My first chopped basket!

While I have done several Iron Chef competitions (is it a competition if I'm not competing?) I have never done a Chopped basket. Erik surprised me with the following ingredients:

1. Corn bitz cereal (generic corn chex)
2. Dried beef
3. Black beans
4. Cherry craisins
5. Pizza crust

My Chopped Basket Ingredients

At first I thought there was no way these ingredients could go together to make a coherent dish. I tried the dried beef with the craisins and black beans and the combination was terrible. I didn't know how this would turn out.

I made pasta dough and then cut out little raviolis. I filled the raviolis with the dried beef, black beans, and added a little pizza sauce and mozzarella cheese. Then I crushed the chex cereal and cut the pizza up into little bite size portions. I rolled the pizza bites in the crushed chex and baked them to make croutons. Next I made a sauce out of sherry wine, heavy cream, butter, and the cherries. I poured this sauce on top.

My chopped creation

This dish may sound terrible but it wasn't. In fact, it was pretty amazing. Erik couldn't believe it! He said he never would have thought these ingredients would work so well together. I was so excited! Actually what really made it was the sauce on top. The sauce was fantastic and Erik wants me to make it again.

So this was a really successful chopped basket!
In other news:

1. I went to the IEEE spring banquet and saw my friend Jack and his wife Angie. He got his PhD which was very exciting. I'm hoping to be more involved with IEEE this year.
2. Since Matthew is developmentally delayed, he qualifies to attend this Family Music time class for free. The music is really catchy and we listen to the CD in the car. The girls love it. I have no idea if Matthew cares or not. He just walks around during the class and doesn't pay attention.
3. All three kids are taking swimming lessons now. Jenna and Sarah LOVE swimming lessons but Matthew squirms the whole time and doesn't seem to like it. I think he doesn't like listening to the teacher - he wants to do his own thing.
4. 82 points on quiddler today