Mystery Box Challenge

This post might win the prize for 'blurriest photoes ever uploaded'! I don't really want to win that prize, but I had to post this story with what photos I had! Too late to go and take some better ones!

Here is my daughter and our friend cooking dinner for four. They were given the Mystery Box after school and had to come up with a main and a dessert using the ingredients within it (We are watchers of Australian Masterchef in our households!).

First we pulled the Mystery Box (read vegetable drawer) out of the fridge where we had been hiding it until it was time to start. The purple sarong was removed to reveal.......

Pumpkin, yellow pepper, beetroot, parsnip, beef mince and green beans!

They had to use at least some of these ingredients, plus whatever we had in the pantry.

We (the mums) kept well out of their way except for sneaking in to take a photo, and finding rows of lovely little meatballs sitting on the bench, all ready to go in the oven, and this wonderful scene:

Soon there was a long row of pasta hanging up to dry.

When we were called to eat we found our appetizers sitting on the table: thin rings of parsnip deep fried and sprinkled with salt. They were SO YUMMY! You will see a few of them in a little bowl in the picture below. Crisp with that parsnip sweetness and the delicious salt sparking them up! Such a yummy way to start a meal!

Next came our main course which included pumpkin ~ used in the pasta! No wonder it was such a golden colour! And beef mince used in the tasty meatballs, Green beans and yellow capsicum adding even more colour to the dish, and a simple tomato sauce to bring it all together.

(Sorry about the yellowness, I hope you can get an idea of how lovely it was, in spite of the photo!)

Now what could be dessert? What dessert could you have made that used an ingredient from this mystery box! Well, I will tell you what the girls made: Chocolate pudding with beetroot cream! Truly! They grated half a beetroot and squeezed out the juice to colour sweetened cream. It didn't taste of beetroot..... but O the colour!

It was even more gorgeous that this photo shows. Such a glorious pink!
An uploaded photo of it to facebook and had 35 comments trying to guess what it was!

What a delicious, surprising and fun evening it was! Thankyou Masterchefs!