And!

 

We did experiment with cooking/air frying/baking other recipes too, not just the Eton Mess.

I bought a large bag of cauliflower florets for the kids to snack on.  I like raw cauliflower, but the kids looked at them and pronounced them "styrofoam" broccoli."  I see their point, but they were not going to eat them no matter what I said.  So I used a Pioneer Woman recipe younger daughter had given me, and air-fried them.  Yummm... But the kids had no interest in them and I had to eat them all myself.  Again, yummm.

Another recipe:

Scones, from Mary Berry's recipe. They tasted great, but the recipe calls for self-rising flour, which I didn't have, so they were a bit flat. (Notice the one on the far right, the one I used a cutter to make. Flat. For the others, I just plopped the dough on the cookie sheet and those looked better.)  Self-rising flour means self-rising flour. Lesson learned.

And I made homemade buttermilk biscuits, which I am ashamed to say, I had never done before. They turned out well, and they were for strawberry shortcake.  We haven't had that in years and years because my husband thought he was allergic to strawberries, but a particularly bad reaction last year to who knows what sent him to the allergist.  He had lots of tests and it turned out he is not allergic to strawberries.  What he is allergic to, really badly allergic to, is now a mystery.

Beautiful, right?

And yesterday I learned about this:

Oh, my.

I can't imagine that (probably frozen, pre-made) Eton Mess could possibly be good. Wouldn't all the merengue pieces and the added chocolate cookies be kind of soggy or cardboard-y after being held in the whipped cream for who-knows-how-long?

It's too easy to make and too good to use this pre-made stuff instead. I wonder if restaurants do.

Make your own, y'all!

Dinosaurs, Panda bears, and Eton Mess

 

We had our older daughter and three of her children visiting last week. Her husband and oldest daughter, both working, held down the fort at home in Austin, Texas. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, and don't know when we will see them again, so it was a treat to have them here. They drove straight through, getting food at drive through restaurants only, to avoid contact with people. Bathrooms? Masks, soap and water.

During this never-ending pandemic (wear masks dammit), there wasn't a lot exciting to do, but we did go to Zoo Atlanta, which was limiting the number of people at the zoo, masks were required, and six-foot sections were marked on the pavement in display areas. The indoor exhibits were closed, so all in all, a safe---and hot---way to get out of the house for awhile.

And then there was this, Jurassic Quest, a drive-through exhibit with animatronic dinosaurs. It did not live up to expectations. It took place at the Atlanta Speedway parking lot, and was not remotely set up as a real environment for anything but cars. It took 90 minutes to get there, 30 minutes to get in, and an hour winding through the paths marked by yellow traffic cones.  Yee-hah...

The dinosaurs creaked and groaned and moved a little.

 

Looks like fun, right?

A plastic volcano!  How realistic!

Again, we are mostly homebound during this pandemic so this "adventure" was good for a lot of laughs. And some moaning. 

A high point of the visit:

This was fun and yummy---Eton Mess. My husband and I had this in Dublin a few years ago, and it's easy, easy, easy to make.  

Jaden made the merengues, Elizabeth cut up the strawberries, and I made the whipped cream. We crumbled the merengues a bit, stirred the pieces and the strawberries into the whipped cream, and done!

This is not my photo, but you get the idea.  YUMMY!!!