September 5th, 2014

W.C. Fields: "I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food."

Today we got a new TV, and it was practically free!  I opened a new credit card that once you charge a certain amount, they give me $250.00 back.  Just with our every day spending were able to reach the amount and get the free money.  Damon came to town and we had lunch, our first time eating at Red Robin.  Pricey burgers but they were really good.

So anyway, after work, we set up our new TV and moved our old one into our bedroom.  We watched a few more episodes of Criminal Minds on Netflix.  We're finally on season 8 and, while we lost another main character, after 8 years, it's still an awesome show!

Anyway, as you know, it's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our fifth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the four mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  

Recap: The rules are simple; Damon has to make dinner using each of the 4 mystery food items that I put into his mystery bag.  He can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but he 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 his ingredients for the first time.

And here's what he ended up with!

A pound of ground chicken, carrots, green onions, and a box of savory herb stove top stuffing.  

Just think about what you would make for dinner if you had to use all of those ingredients. 

After seeing what he had to work with, Damon decided to make a type of casserole.  Damon wasn't sure that was a creative enough option but we don't do a lot of casserole's so basically anything he did with the ingredients was going to be something new for us. Plus, we don't use ground chicken ever and stove top only around the holidays, so I thought while the ingredients were pretty simple, he would have to cook with things we don't use too frequently.

So, having an idea of what to make, he's off!  Here he is frying up his chicken and and cutting his vegetables!

Damon's down about thirty minutes but he's got a good idea of what he's doing.  He's debating whether or not he wants to make a sauce to put on top of the casserole, which he wants to make less soupy and more of a quiche consistency.

He's got about 20 minutes left and he's putting the casserole together and putting it in the oven.  Now, he starts prepping a cheese sauce to drizzle over the top.

The sauce he is making has butter, flour, milk, Monterrey Jack cheese, and he also added some green chilies to it.

Damon's down to the wire and is starting to plate, and with just a little time to spare, here is his dish sitting before me.

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. 

His casserole turned out really good; I've never made stove top baked in the oven with other ingredients in it and I was worried it wouldn't work out well for him, but it came out really good and the cheese sauce was awesome! I could eat it with chips, honestly I could eat it with a spoon, but I am a huge cheese lover!

We did our scoring and I counted Damon off one point for flavor, just because I thought I think I liked the cheese sauce a little more than the casserole itself.  Damon also counted himself off one point for creativity.  He thought he should have thought more outside the box and not done just a casserole.  So, in the end, he ended up with an average of a solid 9 points!

Damon = 22, Christina = 13.5, can't wait to see what Damon has up his sleeve for me next week!

                                Next week is my turn to cook!