Iron Chef Battle: Missy vs. Amanda

On Saturday we had another Iron Chef battle in kitchen stadium (our house). Erik and I chose the secret ingredient: cheddar cheese. Missy and Amanda were the iron chefs and I was paired with Missy as her sous chef and Erik was Amanda's sous chef. We had 1 hour to create 3 dishes apiece featuring the secret ingredient.


Iron Chef Amanda created:

1. Japanese shrimp dip. This dish had several components to it. The shrimp was breaded in panko breading and fried. A spicy and complex cheddar cheese dip was created to dip the shrimp in. The dip was really delicious. She also had sushi for us to dip in the cheese - yum!
2. Not your original mac and cheese. Her second dish was a mac and cheese dish with chunks of chicken and green onions. It had 4 different kinds of cheese in it and melted in your mouth!
3. Apples and cheese play tic tac toe. Apples and cheddar cheese were cut in neat squares and little sandwiches were created out of them. They were sitting in a honey lemon sauce too. A very cute presentation.

Iron Chef Missy created:

1. Deconstructed quesadilla. This dish required you to create your own quesadilla. She made a cheddar cheese sauce and had a bowl of green onions next to a bowl of fresh tomatoes. You could create your own quesadillas on tortilla chips. The sauce was excellent!
2. Proshrimp white cheddar lasagna. Missy made a white cheddar cheese sauce with onions, garlic, prosciutto, and shrimp. She also cooked lasagna noodles and layered them with the cheese sauce and baked it for half an hour. This was superb and definitely creative.
3. Cheddar apple tarts. These tarts consisted of a pie crust with cheddar cheese and sauteed apples as the filling. Whip cream and caramel sauce on top made them much better.

This was a wonderful iron chef competition and we all had a lot of fun. It was Missy and Amanda's first time as iron chefs. and they performed spectacularly.

The score was very close. Amanda earned 49.67 points and Missy earned 49 points. So Amanda won by 0.67 points! A very close iron chef - congratulations Amanda! Missy has already challenged her to a rematch.

58 points on quiddler today.

Gina's Guide to Getting Pregnant

Gina's Guide to Getting Pregnant

1. Rejoin the health club you quit earlier this year.
2. Start running 2 miles three times a week to get back in shape
3. Buy a really expensive polar heart rate monitor to help you get back in shape
4. Renew your KOA camping membership since you'll be doing a lot of camping next year.
5. Give away most of your baby clothes and baby items since you won't be needing them.
6. Decide to stick with the number of kids you currently have.
7. Start writing a paper for a conference next year.
8. Plan to go on vacation with my family next year
9. Decide that I want a third child before I turn 35 (got pregnant and my due date is - of course! my 35th birthday)
10. Listen and accept Erik's mantra "happy wife, happy life".

Erik read the list and said "those aren't the things that got you pregnant."

My princesses

I can't believe it is finally here. Saturday I graduate from Wright State. I tried on my cap and gown (all $780 worth of it!) to see how it looked. What do you think? Sharp huh! I think my masters cap and gown was like $60. Really, why the big price difference here?

So our dishwasher broke today. Right before everyone is coming over for my graduation and a week and a half before Thanksgiving. Bummer. And that dishwasher was only 5 years old. I said to Erik, we just bought it - it certainly must still be under warranty. That's when we realized that "just bought it" means 5 years ago. Where does time go?

A few shameless plugs of my adorable girls. The girls were baking cookies with me on Monday and I snapped a picture of them. They are two adorable sous chefs!

I also snapped this video of the girls yelling "surprise" as they jump out from behind the couch. Sarah's surprise sounds more like "pie". For awhile I thought she was saying pie. Really Sarah, how hungry can you be?

They also want to dance with Daddy at every opportunity. He is always the king and they are the princesses. Of course the queen just sits on the couch so the queen can become a fat bottomed girl. Check out that pun. Booyah!

On that note, I only got 34 points on Quiddler today because ith is not a word. I did that before too. It sounds so much like a word to me!

The Gathering Storm

While the title "The Gathering Storm" could most certainly refer to Sarah, I'm actually referring to the new Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson book in the Wheel of Time series. I recently finished this book and loved it! Brandon was true to the characters and the story moved along nicely. There were two awesome endings that I actually cheered about. I won't give any spoilers away, but I loved the book. I'd put it as one of the top in the entire series. Now that I'm finished with the book, I can pay attention to my family again.

We have been giving Jenna an allowance for the last several weeks and she has finally earned enough to buy this stuffed unicorn she wanted. So we took a picture of her with her new unicorn named "Pinky". Of course now that she bought the thing she wanted, she doesn't want to do her chores. She knew she was trying to earn the unicorn and now that she has the unicorn who needs an allowance?

Erik was gone all last week in Boston at his new job. He loves his new job especially since he got a phone with internet on it *jealous*. He also got a nice new laptop and can work from home. It's really an awesome job. Upon his arrival home I made him a key lime pie as that is what he asked for. I also made yellow cupcakes with cookie dough in the middle topped with a chocolate buttercream frosting I made. Delicious! That coupled with all the candy I've eaten lately has made me want to go back to the love handler!

Today I made the words "voting" and "quietly" on quiddler. Immediately I was kicked out because there were no more letters that could be made into a word. Bummer. So I only got 65 today.