Chopped!

Today, my husband and I lived out one of our fantasies. No, not that kind of fantasy (you pervert), the one where we are competitors on the Food Network show "Chopped".

We love to cook and we love watching this show. In fact, last night, we probably caught 4 episodes in a row. That is probably the most tv we've watched together all summer long! I know it's not summer anymore, but you get the point.

Anyway, we've been talking about having our own little version of chopped at home. The kids would choose the ingredients and be the judges. Today, we decided to do it. It was the perfect day: Sunday, dreary and rainy, nothing planned. Perfect.

So, since you didn't get to "tune in", here are the details from our "show"...

The competitors: Charlotte (me)

My challenger: Andreas (below)

My challenger

We meet in our own kitchen stadium for the cook off. And yes I know kitchen stadium is from Iron Chef, but we sort of incorporated Iron Chef judging rules for our competition, so I can call it kitchen stadium if I want. So there.

ROUND 1 - Entree

We skipped the appetizer and went straight for the main course

The Ingredients

watermelon

pear

chicken tenders and/or drumettes

french bread

(all chosen by our judges)

The Panel

(left to right)

Judge Eden (9)

Judge Emma (5)

Judge Hanna (13)

Let the cooking begin!

Emma's score card (since she can't read yet)

Eden and Hanna's score card. They had to rate each dish on originality, taste and presentation. 0 being the worst and 10 being the best.

And the judges are taste testing the entrees

My entree: watermelon/carrot sparkling slushy, potato chip crusted fried chicken drumettes, pear slices and garlic french baguette

The drumette was ugly on the plate, but I figured I'd win them over with fried chicken since they never get to eat it.

I knew that just putting the pear on the plate wasn't very creative but that 30 minutes goes by fast! Now I have a better respect and understanding for what it must really be like to cook something to perfection in just a half and hour, not having a clue what's inside the basket and the pressure of having $10,000 at stake. Wow.

Andreas' entree: marinated grilled chicken tenders with orzo, watermelon/pear bruschetta

His bruschetta was to die for good. The chicken was super flavorful.

On to round 2!

ROUND 2 - Dessert

The Ingredients

bacon

marshmallows

coffee

cheesecake flavored instant pudding mix

(all chosen by our judges)

Photography by Hanna & Eden

The finished desserts

Andreas made a mocha cheesecake pudding with a side of mocha marshmallow coffee. I liked his presentation in the bowl. It reminded me of food made to look like landscape. I don't know what kind of landscape you'd call this, but it was nice.

I made kind of a conglomeration of things. When you don't have all kinds of pretty bowls and plates and pans, it doesn't get as pretty as it could be. But that's just an excuse. I could have been more creative. Basically it was graham cracker crust on bottom. Next layer was the cheesecake pudding. Next layer was a cheesecake and chocolate chip cupcake drizzled with a coffee marshmallow sauce and crumbled bacon. And a few toasted marshmallows on top.

I took over my camera for a couple natural light shots. I'm a photographer at heart, I can't help it.

The winner of the competition was....

...

...

.....

........

me!

It was a close one though. I think Andreas probably had the entree round won and I had the dessert round won, but in the end, I just barely squeaked out the win.

What a FUN way to spend a Sunday evening with the kids! We got to enjoy doing something we all love together: cook & eat. I highly recommend it!

Next time, it's the childrens' turn to cook for us!

What I've learned

A few things I've learned about photography since I got my DSLR camera:

Don't shoot in auto

Before I learned how to shoot in the various other settings on my camera, I always shot auto. That way, the camera picks what it thinks the best settings are for the lighting situation going on so you don't have to think about it one iota. The reason this is bad is you don't get to see all the wonderful things your camera can do. It produces the same kind of pictures any other camera would. Another thing I don't like about auto is that it will almost always use flash. I never use the flash on my camera. Unless it's absolutely necessary - where we are in low light and I just need to capture the moment and not worry about whether or not the picture will turn out blurry.

Shoot, shoot and shoot again

You don't learn unless you try. A lot. Sometimes I will just take the camera and a couple different lens out in the back yard and take pictures of the same things I've taken pictures of thousands of times before. But I do this to get practice. Practice in different light. Practice with different settings. Etc.

Another thing I do is take hundreds of pictures at a time. While most professional photographers would probably think this is unnecessary and the mark of an amateur, I don't care. I would rather have a lot of pictures to go through, than to find out I screwed up somehow during the shot and got a blurry capture or one that couldn't be saved in Photoshop. Most of the time, if I get 4 captures of the same shot, one will for sure be sharper than the others. And then I can just delete the rest.

