Cooking Games and Sundae Parties

One of the easiest yet most enjoyable ways to treat yourself is to invite your friends over for a sundae party. Setting up the party isn’t even that expensive. Start with some tubs of ice cream. Get a bit crazy with the flavors, but be sure to keep at least one basic flavor to avoid traumatizing picky eaters. Then get a huge number of toppings to include on the ice cream. Buy everything from fresh fruit to candy bars to nuts to gummy bears. Then display it all beautifully on a picnic table in the backyard. (Sundae parties get messy, and you’ll want to keep that mess outside.)

Once you’re prepared for the party, invite your friends over and get started dishing up some delicious treats. Have brightly colored bowls and fun, funky spoons to use and let them serve themselves. You’ll see the conservatives with their vanilla and chocolate syrup and then the outlandish who’ve made huge sundaes with all of the best toppings. Enjoy the company of your friends and the deliciousness of the treats on the special day. Best of all, you’ll have all of those leftovers to enjoy, too.

Cooking Games and Grilling

The grilling cooking games were supposed to be easy, and they seemed that way until I tried to play them. Playing cooking games is often straightforward. You have to cook certain items in order so that you can fill customer orders at a staggering rate. If you don’t move fast enough, food starts burning on the grill and you lose points. You can’t move food off the grill until it’s time to put it on a plate and you can only arrange the food in order of plate – no skipping ahead.

The first few times I played the grilling cooking games, I failed miserably. However, as I played a bit more I got a better handle on it and started to do tolerably well at least. I’m certainly not a pro, but I can hold my own when friends and I decide to have a contest to see who can do the best with the cooking games. So far I haven’t won a single contest, but I have dreams of some day doing well enough to be considered a grill master.

Cooking Games and Making Pizza

One of my favorite cooking games is one where you make pizzas and rush them out to waiting customers. The first few times I played I was pretty terrible. In fact, it took my two tries to realize that you can’t just make any pizzas you want, you have to make the pizzas that the customers are requesting if you want to progress and win the game – oops!

But once I had the basics figured out I got pretty good at playing cooking games and making pizza. You’re given an order and you have to start slinging ingredients and popping those pizzas in the oven if you’re going to make it in time. You have to time the removable of the pizzas with the orders being placed which requires essentially being in two places at once. Or at least doing two things at once. Once you get going though you fall into a pattern which helps you finish the game and move from level to level easily enough. Fortunately the challenge is a fun one.

Cooking Games and Making Breakfast

I’ve determined that making breakfast is the best part about the day. Of course, in full disclosure, I almost never get to make breakfast in the beginning of the day. I’ve started cooking it at the end of the of the day so that I can enjoy it properly. Breakfast in my house is eaten as supper most often, and when trying to throw something together in the few minutes you have between walking in the door and being confronted with hungry children, eggs and bacon sound great.

Breakfast has some of the yummiest items on our daily menu and prepared correctly, there is a huge amount of nutritional value in a well prepared breakfast as well. Bacon and pancakes aside, having eggs, steak and fruit is a nice start to the day, especially if you stir in vegetables to the eggs or make an omelet with other healthy items. Even bacon can have merit at times and pancakes can hold fruit such as bananas or blueberries and nuts for an added dose of healthy protein. Get creative and make breakfast the yummiest part of your day – at the very end of the day.

Cooking Games and the Toaster Oven

I’m not a huge chef in the kitchen, and in fact, I’m pretty pitiful at time when it comes to slicing and dicing. But I do have a certain edge when it comes to one instrument in my kitchen. I am a whiz on the toaster oven. I have a very nice model of the toaster oven. Mine is a stainless steel convection oven large enough to cook a dozen cookies or a full frozen pizza. It’s really an oven that sits on the counter, which is good since my “real” oven is about thirty years old and not the ideal.

Using the toaster oven, I’m able to make toast, bake cookies and broil French fries. The convection feature on the oven helps it to cook evenly and is now a standard for everything that goes into the machine. Want to bake cookies? Use convection settings. Want to heat up pizza? Confection. It actually browns things more naturally than just baking alone, especially in such a small setting. If I could have nothing else in my kitchen, I’d bring along a mini fridge, a small microwave and a confection oven. I’d be set, at least until I needed to wash dishes in a sink I didn’t bring along.

Cooking Games: Super Easy Queso

That yummy melted cheese you get at your favorite Mexican restaurants isn’t hard to make at home. In fact, it’s simple. To make queso, start with a small crock pot or a microwaveable bowl. Take a small package of processed cheese such as Velveeta and cut it into small squares. Then put those squares into the small crock pot or bowl.

Next, you have a few options. One super easy option is to take a can of tomatoes and peppers and empty it into the cheese. Heat until the cheese is smooth and melted. Another option is to use salsa or picante sauce instead of the canned tomatoes. And still a third option is to cut in your own tomatoes and them to add any other items you might like such as chorizo or browned beef to give your queso a meaty edge.

Serve your queso with chips for a yummy appetizer or make yourself nachos using large tortilla chips, beans, meat and tomatoes and then top with the queso to make a hugely delicious mess of cheese, chips and meat – yum!

Cooking Games: Frozen Pizzas

If there were a magic food for the teenager, it would be a frozen pizza. You can do a lot with a frozen pizza and it seems suitable for almost all occasions. To make yourself a frozen pizza, you’ll want to follow the instructions on the box, but know that you don’t always have to do exactly what the box is telling you to do – you can do your own thing.

Start with a regular cheese pizza, preferably one with a thin crust, but a thick or rising crust pizza will do just as well. Dig through your refrigerator to find all sorts of things you can use with that frozen pizza. For example, dress up the pizza with fresh mushrooms and olives. Add a few cut onions and perhaps some tiny pieces of ham. Even adding spices from the spice rack can dress up a frozen pizza.

Follow the baking instructions for the pizza, but realize that the more toppings you include on the pizza, the longer it’ going to take to cook. But when the timer goes off, you can enjoy a hot delicious pizza full of your favorite toppings – even if it would never come in a box that way.