Project Life: Week 27

I’m definitely catching up now!  This time I’ve got Week 27 which was June 29th to July 5th… yes I’ve finally made it into July!  Here’s an overview of the week:

The birthday celebrations weren’t completely over yet… Krystal invited us for dinner at her house and she made a delicious roast chicken dinner complete with gravy and stuffing.  Even as a small girl Krystal LOVED roasts and she didn’t even mind breaking the bread up for stuffing… we didn’t have a food processor back then!  After dinner she produced a home made lemon meringue pie and it was divine. 

After a good start to the week I hit a complete road block health wise… migraine headaches, stiff muscles, aversion to light and sound along with complete exhaustion.  I ended up having the rest of the week at home! 

On one of my visits to the doctors I was flicking through a home and garden magazine when I came across the paint colours I liked so rather than write them down I whipped out my phone and took a photo… so much easier when I’m trying to explain things to Mike.

Here’s a closer look at the week:

Toby was excellent company this week while I was at home.  He loved snuggling up in front of the fire and he was more than happy to just hang out with me. 

Mike kept us well looked after too… he made sure the fire was going each morning before heading off for work by 6.30am… and he also made sure there was enough firewood to keep us going through the day.  That was probably just as well because although Toby is good company he’s a light weight when it comes to doing chores and he always uses his classic excuse… ‘But Mum, I’ve got no thumbs!”

There were a few good frosts during the week and I did capture one of them with my camera.  Mike leaves so early that the frost hasn’t really started yet but within a short amount of time the other car glistens in the sunshine.  Frosts are really lovely… so long as you don’t have to go out in them.

Krystal came to visit us on Saturday and she brought the movie Cinderella with her.  It was a lovely movie and it was great to hang out with my girl for the afternoon.  She also helped me make some yummy treats! 

Just before I went to pick her up I was making ice cream (my first recipe trial using my new ice cream maker).  I’d heated the milk and cream and ‘set it aside’ which is what the recipe said to do.  Then I whisked the egg yolks and sugar and it was looking pretty good.  Next I added the milk/cream mixture slowly and that was fine too.  Back into the pot and onto a low temp to cook and what do you know… I made a huge pot of SCRAMBLED EGGS! 

I was super disappointed so I headed over to Krystal’s to pick her up and I was telling her what had happened.  Apparently ‘set aside’ should have said ‘ set aside until mixture comes to room temperature’… basically it was too hot when I added it to my egg yolks and sugar.

I had enough ingredients to give it a second go and Krystal helped me with it.  The second mixture turned out perfectly and I did in fact get to churn it in the ice cream maker and it was DELICIOUS!  I added some vanilla bean seeds to it and loved how the little seeds flecked through the ice cream. 

Here’s a closer look at the rest of the week:

Since I’d now made two ice cream recipes I had 16 egg whites left over and Krystal suggested I make a meringue ‘roll up’.  It’s basically a meringue cooked on a baking tray… flipped over and left to cool… smothered with some sort of fruit mixture/curd/jam etc. and then smothered in whipped cream before being rolled up like a sponge roll.

I had a couple of jars of lemon curd in the pantry so we used lemon curd and whipped cream to fill our meringue.  Krystal knew the recipe off by heart so we got busy and made one… which turned out brilliantly!  That was 5 egg whites used up so we made a second one… filled it… rolled it… and put it in the freezer!  We still had 6 egg whites left so we made one more for Krystal to take home with her… her partner Chris was very happy about that one!

Meanwhile, Mike was in the laundry working on the walls.  When he’d replaced the floor in the laundry the bottom of the walls were pretty damaged so we’d had to let it all dry out so we could remove the rotten parts.  Now that it was all completely dry, Mike got out the poly filler and started mending what was left.  By the time he’d finished that he was ready to jump into the kitchen himself and make mango lassies!  He’s discovered some wonderful mango pulp (which would also be good in a meringue roll up) and it made all the difference to the mango lassies… he’s got a GREAT recipe now!

Mum was also busy this weekend teaching herself to do mixed media art.  She’d watched some You Tube tutorials, gathered all her supplies and asked lots of questions so now it was just time to start!

Here’s a few photos to show you what she got up to:

I was pretty impressed with what she’d done… and I’m pretty sure she surprised herself too!  She’d made the tag to take to SENZ with her the following weekend and I know she got lots of comments on it while she was there!

We also had an exciting event happen this weekend… Mike’s daughter Roxanne came to visit us for a week.  Roxanne is about to turn 21… in fact Roxanne and Mikayla are exactly three months apart in age so we’ve got TWO daughters turning 21 this year!

Her bus was due in at 3am on Sunday morning so we got ourselves up and dressed and headed off to the bus terminal to meet her.  Toby was VERY excited to be doing something… he had no idea WHAT was about to happen he just knew it was ‘something’.  In the end we had to wait for a long time because Roxanne’s bus was 40 minutes late.

She finally arrived and we all headed home to get some sleep.  Later on in the morning Toby (and Mike) were both like cats on a hot tin roof.  Mike ‘accidently’ kept making a lot of noise to try and wake Roxanne up… and when that didn’t work… he let Toby into her room! 

The rest of Sunday was spent hanging out together and it was great!  So that was our week.  Thanks for stopping by again xx