How to have fun when going out isn't an option

 Otherwise known as how to make a whole lot of work for oneself and then overeat. 

I watched an episode of Great Mythical Morning where Rhett and Link were subjected to a blind taste test of local Mexican food of varying price ranges. (Side note, I think my brother looks like Rhett with less hair) I decided I wanted to do the same thing for Jim, Katie and Christian, and one of the options would be homemade. So we would have storebought/frozen, fast food, homemade, and sit down restaurant. Four courses would be guacamole, steak tacos, chicken enchiladas, and tres leches cake. 

It was a lot of work, but I planned it out and it wasn't overwhelming. I sent Jim out to pick up the take out food, and he also helped by cleaning the entryway and vacuuming. I set up the food in my sewing room so I could keep the information of food source a secret. 

I had stickers and a key sheet for each category and I only brought out one category at a time. Each person got a bite or two of each food and we discussed our favorites, what we liked or didn't like about each dish, and then declared our favorite by sticking a skewer with our name on it in a lump of old playdough in front of our winner of a dish. 

Christian set up some cameras to film it and while I don't know if we got usable footage, hopefully we'll get a montage of favorite moments in the taste test. 

We also taste tested flavors of Mexican soda.

Some pictures: 

Since the theme was Mexican food, I had to get little pinatas for the kids! These are so cute! We filled them with Hershey's kisses, Starbursts, and some Mexican candy. 

Our skewer flags to indicate our favorites. The kids enjoyed having their own flags.

Guac round. Best guac was from El Parian (second from left). Most flavor--red onion, cilantro, lime, salt, and avocado. Mine (to the right of the El Parian entry) needed more salt. And probably more onion. The other entries were Chipotle and Wholly Guacamole (which was Christian's favorite).

Chicken Enchiladas. Emma liked the cooked from frozen entry (second from right). Most people liked the one on the far right which was too spicy for me. My tongue was burning. That one was from Que Taco. I liked the one from El Parian on the very left. Mine was second from left, and I think the homemade sauce recipe needs tweaking

My steak taco (far left) almost won this round, but something about the Chipotle steak taco (far left) was better. The from frozen steak burrito (second from right) wasn't as bad as people thought it would be, but that's because it wasn't a cheapo bean burrito. It was an actual steak burrito. The El Parian steak taco had too much cilantro for my taste.

I don't have a picture of all the tres leches cakes together, but the Costa Vida offering was too much like Strawberry Shortcake (and a soggy version of that as well). The El Parian was too soggy and kind of a mess. It came out of the packaging all sloppy looking. The Supermercado entry was dry and soggy at the same time. Upon further inspection, it seems they only soaked the bottom layer of their two layer cake. My homemade, cinnamon dusted entry was the winner: 

It was SO GOOD. 

I am apparently a better baker than a cook, which I have suspected for many years. No worries, all my food was mostly edible and I had a near win with my steak taco.

We all tasted the Mexican sodas. Only Christian liked the tamarind. The rest of us liked the mandarin and the pineapple and the guava. I liked the lime too. 

I'm excited for Katie and Christian to take a turn with this fun dinner idea!