If you can avoid it, don't shoot in the sun at high noon

This is especially true for portraits. If you are shooting in the sun (and it really doesn't matter what time of day it is) there is so much glare. Skin really looks much nicer and you don't get shadows when you find shade. Sometimes a really great picture can be ruined if you don't pay attention to glare from the sun. I learned this the hard way taking Christmas photos for my sister. This was an indoor situation but the same principle applies. She wanted her family to have their photo in front of her fireplace, which happened to be adjacent to a big picture window. And the sun had cast a bright hot spot on the left side of almost every one's face. It was something I had no idea how to fix in Photoshop. All because I didn't pay attention at the time I was shooting.

can you see the glare? of course you can.

I tried to fix it as best as I could but it wasn't pretty. Not nearly as nice as it could have been had I just paid attention

Pay attention to backgrounds

It can ruin a great picture if you have a distracting background. On the other hand, if you find things that produce wonderful bokeh with large apertures (leaves are super perfect for this) it can make the background seem magical.

see the background? bokehlicious!

Portrait or landscape

When you switch this within your camera to be in sync with what you are actually photographing, it will make a huge difference in the color and overall feel of the photo.

Example:

see how this picture has more of a cooler tone and it makes her fur look blue?

this picture is warmer and I think gives a truer black

ISO

This is another thing I always set to "auto" because I didn't know how to use it properly. I'm still not a professional and know all the ins and outs of it but I do have a better understanding of it now. Basically, the higher the ISO number, the more sensitive the image sensor is to light. So if you are in lower light situations, you can crank up the ISO. However, in doing so, you will get more noise or grain in the photo. I guess I try, when possible, to keep my ISO at 100. But I find that a lot of the time, it works well at 400. It all boils down to what the situation is and luckily the viewing screen is a savior because when I take a picture and find it's too light or too dark or too this or too that, I can adjust accordingly and see the result instantly.

Composition

This is the artistic part of photography. I'm still not sure I do this right half the time. What might be pleasing to my eye might not be to someone else. Generally as a rule, I've read that when taking a portrait, the person should take up 2/3rds of the grid. And the rule of 3 (rather than 2 equal parts) is more appealing in a photograph. But basically, I just move the camera around until I find a pleasing composition and go for it. Sometimes people will say to me, "oh, that's pretty, you should get a picture of that!" And while the thing they are referring to is pretty indeed, I know that it will be boring as hell in a photograph. Maybe that's just because I'm not creative enough to make it interesting. It's all about composition.

to me, this photo has an artistic composition to it

In conclusion:

I'm sure there are many other things that I've learned, but those are the big ones that stand out. It's a constant learning process and I'm always striving to be the best I can be behind the camera so there is less time spent fixing mistakes in Photoshop. There are times when I'm not concerned about getting the best possible result. Because sometimes you just want to focus on capturing the moment rather than making sure it's a professional looking photograph. 

twirling in the warm wind

Eden was twirling for me


I was laying outside on a blanket yesterday afternoon while the girls were outside playing (and fighting). It was so perfect to lay in the shade and feel the warm breeze. Seems so strange to be saying that in October. And today 91 degrees was the forecast! Crazy! But I'm certainly not complaining. It's like round two of summer. And we needed this after the yucky cold spring we had.

Emma picked me a flower (from my flower pot)

For some reason, Emma gets so mad at Eden for such little things. Like yesterday, Eden was pretending to be Cinderella, scrubbing the driveway with a brush and singing.

And Emma got SO MAD and started crying "You aren't the ONLY princess baby in the family, EDEN!" Well, of course I couldn't help myself and started to laugh, and Eden started to laugh and eventually Emma was laughing but trying really hard to cry and sound sincere about it.

Eventually she had enough of that pesky laughing and having fun and she proceeded to hurl a giant rock at Eden.

And like any good parent, rather than stop it from happening, I photographed the incident. You know, in case I needed it for evidence or proof or whatever. Haha....

I didn't think she was actually gonna throw it. Man she has a temper. She certainly didn't get it from me.

What?

yummy and healthy

Cinnamon Swirl Protein Bread

I've been trying some new recipes lately. I really like to eat protein bars and since I'm devoted to eating as clean as possible, which means no processed foods, that technically means that I need to find a protein bar with only the best natural ingredients. The safest way to do that is to bake them myself.

