Iron Chef Peanuts

Today was another iron chef experience at the Cooper Household! Today Erik brought me peanuts as the secret ingredient! He got peanut butter, butter toffee peanuts, honey roasted peanuts, dry roasted peanuts, and even hot and spicy peanuts. So I had lots of peanuts to chose from! I love peanuts and peanut butter so this was a lot of fun for me. I love peanuts much more than Erik but he still enjoyed the food I made.

I made:

• Fruit and nut salad with peanut ginger dressing. This salad consisted of strawberries, nectarines, and butter toffee peanuts on a bed of lettuce. I mixed peanut butter, honey, ground ginger, and oil to create a dressing for it. It was yummy!
• Peanut chocolate oatmeal carmelitas. These were not actually cookies, rather it was oatmeal with peanut butter, chocolate, and caramel mixed together. I used hot and spicy peanuts to make it more interesting. This was Erik's least favorite since he thought it was not chocolatey enough even though it looked chocolatey.
• Lobster pasta with peanuts. YUM YUM YUM. I steamed a lobster tail mixed it with bow tie pasta and a butter herb sauce with fresh parsely and herbs. Then sprinkled peanuts throughout. I had originally planned on making a peanut sauce but decided that it would not pair well with the lobster.
• Peanut selection. This was my favorite!! When I think of peanuts, I think of pb&j, bananas, and buckeyes. So I wanted to feature each of these in a different way. I made a peanut butter, confectioners sugar mixture and put it on a piece of french bread. Then melted chocolate on it. This was my buckeye sandwich. Next I made a pb&J sandwich without the bread. I used a peanut butter mixture, flattened it, then put jam inside. Finally, I made a mini sandwich with banana and peanut butter in the middle and chocolate on top. This three item peanut selection earned me a perfect score on originality!
• peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. I made a standard chocolate chip cookie with peanut butter and layered them on a pretty plate. This was yummy too.

Erik and I scored my dishes exactly the same - 15.1 points as average out of 20 points average. Pretty good :). I loved this secret ingredient. I have one in mind for Erik. I'll keep you posted when we do the next iron chef - probably after Easter.

Sarah likes to hug Scruffles. In fact, she follows him around the house so she can "hug" him (actually tackle). Here is a video of her following him and saying "cat". Sometimes she will walk up to him and say "hi", then tackle him. Maybe she will be a linebacker...

I got 78 on Quiddler today and made the word clingy! Sometimes Sarah is clingy to me :). She's a mamma's girl.