Family Fun During Lockdown

 In Part One I explained that at the time of writing we are currently in lockdown in the UK, and unable to have friends over to visit.  We have all managed to keep fairly busy during lockdown but I realised that more often than not we were doing things separately.  Richard, our autistic son, is such a sociable lad and he, in particular, is missing the social activities he normally attends.  So when a friend told me how they had enjoyed creating their own stay-at-home version of the TV program Come Dine With Me, I pounced on the idea. In varying degrees we all enjoy cooking so this sounded perfect for us.   

The rules are simple, each person in the household chooses a day and prepares one main course, one dessert, and a fun activity for everyone to do after dinner. 

The other diners then give a score out of ten for each of these categories;  

Main, Dessert, Presentation, Entertainment.  

At the end of the week, scores are added up and an overall winner is declared.  We weren’t going to offer the £1,000 cash prize they offer on the TV, our winner just had to be content with the unending glory of being the first Come Dine With Me champion. 

We continue now with how each of us felt our own evening had gone and what the whole event meant to us.  I also reveal the scores! 

So how did the evenings go?

Let’s ask Richard first…

I really enjoyed the planning and actually cooking my meal.  I found the Sausages and Mash recipe pretty easy to follow and was really pleased with my finished dish.  Mum said it tasted just the same as when she makes it so I must have followed the recipe really well!
I think I would choose a different entertainment next time though as Story Cubes was a slow game to play. You have to think for quite a long time before you can tell your story, and there is a lot of waiting around for people to come up with theirs.
I’m really good at creating quizzes so I think another time I would create a special one for the family and I would read the questions out.  I think I would do 20 questions though so it’s not quite as long as the 40 questions I usually create.
I was disappointed I didn’t win even though I thought Mum would be my biggest rival.  I did say I would like to do this again another time. 

How did you feel your evening went Sage?

The week was so much fun. We’ve been in lockdown together but not really spent a lot of quality time together, it was great coming together to all cook and have fun together. We pushed ourselves out of our comfort zone trying new recipes. We’re all at different stages of cooking ability, our choice of dishes show that, but Easy Spoonfuls has helped by teaching the useful skills that we can build on. The only ‘new’ part of my meal was the katsu sauce; cooking rice, cooking breaded chicken, and doing a side salad are all lifted directly from Easy Spoonfuls recipes. 

It’s disappointing that I didn’t win, but can understand why. Going first was more pressure because that sets the bar, you can’t crib ideas from other people. My table setting was really basic so in future I will focus more on presentation and attention to detail. But I’m really happy with my dishes and my after dinner entertainment. We played Kahoot, which is an app to make interactive quizzes, I’ve used it a lot as a TEFL teacher with students, but it was great that my family got to enjoy it too. 

I’d definitely recommend doing Come Dine With Me with your own household. 

A few words from Phil…

I must admit I did take the whole thing really seriously – it was good for me to get my brain thinking about something other than work.
With the lockdown I have been even busier than normal at work and at times it has been very intense.  Come Dine With Me was a fun bit of escapism.
I was pleased with my main meal of Turkey Mozerella although I could have cooked more potatoes for everyone and the veg was a little overcooked but everyone said it was very tasty.
I was really disappointed with my sweet though. I knew Eton Mess was meringue, cream and fruit and I found some sundae glasses in the cupboard so I created separate layers of each in the tall glasses.  The cream ended up being too overpowering with not enough meringue. I now realise I should have put everything in a mixing bowl and stirred it gently together, and then piled the mixture into the glasses.  I will know for another time!  I should have gone with my original idea of using one of Sue’s Easy Spoonfuls recipes – I never go wrong with those but I wanted to push myself a bit this time.
I was really proud of my quiz but in my enthusiasm to do really well I think I probably made it a bit too complicated.  The others hadn’t taken very long to prepare their entertainment and they all achieved good scores which shows you don’t need to spend hours on producing something, but I’m glad I did.

Sue’s view of the event as a whole…

I thought the whole week was fantastic – everyone enjoyed their menu planning and then really focussed when it was time to cook the food.  I also think lessons were learnt on the importance of presentation as this lost some valuable points for some.
This week has also proved to me how valuable the Easy Spoonfuls recipes are.  Richard followed one of my recipes and I know he couldn’t have produced a meal with four components to all finish at the same time without one of my adapted recipes.  Sage used elements of 3 of my recipes and found the curry sauce recipe online, which I love as that shows you can get confident with the basics and then adapt to make it your own. Phil was determined to make his Turkey Mozzarella but as I hadn’t converted that recipe he did struggle a lot with timings.  It is not a meal that lends itself to converting into an Easy Spoonfuls version as along with serving the potatoes and vegetables there are too many tasks requiring attention at the same time – even I find this meal a bit of a challenge.  Phil has said he will stick to using an Easyspoonfuls recipe next time!
However, I am planning on converting the Chocolate Mousse recipe I made as that was very tasty and pretty easy to make. I will suggest making them in smaller portions though as it was very rich!
I actually don’t believe it was fair that I won – I did have an unfair advantage over the rest of the family as I have a lot more experience and maybe next time I should either be penalised in the points department or others with the least amount of experience should have additional points added to their score.  We will have a discussion about that later on.
I am so pleased we did this – it was a great family event and gave us all something to focus on in these pretty difficult times.

The Final Scores!

Sage scored:                27 + 30 + 32 = 89
Then Richard with:      28 + 31 + 31 = 90
Phil did really well:      31 + 31 + 32 = 94
And I was the winner: 30 + 33 + 35 = 98

I have created a PDF of the score sheets, just like the one below, which you can print off and use to record your own scores. 

In Conclusion…

Our own Come Dine With Me was great, throughout the week we all chatted about our thoughts on the challenge and we cheered each other on with the cooking and entertainment.  We agreed we would do this again at some point as it wasn’t about the winning….it was the enjoyment of coming together and having fun.

Using Easy Spoonfuls recipes in this challenge is not compulsory (two of us didn’t, with mixed results), however given the super easy way the recipes are written even those who haven’t cooked before can create a tasty meal to be proud of. 

Even if you have nervous cooks in your household I hope you feel encouraged to have a go at hosting your very own Come Dine With Me and having as much fun as we did!