average of 10 points, perfect score!  

Damon = 51.5, Christina = 42, and that puts him back in the lead!!

Next week is my turn to cook and his turn to turn up the heat on this challenge!

October 10th, 2014

Thomas Wolfe: "There is no spectacle on earth more appealing than that of a beautiful woman in the act of cooking dinner for someone she loves."

Tonight we went on to the second best picture movie of all time, The Broadway Melody, 1929.  Musicals definitely aren't Damon's thing but there are quite a few that I enjoy. I'm not sure I will add this movie to that list but it wasn't horrible.  It seemed like all the actors were over-acting but overall it wasn't that bad.

Anyway, It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our tenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  Damon thought it was his turn to cook up until last night so he hadn't thought about it and he confessed when I got home tonight that he still had not decided on the ingredients.  I think I might be in for some trouble tonight! 

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.

And here's what I ended up with for tonight!

Okay so he gave me a pound of ground beef, shredded cheese, a red onion, and yeah, a yellow onion too!  

Funny enough, During the movie, Damon had handed me a 1950-1960 New York Times Cookbook he had been thumbing through, and said maybe I should read this before my challenge, just to be funny.  I was like, really you found something out of here to inspire you?  He said he didn't he was just being funny, but I began thumbing through it and found all kinds of crazy recipes that called for bone marrow, or ox tail, or calf shins and I was really thinking Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot, nasty!  Because who the hell has this kind of shit in their house???  Anyway after about thirty minutes, I found something that I thought would be interesting and I kept that in my pocket thinking I might could use it on Damon on a future challenge.  Sure as shit, he gives me things that I could totally use to make the dish..... Hamburger Potato Roll.... Seriously, and the book said it was the most frequently asked for recipe by the New York Times from that time period?

I didn't remember the exact recipe from the cookbook or all the details but I did remember that it said it should bake for an hour.  Well, I only have an hour so I jump right on it, hoping I maybe could bake at a higher temp and get it done in time.  Potatoes go in to boil and I start cutting onion, I'm going to put the red in the roll and use the yellow with some green beans as a side dish.

I'm quickly realizing that I am so not going get this done in an hour but I'm already committed so here we go!  My potatoes are finally done, I should have used instant but that's not how I roll.  First, I use the lovely ricer we got as a wedding gift to mash the potatoes! 

Next I'm off to mixing them together with butter, milk, salt and pepper, and of course my shredded cheese!!!   
  

I have about twenty minutes left, so I mix the ground beef with bread cut into chunks, thyme, oregano, sage, salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flake, onion, garlic, and one egg.  Next, I spread out some bread crumbs on some wax paper and put my meat mixture on top of it and flattened it out.  Check me out, I'm out of time and no room for being a sissy here, no gloves and I always use gloves to touch raw meat!!

Next, I spread a layer of the mashed potatoes on top of the meat and begin to roll.

Okay I'm just under 20 minutes and I finally get my roll into the oven and again, I am so not going to get this cooked on time!!!  At any rate, Damon and I are both convinced this is going to be a pretty bad ass dish!

So, now I have nothing to do but clean up my mess while the roll bakes, so Damon helps me with clean up and we just wait.  The timer goes off and my hour has passed...... DAMNNNNNNN!!!!  Oh well, I knew I wasn't going to make it but it's looking pretty good in the oven!

I ended up being over by thirty minutes which sucks but it was inevitable.  The roll was close to being done so I cooked up some green beans with minced onion, garlic, butter, and salt and pepper. Nothing left to do but plate up.

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, I ended up with an average of 8.5 points!

Damon = 41.5, Christina = 42, and that puts me back in the lead but not by much!!

Next week is Damon's turn to cook and my turn to turn up the heat on this challenge!

October 3rd, 2014

Orson Welles: "Ask not what you can do for your country.  Ask what's for lunch."

Tonight we started our marathon of watching every movie that has ever won a Best Picture Oscar.  Of course, we started with the beginning, the very first movie to win the very first Best Picture Oscar was a movie called Wings in 1928.  It was a silent film and it was better than either of us expected but I have to admit, I had a hard time keeping my eyes open!  Not because the movie was so awful, I've just been exhausted the last couple of weeks.

