Masterchef

First - thanks to everyone who makes an effort to comment and/or give me feedback!  It's no fun feeling like I'm talking to an echo chamber so I really like hearing from people.  :)

Second - I am pretty much better from being sick this weekend.  The cold is nearly gone and the stomach thing went away on Sunday.  I still can't eat a lot of things though, which is annoying.

Okay, main post.

As I've mentioned before, J, the 10 year old boy of the family I work for, is very into cooking.  He had taken some cooking classes here and there before I started and when he first met me the first thing he wanted to do was make me a crepe.  When the mother and I are busy around the house and/or taking the other kids places we can always count on J to make dinner just fine on his own - I think that's pretty great for a 10 year old, especially a boy (sad to say).

He also loves the show Masterchef, which is kind of the equivalent of Top Chef in the US - an elimination reality show type thing with weekly challenges where the competitors have to make certain dishes with specific ingredients or create their own dish, things like that.  In August J applied to be a contestant on Masterchef Junior, they interviewed him shortly after, and accepted him.

Ten French kids, ages 9-13, will compete over next week's vacation (French schools have all next week off for Toussaint - All Saints' Day) to gain the title of Masterchef, Jr.  I have no clue what they win other than bragging rights.  J is, of course, super excited and nervous.  That's also why he's been taking so many cooking classes lately, to get experience cooking diverse things in a professional setting and limited time.  I think it will air sometime around Christmas, as one of their challenges will be to create a Christmas-themed dish.

One of the parts involved in the show is a visit to each contestant's home to film them cooking their favorite dish and to interview them and their family.  J was the first kid to get a visit, and it happened a few weeks ago on a Wednesday, while he was off from school. 

The whole family was worked up, of course, and there was an enormous amount of bustling about, cleaning, equivocating about outfits, and fretting about keeping the little ones quiet during filming.  Since I was not going to be filmed I was assigned to entertain and shush M, who was going out of her mind with excitement and tiredness, and baby O, who didn't care about the crew but definitely picked up on the atmosphere. 

Neither kid got their nap that day so by the end of the filming session, around 6:30pm, they were both nightmares.  Early in the day M spent almost two hours staring out the window and running, shrieking, to J each time a car pulled up, saying that the crew had arrived.  The poor boy was already terribly stressed and this did nothing to help.  M knew she couldn't really talk to the crew but was determined to be as cute and charming as possible.  She drew pictures for each of them and won all their hearts.  I must say, I wish I had a film crew there every day since it seems to put her on her best behavior.  When I took her to the park with O, though, she was terrible!  He really wanted to sleep, and he would have if she didn't keep poking and pinching him, yelling in his ear, and trying to take off his shoes while he sat in the stroller.  We had to get out of the house for a bit - firstly, to try to make O sleep, but secondly because they had to interview the mother for the show.  Meanwhile D, 14, was plotting about how to work her desire to be an actress into the interview about J.  Sigh.

Anyway, they spent a long time in the kitchen filming J as he made a cheesecake (of course not the cheesecake they eventually ate for the cameras, which was made the night before and had to chill).  After the individual interviews they moved into the dining room where they staged a scene of J presenting the cheesecake to the whole family (I've never once seen everyone in the family eat together) while they made enthusiastic comments about his cooking abilities.  Even little O cooperated, demanding more after the piece he shared with his mother was gone.  M made some hilariously overacted "mmmmm!" noises and faces.  I got some afterwards and I will agree it was delicious.

Since I wasn't around or shut up with the little ones during most of the filming I don't really know what kinds of things they discussed on camera.  The crew was very nice, though, and I talked with them some between "scenes."  They suggested perhaps I could be in the eating scene but I really did not want to do that.

It was an exciting day for everyone, but pretty exhausting.  I think, though, that since they've come J has mellowed a little, becoming more excited than stressed about the whole thing, as he was before.  Now that the actual challenges are coming up, though, he's getting stressed again.

He will have three challenges to complete: one is just making a dish from a set recipe - something to do with scallops I think; the second is to create a dish using all of a list of ingredients, the main one being eggs; and the third is to create a Christmas-themed dish using their choice of a long list of things.  I have the descriptions and ingredient lists of all the challenges and if anyone is a cook and interested in helping young J become the next Masterchef Jr he could use some creative ideas about what to make.  PLEASE feel free to email me about it if the spirit moves you!