Iron Chef: Food-Storage Style

Do you ever buy a food storage item for your family only to find out that it is a complete "miss" and no one will even touch it?  This happened to me this year.  I purchased 5 boxes of Kix cereal on a great sale.  Those boxes have been sitting down on our cereal shelf for almost a year now.  I brought a box upstairs in hopes that someone would open it and give it a try.  I even rearranged my cereal shelves so that all of the boxes of Kix were highly visible right at the front.  But no bites (literally)!

So, for a recent Family Home Evening I decided to ensure that the Kix cereal got used.  I was in charge of the activity and planned an Iron Chef Competition:  Food-Storage Style!

If you've never seen an Iron Chef competition, the gist is that two teams (chefs) are given a "secret" (previously unknown) ingredient and then have one hour to create unique foods which are then judged.  The winning team is determined by which receives the most total points in three categories:  plating, originality, and taste.  Each judge can award up to 5 points for plating and originality and 10 points for taste, for a total of 20 points which are then added together.

We broadened the time limit and then talked our good-sport neighbors, who I'm pretty sure thought we were crazy, into being our judges.  Of course, our secret ingredient was Kix cereal.  Dad's team created a Kix-Brownie by replacing most of the flour with crushed Kix. They dusted them with powdered sugar and drizzled with a chocolate sauce. My team created a chilled peach pie with a Kix cobbler-crust. We added a sprinkle of toasted crumbled crust on top. Sorry, I forgot to take pictures.

After we created our concoctions, we delivered the treats and judging slips.  We sampled each-other's dishes while waiting for the results.  After a few minutes, our neighbors returned the totaled judging sheets.  The winner?  Chilled Peach Pie!  Who knew that the neighbor-dad didn't like brownies?  His super-low ratings for the brownies threw the game to the peach pie by just 3 points.

Unfortunately we only used one box instead of all four like I hoped.  So, I'll likely donate the remaining boxes to the food bank.   Even if you only use a bit of your unused storage, having an Iron Chef competition is a fun way to help you rotate through some of your own less-used food storage items. 

I'd love to hear about your competition if you try it!