Cooking Games and Watermelons

It would seem like a silly thing to play with, but watermelons are great for cooking games. The watermelons are an easy way to make a bowl for your fruit salad, and they are a natural ingredient in the salad as well. Start with a round watermelon that isn’t too big – you want it to be manageable. Cut off a tiny slice on the bottom of the melon. This is just to give the melon something to sit on – not to drip from, so be sure you don’t cut off more than just a sliver of rind.

Then, cut open the watermelon and using a melon ball scoop, start scooping out little balls of watermelon. Cut open a cantaloupe and do the same thing with that as well. Store the balls in a large bowl until the watermelon bowl is empty. Cut out the rest of the watermelon inside and then pour the balls back in. Mix them up with some blueberries and perhaps strawberries to finish off the fruit concoction. Easy dessert and beautiful to boot!

Cooking Games and School Fun

One of the best things you can do for school is to make yourself a lunch group. Rather than go through the trouble of packing up your lunches every morning, you can enjoy something new and different every day through your lunch group. You bring one dish and your friends bring a dish and then you have a full collection of food to eat for lunch.

If you have four friends who all sit together for lunch, you just need to assign each person a course and you’ll have a full lunch every week. For example, you might bring sandwiches on Monday and your friends bring a big bag of chips to share, a few cookies to share and a pack of cokes. If you buy big enough packs and store the extra in your locker or in a fridge overnight, you can enjoy all sorts of things without having to remember to do more than grab four cans of soda first thing in the morning.

Cooking Games and Coffee

Who doesn’t love to head to the local coffee shop for a drink with friends? Just watching the baristas make great coffee makes me wonder how much fun I could have playing cooking games with coffee. While I might not have an espresso machine or a way to create my own steamed milk for cappuccino, I can play around a bit with the many forms of coffee creamers and flavors to see what sort of tasty concoction I can make at home.

For example, in my cooking games, I might start with a pot of black coffee. In a blender, I could pour in some coffee and put in a scoop of ice cream. A handful of ice and a generous squirt of chocolate syrup might just make a frozen coffee drink that is worthy of praise. Perhaps you can develop your own signature coffee drink you can whip up and serve to all of your friends every time they come over to visit.

Cooking Games on the Grill

Over the summer, I’ve decided that I’m not going to use the oven unless I’m making a sweet treat. Rather than cooking up large items that require the oven, I’m using the grill. It’s been a long time since I actually used the grill to cook, and the first time I fired it up this summer was probably the first time I’ve fired it up in a couple of years. But this was my summer to learn some more cooking games, and learn them I did!

I now know how to play cooking games with steak, chicken, pork, sausage and hamburgers. I am almost experienced enough to cook a meal every day of the week on the grill and not have to repeat myself. Sadly this is much more accomplished than I am using the oven or the stove, and I’m rather proud of my accomplishments. Thanks to a gas grill, I’m able to fire up the grill for some cooking games, take a few minutes to get the meat ready, and then simply throw it on the grill. It cooks while I work on side dishes and just like that – we have delicious summer cooking games!

Cooking Games – Breakfast for Dinner

One of my favorite cooking games to play is to make breakfast for dinner. It’s actually rather simple, but you almost wouldn’t know it from the elaborate supper plans I often make. Sometimes I start thinking about steaks and salads and frou-frou desserts, but in reality the easiest and often healthiest thing you can have for dinner is a bit of what you might normally have for breakfast.

For example, French toast can be made with egg whites, skim milk and some whole wheat bread. Cook up your French toast while you prepare a bit of turkey bacon. When it’s all finished, have your French toast with bacon, fresh fruit and a cup of milk. You’ve hit every food group, made a minimum of mess and you’re able to enjoy your food knowing it’s healthy, it’s easy and it’s the sort of cooking game you can enjoy both morning and night.

Cooking Games: Shut Down the Oven

If your kitchen is already hot this summer it’s going to just get hotter when you turn on the oven. A hot oven may be great for making a giant batch of cookies, but when it makes your whole house that much hotter, it’s barely worth it. This summer, all of our cooking games should be done without using the oven at all. Need some ideas of cooking games that shun the oven? Try these!

Microwave – if you can, just microwave whatever you’re eating. Sure you can’t make cookies in the microwave, but you can cook a whole chicken in the microwave so why even use the oven?

Toaster Oven – The best $20 you’ll ever spend is on a great toaster oven. Get one that is large enough for a frozen pizza or a small tray of cookies and you’ll be able to do everything you’d normally do in the big overheated oven with minimal heat waste.

Grill – Fire up the grill outside and you won’t have to cook in the house at all. Learn to make all of your meals on the grill and you can go weeks without turning on any kitchen appliance.

Cooking Games: Layer Cakes

Today I played some cooking games with my sons. We made a layer cake, and frankly after those cooking games, I’m feeling a bit sick right now. Our layer cake is delicious. My oldest son was convinced that rather than just a stacked layer cake, we needed to have a layer cake that more closely resembled a wedding or tiered layer cake. He wanted at least four layers to be present in decreasing size.

I took this request as a challenge to overcome with my cooking games, and after whipping up a box of cake mix, I used a collection of casserole dishes and baking pans to get my four rounds of varying size. The best part of the cooking game came when it was time to stack the cake. The four little layers I’d made for the cake weren’t very big – I only had one bag of cake mix, after all. The end product of our cooking games was a tiny layer cake that looked like a doll’s wedding cake. It might look tiny, but it was delicious!