Semiserious Chefs

Look out, our two professional chefs are about to throw down!

KID CHALLENGE RECIPE TIME; I think I like the name of this post, and if it works out well I might just continue with more of these ‘episodes’. Who knows though, because I am pretty skilled at starting projects and never finishing them. Think Dueling Duleys. Which by the way reminds me, we really need to do another one of those.

As you all know, we like to include Nathan in our cooking endeavors – at least when he isn’t pretending he’s a tornado, running around trying to destroy our living room. And I figured it was about time I posted a new recipe to the site, mostly because I’ve been dragging my heals.

Don’t worry though, this post won’t be featuring any recipes. I simply want to share with you what gave me the idea to do “Kid Challenge Recipe Time.” Believe it or not, I was having a hard time coming up with any new ideas for the website. Or any ideas for that matter. Basically, we didn’t have many children scheduled for day-care yesterday, and it was a super easy day. That was confusing to us since Vanessa and I are used to always having something that needs to be done. And if there isn’t much going on during our work day, it throws us off a little.

To make a long story short, I was sitting on the couch with no ideas whatsoever and I couldn’t figure out why I was having such a problem. I knew I wanted to add something to the site, but if you don’t have any good ideas, it’s kind of hard to add a recipe when you don’t know what that recipe is. Low and behold (((yes I mispelled that on purpose…) I used ‘low‘ because children are short) Yep, I just used triple parentheses – so hah! Vanessa), an idea pops in my head. Give it up for that last sentence. What a mess eh?

Why not have the kids help me come up with a recipe? My thoughts were, their suggestions just have to lead to something interesting and creative. In truth, they turned out to be more than interesting, and I will show you why shortly. I decided I would try and get three super secret ingredients from Nathan, and three super secret ingredients from his friend Zeke. They could think about it while we all got dressed up to go play in the backyard. Below is the video of the three ingredients Nathan chose for the dish. Keep in mind I had no idea what he would pick, nor did I try and alter his decision in any way.

He’s kind of hard to hear but the ingredients were ginger, wheat bread, and garlic. That’s cool I can work with those no problem. It’s either going to be a ginger chicken salad with whole wheat croutons, or some sort of teriyaki chicken sandwich. I’m leaning towards the chicken sandwich, but before I can make a final decision, I have to tell you about the input I got from my other source.

I asked Zeke to give me three additional ingredients I could use with the ginger, wheat bread, and garlic. Saying that he threw me a curve ball would be an understatement. After some careful thought, he told me milk. Okay I thought to myself, not the easiest thing to incorporate into my overall plan, but I can probably make it work. After all, if I wanted to take the easy path (which I fully intend to do), I could just show a picture of a sandwich with a glass of milk. But then he said…mutant zombies. MUTANT ZOMBIES! What do I do with that?

Before I continue, I should probably tell you why this seemingly random ingredient was on his list. If any of you know what Minecraft is, you will know there are zombies in the game that come out after it gets dark. He likes Minecraft, and he is super good at it. So in summary, I now get to somehow incorporate a mutant zombie into my presentation. And that’s it. He was happy giving me two ingredients and nothing more. And for all of you who don’t know what a zombie looks like in Minecraft, check out the picture below.

Oh no! A mutant zombie is chasing me! Actually I just wanted to show you my automatic chicken farm and the gigantic flaming inverted pyramid that I made. Was it in creative mode? No sir, it was in survival mode. And before you ask the next question, let me go ahead and answer it. Yes, it was a huge waste of time.

So I guess it’s pretty clear what I need to do next, and that’s go find some toy zombies for my recipe. And I think I will call it the “garlic and ginger zombie chicken sandwich.” What do you think of that? Or maybe the “garlic and ginger chicken zombie sandwich.” That would imply that the zombie was a chicken and that’s terrifying.

In retrospect maybe it wasn’t the best idea to get some random ingredient ideas from the children, but I think if I do this again it might play out better. Let’s just call this a test drive. And let’s hope this experiment doesn’t turn out to be a train wreck. Wait, maybe I’ll just call the sandwich a Train Wreck Club Sandwich. That’s not bad. That could catch on I think. No wait, I think I’ll use that name for something else. Wow, I’m suddenly having some great ideas! Wait, why am I suddenly having some great ideas???

Oh well, whatever. It’s time to end this silliness and get busy plotting out how I’m going to tackle this mutant zombie kid challenge. This monster of a challenge I guess you could say. Oh and it’s gonna require some brains to complete. Don’t let that spook you though, because I actually do have some brains. And with that, I bid you all adieu while I go listen to the Cranberries for some inspiration.