Aluminum Chef

So I guess there is a TV show called Iron Chef. We don't watch a whole lot of TV, and when we do it is Mythbusters, Spongebob, or Leave It To Beaver.

Our ward youth had an Iron Chef activity last week. The day before the "competion" I was asked if they could use my kitchen for one of the groups. Of course, that was fine with me. Apparently I should have watched the show first to know what that meant and what I was in for.

I showed up at the church at the appointed time, gathered with my group in a corner of the gym, while someone immitating a Japanese guy introduced the teams. I was pushed into the center of the gym to stand with the 3 other chefs, and somebody had to turn me around because I didn't know I was supposed to face them. We were presented the "secret ingredient," which was a pineapple. I was told that we would need to make as many dishes as possible using the pineapple as an igredient.

As I was standing in the square facing my opponents, I was thinking, "Crud. We just got back from vacation and I have not been to the grocery store. I didn't realize that I was supposed to be a chef, or that I would need to provide food!" But I just stood there and smiled, and then loaded 5 kids in my car to head home.

We got into the kitchen and I started thinking. I had frozen chicken, a few potatoes, a couple of apples, and a pantry full of canned food, along with the staples of flour, sugar, etc. It was sad. I felt like Wesley in the scene from The Princess Bride when he and Fezzik and Inigo Montoya are planning their castle onslaught. But instead of "what I wouldn't give for a holocaust cloak" I said, "What I wouldn't give for a block of cream cheese." One of my guys called his mom, who was at the grocery store anyway, and she delivered a block of cream cheese 15 minutes later.

So while other groups had chefs who had planned in advance and had things already underway, we came up with the following:

1) grilled potato, teriyaki chicken, and pineapple kabobs

2) fruit pizza (a big cookie crust with a cream cheese sauce topped with pineapple, apple slices, frozen strawberries and grapes)

3) strawberry/banana/pineapple smoothies. Fortunately I had a bunch of frozen strawberries.

An hour later we showed up at the church again to see what everyone had come up with. One group came with deep dish barbecued chicken pizza (with pineapple topping) and cinnamon rolls, another had carved into the pineapple and filled it with a yummy pineapple salsa (big points for presentation), another had some fancy rice and chicken dish served on a slice of pineapple, and some other funky things. I felt like crap. My group did not win. I am not an Iron Chef. I figured I was more like Aluminum or Manganese. But our fruit pizza was excellent, I must say.

Next time the youth have an activity based on a TV show, I will make a point of watching the show first. Oh, the things I could have done if I had actually gone to the grocery store first.