Iron Chef Erik: Pineapple

On Saturday Erik undertook the task of creating 4 dishes with an exciting secret ingredient. When I went to the store to get a secret ingredient for him, I saw a whole pineapple and thought, this will be fun and I'd like to eat a meal of pineapple. However after I bought a bunch of pineapple I realized that I had never seen Erik cook with pineapple. Oh well - he did great!

Erik made 4 dishes:

1. Pineapple smoothie - This smoothie had blueberries, pineapple, strawberries, yogurt, sugar and cream cheese. It was delicious, light and not too sweet.
2. Fruit salad - This fruit salad was in a pineapple bowl. It was a mixture of pineapple, blueberries, blackberries, and strawberries. Very light and refreshing.
3. Spicy pineapple manicotti - this is why I love my husband. He has never made manicotti or cooked with pineapple, but he made pineapple manicotti. Go figure! He made a ricotta/cream cheese mixture and stuffed spicy peppers along with the pineapple and cheese mixture inside the manicotti. He baked it and topped it with more of the cream mixture. It was delicious and the spicy peppers contrasted well with the sweet pineapple.
4. Pineapple blueberry stack - This was a sweet cream cheese and ricotta mixture with blueberries and pineapples. He layered tortillas with the cream cheese mixture and put grilled pineapple in between each of these layers. The whole stack was topped with whip cream too. It was so yummy!

The final score was 15.25 (Erik's rating) to 15 (my rating). A very successful iron chef that wasn't too heavy or filling.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King day and Jenna and I have no school. We are going to spend the day at Erik's lasik appointment. He is going for the consultation to see if he is a candidate. Then he's going to take us to Golden Corral for dinner! So tomorrow should be a fun day. We had planned on putting Sarah in underwear all day tomorrow (just like today) but there were too many accidents and I don't feel like doing that much laundry!

Even though I've written a lot about food, I've been wanting to fast. My sister has had incredible success with fasting and I'm so happy for her. However with the pregnancy and then with breastfeeding afterwards, I don't feel comfortable fasting for the next year or so (although I would not hesitate if God called me to do it!). So since I can't fast, and am not praying at the abortion clinic anymore, I've felt kind of lost. I asked God what to do - what do I do in this season of my life? God told me to write a list of names, I have over a hundred names on it. Every day I will devote to prayer for that person. It has been a great experience so far to think of this person and pray for him/her during the day.

Wednesday is Jenna's birthday and on Thursday we are going to have a fun cookie decorating birthday party for her. We are so excited to have this party and I'll be sure to post pictures :).

87 points on Quiddler today - however, Quiddler would not give me the word "gamers". Hello? Erik is a gamer, I am a gamer. Since there are two of us we are gamers. I really don't see a problem with this word.