Day 36 - Chips, aka Potatoes

Cookbook - Jamie's Kitchen

Today is the second to last day of summer so my family decided to have a barbeque. Me and my brother were, like, "What are we going to make that goes with a bbq, except potatoes?"

So I'm, like, "Why don't we make french fries." Jared found a recipe in Jamie's Kitchen for Chips, which here are called french fries.

We didn't have any with our actual dinner since we snacked so much on them while we were making them.

They were delicious. They were a lot of work, though. A lot of work. But it was worth it. I bet you want to know why they were a lot of work when it's just potatoes. There are four steps. You wash the potatoes, dry them off, then you slice them, and then you cut them in half to make them into french fries. Making them all even was the hard part.

They're also not very healthy, but we worked hard for our unhealthy treat.

1 THUMB UP, because they were really greasy.

You could see and taste the grease a lot, so this is not something to have a lot.

Day 35 - Granola

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

Today my mom, dad, and brothers were not here. They were all in different places. Jared and I were home alone with our kitty, Pablo, and our dogs. (Mom was just down the street, and so were my older brothers). I just finished watching Glee and when it was done, it was 6:40, and we didn't know what to do or what to make.

My mom had said earlier that we should make granola since it's fast and easy, and so we did.

Granola is basically oats and whatever else you want to put in it. It has to have something else to make it stick, something like agave nectar, which my brothers really love, or maple syrup, or honey. Just anything that is kind of sweet and can stick together.

Jared and I used maple syrup since we had unopened agave nectar and unopened honey and we didn't want to open then and we had maple syrup, so we used that.

Before that, you get one cup of oats, mixed seeds, nuts (but my brother misread and so we put too WAY too much seeds, and no nuts or dried fruit). This is exactly like poor man's granola (said my mom).

You bake it and then what I did is put it in milk and ate it like cereal.

It's pretty good. I think it would be better, a whole lot better, I should say, if we had added the right amount of seeds and nuts.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP

This was another day with Sophie, the cooking girl. Hope you come back next time!

Day 34 - Baked French Potatoes

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

I made some Baked French Potatoes today. I absolutely loved it. I would expect you guys would get tired of hearing that we like everything, but isn't that a good thing?

Anyway, this recipe was really easy, surprisingly. It took about 10 minutes to prepare. We used this handy dandy slicer called a mandolin from Pampered Chef, which my mom likes.

We also used garlic and onions, cooked that, layered the potatoes and the garlic and stuff, then covered with more potatoes, etc. Then you cover it all with chicken broth and bake.

Then, shabam! You've got yourself a bit of potatoes to eat.

Did you know that potatoes make you grow. Really, it's clinically proven to make you grow faster? I think.

I definitely think I shall do this one again. They're all gone. My brothers ate most of it.

One more thing. I think the reason we like most of the recipes is that I have picked things that don't sound gross. And I look for ingredients that I like, too. Just FYI. So I'm a good recipe picker, in my opinion, and maybe Jamie Oliver is a good recipe maker, too.

We're a good team. Me and Jamie should collaborate more often. Oh, maybe me and him can do a Gluten Free cookbook about our kids challenge. Wouldn't that be so cool?

Oaky. Thank you and goodnight. Come back tomorrow.

2 THUMBS UP

Day 33 - Gorditas

Recipe from Jamie Online

Hello my fellow friends! You're probably wondering what we cooked today. Jared was still in his PJs at 5:00 (he'd been in them all day) so I'd gone to this awesome restaurant earlier with my grandmother and my cousin and I was not hungry at all, so I didn't want to actually look at food since when I'm full, I don't feel like I want to cook at all or look at food at all.

But since I'm doing a 6 month challenge, of course I have to. Today you're probably wondering what I made. The answer is...what are they called? Oh yeah, Gorditas. Those are corn meal with salt, baking powder, and water.

This is the corn meal we buy.

We are not in the UK and Jamie Oliver uses ml and grams for measurements, so we had to buy a little scale a while ago. We're in the US and here we use pounds and ounces. But back to the point. My mom had to look up how much to measure to convert from UK to US. Once we had all that, I just mixed it all together.

It's sticky, so it's kind of like making a cookie. You're supposed to roll it into a ball and then smash it with your hands to make it flat, but not too hard so it doesn't stick to your hand. Then you get a pan and drizzle it with olive oil (actually you should do this first and then do the smashing and stuff).

