While “life” has gotten in the way of those regularly scheduled Family Food Fights, we’re still a family that loves to eat together. And, even if we’re not competing, you can bet your bottom dollar we eat well. Welcome to Saturday’s crab boil at my son and Julie’s house. 
Life has a funny way of getting between you and the things you like to do sometimes. Fortunately, for us, it’s been all good things like a wedding, a graduation, various trips out of town, and lots of other happy events.
It had been quite a while since we battled it out in the kitchen. So when Jim called one day last week to ask “how about a Family Food Fight this weekend?”, I was ‘all in’. And, since 3 of us are watching carbs these days, we decided the theme of the challenge would be Atkins-friendly.
On Sunday “Our Family Food Fight” battled the States. The challenge was to cook something representative of the states we randomly chose from a U.S. puzzle box. Clearly, I got Idaho and , of course, I immediately thought of potatoes. Other states selected were Maryland, South Carolina and Arizona. You’ll be able to see the progression of all 4 dishes on the Family Food Fight blog when Jim posts later this week. I’ll tweet and let you know when they’re up.
I don’t know if anyone in Idaho ever ate a pizza like this, but they should!
After a long hiatus, Our Family Food Fight is back!
The theme: Surprise (stuffed) Burgers.
The challenge: present a burger with a surprise stuffing. And, of course, it had to be thematically correct, appropriately dressed and accompanied.
The Contestants: The usual suspects (Jim, Cassie, me) plus our newest family member, Julie (Jim’s wife). We’ll have to update that photo in the sidebar one of these days.
I debated between calling mine “The Sunday Sauce Burger” or “The Italian Stallion”. It has all the components and flavors of an Italian Sunday Sauce dinner but, as I developed the idea and went with the ‘one-burger-for-all’ instead of sliders, it began to take on the personality of an ‘Italian Stallion’. Besides, I liked the rhyming. 
Most of you know that here at FOODalogue Sunday is a family day. It’s either spent enjoying celebratory dinners with the extended family (when you number 17, it’s always someone’s birthday or a holiday) – or – Jim, Cassie and I have food challenges. No birthdays this week, so we planned a ‘Family Food Fight’: Battle “burgers”. Though unspoken, we each came up with a non-ketchup burger (not that we have anything against ketchup).
Ben of What’s Cooking? issued a challenge to food bloggers to make tortillas. And, I issued a challenge to my team…let’s collectively make the tortillas and individually make a filling and topping. [I'm not a fan of dough-related recipes. I like to eat them, but I just don't have the temperament to make them. So, "collectively" means I issue ideas (I had a few), Jim does the actual work, and Cassie plays games on his I-phone.]
We used the standard tortilla recipe (easy with the right product) and made them ‘ours’ by pressing cilantro leaves into the dough (left); mixing in Sazon seasoning with achiote (center); and blending the dough with squid ink (right).
Jim made carnitas with a slow-cooked pork butt and pickled onions which we paired with the achiote tortilla; Cassie wanted to make a “salad” filling and chopped lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, olives etc. and served it with a citrus vinaigrette and we paired that with the cilantro tortilla; and I made a shrimp ceviche which I had planned to serve with the squid-ink infused tortilla. 
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