Chopper

Recently, the Mild Wife and I started watching "The Big Family Cooking Showdown" on Netflix. I don't remember whether it was recommended based on previous watching history or if we just decided to pull it up on a lark, but we started watching it nevertheless. If you've ever seen "The Great British Baking Show," this show has a very similar look and feel. It is a cooking competition, but it's not cutthroat at all. It very much feels like a family-friendly show featuring friendly families.

Since this show specifically focuses on home cooking, you get folks cooking things that look like something we might actually attempt to make at the Mild Home. I mean, it can be fun to watch some professional chef cook a giant lobster and top it with caviar and truffle sauce, but I'm never going to make something like that. The stuff that these folks make, though, looks something we might actually attempt to make. We might not make the recipe exactly as is, but we sort of recognize it as something that falls within the realm of our possibility. Basically, it's been a lot of fun to follow along.

That said, this eventually prompted a question: if we were in these contestants' shoes, who would we pick from our families to be on our team? The teams are made up of three people, so at minimum, the Mild Wife and I would need one more person. Would it be cousin So-and-So? Or what about that niece from the other side of the family? Our parents? Siblings? In the end, it prompted a fun discussion about which family members' cooking skills would complement which other skills, or how we would approach the show.

Given that we had this much fun with it, we then posed the question to my siblings. We figured they might have some fun with the notion, as well. As it turns out, my sister had the best answer. She actually put a fair bit of thought into it, because she had a bunch of questions. Did she have to be on the team? Was there a pre-defined theme? Which in-laws counted? You get the idea; this was not a flippant, off-the-cuff response.

That said, what was really interesting was the way she mentally organized her team. She picked one person to be the "head chef" and another person to be a "taster." She still picked people whose cooking skills she thought were up to snuff, but she wanted them to fill specific roles. The head chef would plan out the menus and dictate general direction, and the taster would be responsible for figuring out specific details during the execution.

The best part, however, was the last role, the one she reserved for herself. She handles herself okay in the kitchen, but she was intentionally picking other folks to be the superstars on the team. So, she relegated herself to the role of "Chopper." Yup, chopper. She would be responsible for a lot of the prep work and chopping of ingredients. I don't remember too much else from that conversation, because I started cracking up once I saw that. That's one heck of a way to describe the prep work.

Of course, I couldn't help but point out that in the Mild Home, we call that the "Sous Chef." In either case, I'm going to start looking for the Chopper on each team as we watch this show. I suspect there will be a fair bit of giggling during this process.