Then you just put them in the pan and they cook for a few minutes on each side.

We normally call these arrepas because that's what a friend calls them, but my abuela calls them gorditas. They're all the same thing, but there's a lot of different names for them. Call the whatever feels right to you.

I liked it. My brother loves them. He loves them SO much. Nacho Libre would love them, too.

1 1/2 THUMBS UP, though Jared gives them 2 THUMBS UP

Day 32 - Crunchy Garlic Chicken

Cookbook - Jamie's Food Revolution

I would like to say that this was probably one of the best things I've made so far during this cooking challenge. It was so good. I would eat it every day for the rest of my life, it was that good. I really don't know what made it so good. The flavor. The breading. All of it.

All you do is get some crackers--I, of course, used gluten free Glutino Brand which we purchased at Sprouts--garlic, parsley (fresh, but we used dried because we did not buy fresh), and the zest of a lemon, but we used a lime. And then you put it in a food processor and blend it until it's blended.

You get your chicken and score the bottom, a new word and technique I learned today, cover in plastic wrap, and then whack it with a frying pan! Which I enjoyed SO much. It was like expressing your anger by whacking chicken. My mom had a writing camp today and I asked her what kind of pan I should use to whack the chicken and boy did that get everyone's attention.

And then you coat the chicken in flour, then egg, then in the mixture you made in the beginning and you can bake or fry it. I baked it at 900 degrees, or aka 475 degrees. Bake it until it's golden brown or about 15 minutes.

It was crunchy and garlicy, hence the name.

I made this for lunch because it's my older brother's birthday and he wanted breakfast for dinner, so I made the chicken for lunch which my brother's ate greedily. So I'll definitely do this again, but for dinner.

I give this, possibly, 4 Billion THUMBS UP, or 2

Day 31 - Popcorn

Recipe - Jamie Oliver Online Video 

Now, I know what you're thinking, that I haven't made a real dinner for a while, but tonight wasn't my fault. My mom was teaching a class at SMU and my dad got home at 6 :30 and I didn't know there was already chicken dethawed, so I couldn't make a good dinner.  We ended up having nachos.


And I was going to make a good, legit dinner. I would know. It was chicken... so stay tuned for tomorrow to see the chicken dinner.  


So anyway, today I made some good popcorn. 

Now this isn't your ordinary popcorn. But it was easy.  Trust me on this. All you do is use a sauce pan (not a frying pan--Look at the boiled egg post) and put a chuck o' butter in and then right after you put in your kernels. Cover the pan.  Once it starts to pop, move the pan about every thirty seconds to cook all the kernel and ta da...popcorn!!!

This popcorn tasted better than how we usually make it in a popcorn popper.  "It had a brownish burned look to it," said my dad, "but it was very good."  


All the kernels were coated in butter so it tasted awesome.  It was cool because the picture I took of the popcorn in the pan happened right before some popcorn exploded in my face.


This was just a quick snack because I spent 20 minutes trying to find a recipe.  I found one that was for Christmas popcorn that was seasoned, but we didn't have the seasoning, so I just made popcorn from one of Jamie Oliver's video recipe.

2 THUMBS UP

Akidscookingchallenge.com is not responsible for any popcorn in the eye surgery.

Day 30 - Crispy Tortillas with Guacamole

Recipe- Jamie Oliver Online

I, Jared, made guacamole twice today.  They were both really good.  I made it the first time using Sam the Cooking Guy's recipe...again... and it was good.

I made the Jamie Oliver recipe at dinner.  I wasn't entirely smart with the Jamie Oliver one.  I seem to have missed the fact that you have to finely chop the chile and mine were as big as thumb.  It was quite spicy.

I added tomatoes, because I like tomatoes.  Mash together avocado, cilantro (one of my favorite things), chile, and green onion.  And, voila, you have guacamole.

Good thing the next part of the recipe was making our own chips since we ran out.  It was easy.  I just cut some corn tortillas (the recipe says flour, but of course I used corn, which are better anyway) into chip shapes, put on a cookie sheet, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper (I think you're only supposed to do salt, but I did pepper for good measure).

Baked Tortilla Chips

And then you bake for about 5 minutes at 400 degrees.  That's all there is to it.  It was really good.

But remember, always finely chop your chiles.

2 THUMBS UP!