Family Food Challenge!

When we visited our Oklahoma Family for the 4th of July weekend, we had so much fun.  On July 3rd, my nephew, Brody (9) and brother, Jason (he may not want me to put his age--ha) planned a really fun event for the family.  They, like us, are big fans of all things Food Network related and created their very own "Family Food Challenge."  They took some of the fun concepts from several of their favorite shows and made a game for the family.  Each participating couple would be given a secret ingredient (by random drawing) for both a main dish and a side dish.  Then, they would be tasked with creating a delicious, creative main dish and side dish highlighting those secret ingredients.  In addition, they were to create dishes that relate to or remind them of the 4th of July.  Also, they would be judged on creating a video describing those dishes.  They would do all this (including shopping for groceries to make the dishes) within a 2.5-3 hour period.   Oh, and I might add that all 4 teams shared one kitchen.

Brody was the host of the event and did a fabulous job.  He is holding the Grand Prize Golden Spatula.

That sounds like a pretty difficult task--but 4 teams stepped up to the plate and conquered that task.  Drew and I were judges for the event, along with my dad.  Also, since Drew and I love photography and videography, during that 2.5 hours we took pictures and videos of everyone and then I put it all into a little movie production.  Snapping photos with our good camera, editing them quickly, finding music for the video, snapping videos, importing them and trimming those videos, creating the video presentation and then exporting it:  this all took a lot of time, but Drew and I work well as a team and got everything done just in the nick of time.  Thankfully, when all the cousins are around, the kids kind of babysit themselves--ha!

My brother, Jeremy, representing one of the best in the kitchen--our mom.

My sister's super fun in-laws were in town from Iowa and participated as a team as well.

We decided we want to remember how this all went down for the future.  We want to make this an annual event.  So, for future reference, this is how each team was scored:

Flavor:  max of 10 points per side and main dish
Plate Presentation: max of 10 points per side and main dish
Video presentation and How the Dish relates to the 4th of July: max of 20 points for both dishes
Use of secret ingredient:  Max of 10 points per side and main dish.  

While the three judges (Drew, my dad and I) and Brody met together and calculated the total points, I also completed the presentation.   We decided that showing the presentation would be a really fun way to announce the winners.  So, the first time they saw the video and photos from the event, was also when they saw the winner announced at the end.  It was so much fun to watch their reactions to everything, since they were all so focused on the task at hand during that 2.5 hours.  They got to see what each of the other teams came up with and we had a lot of good laughs.  Here is the video that includes tons of photos from the event, the video presentations from each of the teams and the announcement of the winners:

As you can see, this was a lot of fun. I was honestly surprised at how creative each of the teams were with what little time they were given. Also, I thoroughly enjoyed tasting all the food. Everything was delicious! And in the end, there was only 1 point separating the overall winner and second place. I am sure all the teams are excited about returning next year! I know I am looking forward to tasting everything again--ha!