I've tried a few recipes that I've found on bodybuilding.com and they are a big hit. My husband would like them if he didn't know there was whey protein powder in them. But he's got some sort of mental block when it comes to whey powder. He says he doesn't need any more protein than he already eats. Whatever. Anyway, these bars turn out more like cake and they are incredibly delicious. I made a 9 x 13 pan of pumpkin bars. Gone. My kids loved them, I loved them and I gave one to my mom and sister to try - they both want the recipe. Today I made carrot cake protein bars and I think I might love those even more than the pumpkin recipe. I also made cinnamon swirl bread (also with whey) and oh yum!

The one recipe that didn't turn out, in my opinion, were the mini banana loaves. Supposedly these were to be a good substitute for banana bread lovers. Well, as I was following the recipe, it just didn't seem like it was going to turn out. There was no flour at all, and hardly any ingredients. Surprisingly, the texture turned out really good. Spongy like a cake. But the taste was awful! It tasted like a banana peep. I don't like peeps. And that artificial banana flavor from the banana extract was blech! So tomorrow I am going to come up with a good banana bread recipe. I'm getting pretty skilled in that department so I'm pretty sure I'll be able to pull it off.

Banana Protein Bread mini loaves (fail)

I don't feel like I'm being deprived when I can still eat flavorful bars that taste like cake, but are actually very healthy and good for my body. Not one bad ingredient. If you want a taste, click on this link and try them for yourself!

accidental model

Yesterday afternoon I brought my camera outside to get some photos of my baby girl riding her bike with no training wheels. After she was done, she sat down on a chair in the shade next to the house. It just happened to be PERFECT light in the spot she was sitting. Bright but no sun. So I snapped away. I took as many as she would let me. Eventually she gets tired of the big lens in her face so I stop. I don't want to push my luck.

I love when these accidental mini photo shoots happen. So much better impromptu than planned, especially with kids. And she just happened to be wearing nice clothes and was all clean (shock!) so I took advantage. Oh, she had a nice milk mustache going. My kids always run around with either a milk mustache or peanut butter cheeks. I don't always notice anymore. So the fact that she was already wearing pretty clothes and was relatively spot free, was quite exciting.

I took about 140 pictures just of her on that chair. I'm a compulsive snapper. I know the professionals tend to cringe at someone like me, but I want to make SURE I get at least a few good shots in there. I can always delete later. Anyway, I'll have to post more later because I think she's just the prettiest little girl in town!

Mom

before

after

Mom and I went to take more pictures this morning. I thought she looked so beautiful and there were so many good ones. We ditched her dog after the first location. He was just too much for us to handle. After we took him back home, we could relax a bit more and some really great pictures were the result.

I wanted to include a before and after, just because. I thought most of the pictures looked great straight from the camera, despite the obvious little exposure and tone problems that can occur when you shoot in manual.

The blog sized photos never do justice to the beauty that I see full screen in Photoshop. The colors look over edited and quality is never as crisp. But it's the best I know how to do with the patience God has given me.

Once again she was a beautiful model and we had a terrific morning together. Even though she can't move as fast as my girls, she has much more patience and is a joy to photograph.

Sweet potato pot pie

(sorry for the horribly lit photo)

This was yet another attempt at "fun food" as a ploy to get my 5 year old to eat dinner. Isn't it a cute fun seasonal dinner? I thought so. Basically it's a pot pie, with mostly chicken and sweet potato in the center and a lovely puff pastry crust over the top, and a jack-o-lantern face cut out.

My older two children loved it. Emma, not so much.

On a previous day, I made mini mummy meatloaves. Which was basically individual meat loaves made in muffin tins, with mashed potatoes piped over the top to look like mummy wrap, and green peas for the eyes. (both ideas came from a magazine but it escapes me as to which one at the moment)

Incidentally, Emma didn't like those either.

I am at a loss. I feel like giving up and letting her just eat her favorite staples like always (Greek yogurt or peanut butter bread). At least they are both healthy. But she's not getting a very well rounded diet with such few likable choices. I am giving her some "Carnation Breakfast Essentials", which she calls her "protein milk" because when I read the nutrition label, apparently that was the word that stuck out to her. Or maybe it's because of my own protein obsession. Whatever the case, it's like chocolate milk to her, but better, and she drinks it. So I'm a little less worried about her lack of variety with the food she eats. Only a little though.

We have gotten tough on her. We make her try everything. We send her to her room when she doesn't eat. But that backfires because she just falls asleep. I'm so hoping that it's just a phase. I mean, I know it is, but I want it to end. Now.

Any more fun food ideas that might be extremely-picky-child-friendly?? Preferably that include veggies AND meat.