Meringues

It is school holidays and we’ve had a visitor – our gorgeous grandson, Cooper, which meant it was time to cook with Granny, play chess with Papa, and this time, there was also a little piano lesson too!

We only had 48 hours, but we managed to pack a lot in. Cooper had a list of what we needed to cook:

Meringues
Chocolate Cream Cake
Lemon Slice (for Papa), and
Rocky Road

A major search to find the Rocky Road recipe, but more about that later, then he wrote up the shopping list. A trip to the supermarket and home via my favourite book shop – The Book Shoppe, where I was delighted to hear him asking Janene about his favourite authors. Yes, there was also time for reading in between everything else!

Back at home, and decked out in Chef’s Whites, Cooper was ready to get to work! When it come to the meringues – last time we made Evil Pig meringues, I thought that they looked rather sinister, so didn’t even mention them. Instead I asked Cooper what colour the meringue shoud be. His answer – purple! With blue and rose pink colouring at hand, I took a portion of the meringue and began mixing in the colour. It was then that Cooper suggested that we should make evil pigs again, so we ditched the idea of making the meringue purple, and the Evil Pigs made a return! After a little more chit chat (and there was plenty of that), this time, we also made crazy critters, aka porcupines. They were put in the oven and the waiting began – how frustrating that even though they were cooked, they still couldn’t come out of the oven until they were totally cooled! Continue reading →

While 2017 had it’s dreadful lows, as we moved through the year, things seemed to improve and get better and better. In fact, by the end of the year, we were looking forward, with great excitement, to 2018.

Gary and I deliberately chose to stay at home on our own for New Year’s Eve this year, and with that in mind, I decided to plan a special meal. Using only what I had in the garden and the fridge, freezer and larder, the menu was set, and preparation began the day before. Meat was taken from the freezer, jellies were made and set, and a terrine prepared. The star of the show was to be a beautiful piece of venison that we had purchased, from the farm gate, while in Bright earlier in the year. It was a knuckle, so had to be cooked long and slow… This meant messaging a great friend, Fabien, in Paris, as he had prepared a shoulder of venison in a similar manner during one of our visits to his mother’s (my very dear friend, Véronique’s) home a few years ago. While the method for the cooking of the venison was quite simple, it would need seven hours in the oven! This gave me the idea of eating our way into 2018.

During the afternoon, leading to New Year’s Eve, I wandered around the garden picking a small basket of flowers. Carefully arranged in a bowl with a large candle in the centre, they became the centrepiece of a small table set with crystal stem-ware and serviettes.