January 9th, 2015

George S. Patton: "Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration  of victory."

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  Now that the holidays are over and we've finished our Christmas movie marathon, we're back at it.  We watched Around the World in 80 Days (1956) which was one of the better ones we've watched.  It was longer, much longer than it really needed to be, but it was a good story line.   

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our eighteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  As usual, I'm getting nervous as Damon is scurrying about the kitchen in search of his last two ingredients for my bag.

 

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.  We agreed to turn it up a notch and start thinking more outside the box for the mandatory ingredients we'd be picking for the other!

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

Ground beef, shredded colby jack cheese, red onion, and Irish white cheddar!  What to do, what to do?  What would you do?

 

I was in the mood for Mexican and I can totally make this work, so after a minute or two of thinking if this is too simple, or if I'm brilliant, I roll with it.

I start rummaging through the cupboards, fire up the skillet and start warming up the oven.  We both learned pretty early on in this game that it's better to have everything in the kitchen out and ready just in case!

So I'm browning the meat, cutting my vegetables, getting out the tortilla chips, some taco shells, and a few other random containers of left overs from the fridge.  We are really against wasting food so when we have something left over from another dinner or we only used a half a can of something, we put it in a Tupperware and throw it in the fridge and we work it into another one of our meals before it goes bad.

 

I'm making nachos with a nacho-taco, yes a nacho-taco!  In the ground beef, I diced up some chipolte peppers in adobe sauce and the red onion.  With the white cheese, I make a quick bechamel cheese sauce which I will use for the nachos.  The ground beef will go for both the taco and the nachos.  I'm doing pretty good on time but forgot to think up a side so, I quickly grab a can of corn and a can of black beans, drain and rinse and put them together, salt, pepper, and add some chopped green onion on top.  It tastes pretty good so while I contemplate whether or not I want to warm the little side salad or serve it cold, I move on to dicing up some tomatoes and getting all my other miscellaneous condiments from the fridge.  

For the taco, I use a black bean dip to hold a flour tortilla to the outside of a corn taco shell, then fill it up with ground beef, shredded cheese, Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), tomatoes, and green onion.

 

For the nachos, I use tortilla chips, topped with the ground beef, tomatoes, just a few black beans, green onion, and then cover of that with the cheddar cheese sauce I made, top that with a dollop of Greek yogurt, and sprinkle some green onions on top with a few pickled jalapenos!

I plate up and serve Damon his dinner with four minutes to spare! YEA BITCH!!!!  

I don't know how creative I was being but I am pretty pleased with myself! The bad-ass cook in me, taking another YEA BITCH moment, as she remembers the "magnets" seen from Breaking Bad.  

 

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 9.5 points. 

Damon = 78.5, Christina = 80, and that puts me back in the lead, but only by a little!

Now that we're done with our challenge we're off to watch The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Damon's seen it before and he swears it's not as dreadfully slow as some of the others we've seen so here goes!  

 

Next Friday will be my turn to pick ingredients for Damon!!! I can't wait.