come dine with us...

over the past few months joe has gotten really into the channel 4 reality food thing come dine with me. despite myself, i've also ended up pretty much hooked on the show too, and between us we came up with a plan to stage our own family version here at home.

if you don't know the programme, the format is fairly simple - four strangers each take turns to host a dinner party for the other three, who mark their cooking and general hosting out of ten, and once the marks are added up the winner gets £1k.

we've competed for a grand prize of 20 quid, and whereas the tv contestants have to provide a three course meal, we decided to dispense with the starters and just make main courses and puddings...





sue kicked things off with this jamie oliver-inspired chicken with banana and swetcorn [that's right, banana...] followed by a rather fine fruit cobbler...





joe followed his mum with a chicken and ham pasta dish [taken from this book] and an incredibly rich [but still quite light] chocolate mousse cake. [the cake went down very well indeed...]





eddie went next with a main course of sundried tomato and cheese sauce pasta with chocolate pancakes to follow...





i closed things with a chicken tikka massala [which contained one large chili too many i think, though the boys bravely ate as much as they could!] and maple pecan tart for pudding...

the results were close - sue and i tied for last place with 19 points, joe finished second with 21 and eddie triumphed with a mighty 22...
i am now utterly stuffed, but it was all great fun and we'll definitely be doing it again sometime soon :-)