So, I love a few shows on the Food Network, my favorite being Chopped. The premise of the show is that four professional chefs are given a basket of secret ingredients, along with a stocked pantry, and told to make an appetizer. The least impressive is "chopped" and the remaining three repeat with a new basket for the entree round, and the final two battle over dessert.

The combinations of secret ingredients can be fairly normal things like Kale, honey, and quail, or as odd as trout and chocolate sandwich cookies (oreos).

Well, I've started looking at our pantry at home and picking the oddest ingredients and trying to figure out how I'd turn them into something delicious. The other day I made pork sliders with a spicy plum sauce... sure, it was tasty... but it was abnormal.

My family is tolerating my culinary explorations, but only just. I've definitely been told to eat it myself and make macaroni from the box for the kids.

Anyone else experience this phenomenon?