This past weekend, I drove down to DC with my aunts and cousin so that we could take an acrylic landscape workshop. I have always loved a variety of art forms and the expression they allow you.

While that was the point of our trip, one of the highlights was the $10 appetizer challenge we had on Saturday night. This is something my cousin had done with her friends before and it sounded like a lot of fun. What I loved about this is it’s like recreating Ready, Steady, Cook at home.

The Challenge
Spend only $10 and create an appetizer. No peeking at recipes allowed.

The Rules
– If you spend more than $10, a point gets deducted from your final score
– No corn or rice products could be used
– No beef or pork
– Points from 1 – 5 (with 5 being the best) awarded for presentation, taste, and originality

By far, the most challenging part was sticking to a $10 budget at Whole Foods (that was the closest place to my mom’s apartment), but it certainly did force us to be creative. It was also a little difficult to manage five people cooking in the kitchen at once, but this was a lot of fun. Once everything was ready, we also added a wine tasting to our evening.

Here are the dishes we ended up creating:

The winning appetizer.

Rosemary mashed potato stuffed mushrooms with mozzarella and fried green tomatoes. This was my cousins creation. She managed to spend only $7 and win the challenge. It was delicious and something I would make.

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Mussels in a white wine sauce with sweet potato french fries.

Mussels in a white wine sauce with sweet potato french fries were made by my mom. Also very tasty.

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Mini seafood quiches.

Mini seafood quiches were made by one of my aunts. If I remember correctly, she filled phyllo dough with crab meat, Swiss cheese and egg.

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Pan-seared scallop with mango-peach salad.

Scallops with a mango-peach salad were cooked by my other aunt. The scallops were perfect and the salad was good.

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I think I need to work on my plating skills.

Chicken in a avocado-tomatillo sauce is what I chose to make. While I was walking the aisles of Whole Foods, I couldn’t think of what to make, so once I saw avocados this is what I went for. I promise you, it tastes better than it looks. My sauce was a little thicker than I wanted and I think I should have cooked it with the chicken of laid the chicken on top. I also went $1.45 over budget.