Gang Up Volume 2

I wanted to get this published earlier in the week but life got in the way and I haven't had much of a chance to sit down and write until now. After serving my gang-up dish last Monday, I wanted to follow up with the dish my mom came up with for anyone who in interested. Besides, she gets mentioned enough throughout my posts I figured it was time for her to be in the spotlight. Her face when I put my plate down in front of her on Monday looked slightly shocked. She told me it was eerily similar to what she had planned but wouldn't tell me what it was. So on Tuesday night, I sat down and this is what wound up in front of me...

I know it doesn't really look anything like mine, but the concept is similar. Mashed potatoes with the beef and sauce served over the top and bread on the side. The difference is, I made a joke about my bread being made out of barley and potatoes and hers really was. I guess as far as competition goes, she has a one-up on me there. She called this dish "Beef Ragout with Mashed Root Vegetables & Potato Barley Flatbread" Not sure what Ragout directly translates to, but I'm going to guess "stewed beef in a chunky tomato sauce." She used all 10 ingredients and added an onion and an egg. The onion was used in the mashed potato mix-up. It was mashed potatoes and turnips with caramelized onion. The addition of the onion was a good choice - these were good. The pumpkin went into her Ragout, but I don't know any of the specific details on how this was put together. All I know is that it was put together well. The flat bread was an interesting addition to the meal. It tasted a little bit like a cream of wheat cracker if you can imagine that. The fact of the matter is, it was made using only the ingredients allowed so that in itself is impressive to me. She ate more of the flat bread the next morning toasted with jam. So it looks like she got a couple of meals out of this. So versatile!

Normally we make a competition out of this complete with judges and scoring sheets but we didn't go to that trouble time around. My brother ate mine but I don't think he had a chance to taste hers. So just because she made homemade barley potato bread and used a fancy French title AND got breakfast out of it the next morning, I'm going to go ahead and say its still up in the air as to who won this one.

Her friend Deb, who put this whole thing together wrote up a blog presenting all of the final results. It's kind of interesting to see what everyone was able to come up with using the same ingredients. If you are interested, check that out here! Gang-Up Challenge Results