Chopped: Virtual Family Night Edition

In our house, every Friday night is Family Night. Most times it's just dinner with whatever family members are in the area. We've had Game Nights. We've also had other fun, planned activities. We've been talking about a Family Night version of Chopped for a long time but just couldn't figure out the logistics of the teams working in my too-small kitchen, sharing the lack of counter space, only one oven, etc.

But then Governor Wolf solved our problem for us. He told everyone that they had to stay home. Hmmmm, well, now that we have separated families from themselves, maybe we can do a virtual Chopped? Better yet, why don't we expand it even further?

So we ended up with 6 teams in 5 locations (the King family split into two) and 3 states. We were 3 generations gathered for the first ever Chopped: Virtual Family Night Edition.

First order of business was to select the items and have them mailed to each participating family. This ended up proving to be more difficult than first imagined. Since everyone has a different grocery store and lives in a different part of the country where different food hoarding practices are being carried out and since some participants might be avoiding the grocery stores more than others, we went the Amazon route. But then the first list had to be abandoned because items were either not available or were perishable, or too expensive because they needed to be bought in bulk, or were going to arrive too late for our scheduled activity. But after about 10 revisions, a final plan was made and orders were placed. Only one person knew the ingredient list and others were instructed to keep their boxes secret until the specified time. Some are better rule followers than others but whatever...

A few days before the event each time chose a name and we voted for our favorites. Each team had to reference food in their name, and it had to be at least three words long.

We posted a list of kitchen and pantry items that could be used, to try to be as fair as possible.

Two Greenhorn Peas in a Pod - Because they've never done this before 

(but neither had anyone else)

PopPop and MomMom

The Spice Girls - "Wait til you see my spice rack."

Jesse and Megan

Kentucky Fried COVID (KFC) - Because they live in KY, of course

Andrew and Sarah

A Salt with a Deadly Weapon

Chad, Jodi, Annika, Nadya, and Jodi's Parents

The Men Green QuaranTEAM that Will Squash Your Food Dream

John, Mariana, Molly, Shoun (in absentia), and Victor

Guaranteed Your Kids Will Love Liver - An inside Bauman family joke

Cindy, Isaac, Eden, HopeAnne, and Victor

Victor jumped shipped according to which assigned task seemed the most enjoyable

We all started to gather on Zoom last night at 5:15 with a Chopped scheduled start time of 5:30. When the time arrived, participants were given the instructions and could open their ingredients.

Here are your four items which must be in your final main course: Coconut Milk Powder, BBQ Sauce, Curlz Toddler Snacks with Sweet Potato and Cinnamon, Muffin Mix

Simultaneously, you are to create a dessert (or desserts) with these four ingredients: Orange Marmalade, Strawberry Pudding, Chocolate Chip Cookie Mix, and Reese's (of course)

And....go.

It got pretty messy at the King house.

We checked in with each other halfway through and then had the final judging at 7:30PM.

Categories for judging were...

Table Talk - Each team got 1 minute to tell us what they made and why their delicacies should win
The Cruise Line Touch - Presentation is everything!
Go the Distance - How far from the original four items do you go?
Look-Alike - Costuming
Social Distancing - Since our plan lacked one main ingredient - taste testing all of the foods, we had to go with which foods do you think would taste the best if you could actually taste them?

Next Virtual Family Night? Recreating famous paintings with items found around the house. Stay tuned...