Come Dine With Me – Cooking with kids #FRD2013

Everyone seemed to love our ‘Come Dine With Me’ dinner last night and I know they’re going to want to do it again soon…I just don’t know if I can cope again with helping 3 children make 3 different recipes at the same time in our kitchen!

Even though it felt a little stressful, I kept my cool and didn’t think about the huge clean up job I was going to be facing when it was all over until I actually had to get on and get it done!
The kids usually have daily chores to help with the cleaning but on Friday evenings they don’t have time to do them. Aiden’s dad comes to pick them up for the weekend and it takes an hour and a half to get to his house in Derbyshire so they have to be leaving as soon as dinner is done.

Because of this, it was a bit of a rush but everyone had fun so it was worth it 🙂

Ella cooked the starter.

Pea and Ham Soup

We only had one little mishap; Ella lost count of how many teaspoons of the vegetable stock she’d added to the pan and because I was answering a question from Kaycee, I hadn’t kept count either so the soup was a little on the salty side.
We all enjoyed it though, except for Kaycee who wasn’t very keen and didn’t eat much.
She did apologise to Ella and said she felt bad for not liking it because Ella had cooked it but Ella assured her that it was totally fine and she wasn’t upset!

Pea and Ham Soup

Aiden cooked the main course of sticky chicken, potatoes and rocket salad.

Sticky Chicken with new potatoes and rocket salad

We were going to have roast potatoes with it but time ran away with us and we ended up just having boiled new potatoes because we didn’t have time to roast them.
Aiden wasn’t very keen on touching the raw chicken because it felt icky and because he was worried about getting sick! I explained about food hygiene and told him that as long as he followed the rules, he’d be perfectly safe.
He got on with it with no more worrying and I think once he’d got over the initial ickyness (I don’t think that’s a word but never mind!) he was quite proud of himself 🙂
While the chicken was marinating in the fridge, he did the salad and potatoes.
When it came to cooking the chicken I ended up helping him because he kept complaining his arm was aching with having to keep stirring it!
Everyone really enjoyed the chicken and wanted seconds, although unfortunately, there wasn’t any left!

Sticky Chicken

Kaycee picked the dessert for 2 reasons; she loves giving out pudding and she loves to use the blender!
She made Slimming World’s version of Eton Mess and it was delicious!

Eton Mess

She also made a little mistake when she didn’t read the recipe properly and whizzed up all but 5 strawberries that she’d saved for decoration when she was only supposed to whizz half of them and chop the other half!
She ended up chopping the 5 she’d saved for the decoration because she said it was better to have the pieces in the pudding and the decoration wasn’t as important 🙂

Eton Mess Recipe

After each meal we all secretly wrote our scores on a piece of paper and at the end I added them up.

Scores:

Pea and Ham soup

Aiden – 10
Ella – 10
Kaycee – 2
Me – 9
Total = 31

Sticky Chicken

Aiden – 10
Ella – 10
Kaycee – 10
Me – 8
Total = 38

Eton Mess

Aiden – 10
Ella – 10
Kaycee – 10
Me – 9
Total = 39 – *WINNER*

I worried that Ella might be upset because she didn’t win but she was totally fine and when I explained that I’d given her 9 instead of 10 because it was a little salty, she said, ‘yeah, I need to be more careful next time!’ and laughed 🙂

I told Kaycee it would have been a 10 if there were a few more pieces of strawberry and next time she needed to take her time and read the recipe first.
She was fine with that and was very pleased that she’d won!

When I read out my score to Aiden he said, ‘awww come on mum, why an 8?!’ (he was smiling so wasn’t really upset!) and I told him it was because I’d had to stand there for 15 minutes cooking my own blinking tea when he was supposed to be cooking it for me!

We all had a laugh and everyone agreed that it had been a lot of fun 🙂

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