Anyway, It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our ninth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.

And here's what Damon ended up with for tonight!

I pulled a little trick on Damon, all I gave him was one item, his protein and I went with Smoked Sausage! This can be a good thing because you get to chose the rest of what you use or it could be a bad thing because that leaves you with soooo many options.  

Damon decides pretty quickly that he's going to do kabobs and so he gets out some wooden skewers got them soaking in water, so they wont catch on fire under the broiler, then he started cutting up his peppers and onions that are going on the skewers with the sausage pieces.

Next, Damon's on to working on his side dish, cutting vegetables and getting some rice cooking.

Damon's got his kabobs all prepped and ready to go into the oven on high heat and quickly finishes up his rice by adding some left over adobo sauce, diced tomato, and green onion.
  

With several minutes to spare, Damon plates up and serves my dinner.  How professional does that look!

It looks great and tastes great!! We finish our dinner and talk scoring.  Damon of course is harder on himself than I think he should be.  To me the roasted vegetables and the seared smoked sausage went great with the veggies from the rice!!

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, Damon ended up with an average 9.5 points!

Damon = 41.5, Christina = 33.5, and that puts Damon back in the lead!!

Saturday we went to check out Lincoln's Apple Festival, the free apples and cider was worth the drive.  It was a much bigger event than we thought it would be.  It was pretty crowded but we had a good time.

Next week is my turn to cook!

September 26th, 2014

Mark Twain: "Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you like and let the food fight it out inside."

Today after work, we swung by the Bikes, Blues, & BBQ motorcycle rally in Fayetteville.  We've lived here four years now and haven't gone, so we thought we'd pop over and check things out.  Of course we saw some sweet bikes but really expected to see more tricked out bikes than we did.

At any rate, the amount of people there was pretty amazing and we were told that this is the third largest bike rally in the U.S.  Again, surprising just considering how massive Sturgis is compared to this.  We aren't bikers by any means but it was cool to see all the bikes and have a beer while we people/bike watched.

Okay, enough of that.  I had a pretty long week and I was pretty tired when we got home, but we still snuck in an episode of the Netflix show "Orange is the New Black".  We haven't finished watching the rest of the episodes of Flashpoint yet, but last week I got a little caught up in the drama of Orange is the New Black.  Anyway, It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our eighth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the four mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  Though, I don't feel like doing anything but laying around and watching TV, I figure the show must go on!  

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.

And here's what I ended up with for tonight!
 

Tyson grilled chicken strips, english muffins, cherry tomatoes, and provolone cheese.....  Hmmmm..... What would you make if you had to use all of those ingredients?  

I'm a little slugish and take awhile to figure out exactly what I want to do.  Damon feels sorry for me because he thought this might be an easy one for me.

I eventually get it together and start getting my pans out. The chicken is pre-cooked and while I'm not 100% sure what I want to do, I know I can thaw the chicken in a pan and get it warmed up while I formulate my master plan.  I take a look at our leftovers and see that we still have some of Damon's cheese sauce from a past challenge and some of the adobo flavored rice I made in a prior challenge.  I grab those out along with some small sweet peppers and green onion.

I use the rice and cheese to make a filling to make some stuffed peppers I will use for the side dish.

Next, I decide to dice up the chicken, quarter the tomatoes, chop up the cheese and throw it all into the skillet to get the cheese melted. I'm going with some type of open faced sandwich with stuffed peppers on the side.

I've got everything going and am doing okay on time when I decide that I'm going to top my little sandwiches with over-easy eggs.  I get the stuffed peppers into the broiler and finish up my eggs.
  

With only a few minutes left, I'm starting to feel the pressure that Damon must have felt last week, "How the hell long does it take to make a sandwich"?  At any rate, I start plating! 

With only minutes to spare, I plate up and serve Damon his dinner.

It turned out really good and to not be feeling 100% up to the challenge, I'm pretty impressed with myself!  We finish our dinner and talk scoring.

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, I ended up with an average of a perfect score, 10 points!

Damon = 32, Christina = 33.5, and that puts me back in the lead!!

 

Next week is my Damon's to cook!