Master Chef Junior! (Addicted! Inspired!)

We are coming off a 4-day weekend here in Never-a-Dull-Moment-Land — the bambinos had no school Friday or Monday (President’s Day weekend). And we are knee-deep in our annual February Funk. This year, layered on top of our usual February-funkishness, is the more-than-usual ice-and-snow, and — double whammy! — a significant sports injury on the part of Kyle (fractured knee cap; leg brace; 3x/week physical therapy for 6-8 weeks; immobilized 10-year-old). We are facing what could easily morph into our most funkish February yet if we’re not careful. So, we’re trying very hard to be proactive.

Often people have told me that our family “just needs to watch Master Chef Junior!” But we hadn’t done it. So, this weekend we took the plunge and watched the first episode of the first season. It was like crack for the J-Ms — instant addiction! For all five of us! One hit and we were done!

We watched the entire first season over the course of our long weekend. And, as a result, one of the five of us — Owen — has become immensely inspired.

In one of the episodes of Season 1, the winning kid — Alexander — makes sliders. Owen had never had sliders before and this was like a whole new world opening up to him. He was absolutely dead-set upon the idea of creating his own version of sliders. Rather than make them “super fancy” (his words), he wanted to make them “McDonalds-esque” (his words). His concept was McDonalds-inspired “Classic American Sliders” (his title), but with super high-quality ingredients. I actually thought this was a pretty cool, novel, confident food concept. Sort of an ‘in-your-face’ to the gourmand-haute-couture foodie world. I like it! I like it! I could roll with that. So, this afternoon we went grocery shopping for the ingredients. Almost everything was top notch and organic (except for the King’s Hawaiian rolls), and he wanted to serve his sliders with only mayo and ketchup as condiments.

The result was unbelievably outlandishly good!