Feast

We had another day of being stranded today, Ballinasloe has had some of the worst flooding in the whole country, so we stayed indoors and crafted and cooked and ate… I need to get out of the house before I double in size!!!!!!!

We are in the middle of a whole group of silly sock creatures, they are getting whole personalities as we stitch, add buttons and ridiculous appendages (as in ARMS or funny FEET, just in case something else went through your head…) I’ll post photos tomorrow, the kitchen is in crazy chaos (not unusual!)

Tonight we had a FEAST of almost-Christmas-dinner proportions;

so much so that we have a whole dinner for tomorrow left over also! (I must try to remember there is only 5 and a half people to feed…) I have a stash of huge organic chickens in the freezer, so: one of those roasted with olive oil, herbs and Maldon sea salt (I need to buy shares); roast potatoes, roasted in the fat with generous amonts of salt sprinkled, roasted butternut squash (with olive oil, honey, salt (I so need those shares), herbs and grated nutmeg-swoon), carrot and parsnip, and Fionas “Apple Stuffing” (I’ll post the recipe again, this was to be a short post), oh, and gravy. But, the highest point of the feast was the dessert which almost had me in tears of joy. Yesterday, my son (8) and I did a science “experiment”: freezing icecream using salt and ice to quick-freeze it. We had to put the ingredients into a ziplock bag and pack the ice and coarse salt around it: the salt makes the ice even colder and to do this needs to use the energy of the ice-cream ingredients, thereby making them colder and turning them into icecream. Well, of course I couldn’t find the piece of paper with the ingredients, so we made them up and People!! let me tell you, what transpired, many frozen hours later was **practically** a litre of Haagen Daz (slightly more ice-crunchy, not as smooth). I’m light headed (and it’s not all the ice-cream!!) Ness has promised me a loan of a “real” ice-cream maker, so Culinary  Nirvana has just spread out before me….

• Christmas,
• dessert,
• feast,
• Flooding,
• Haagen Daz,
• icecream,
• Maldon sea salt,
• organic chickens,
• roast potatoes,
• science experiement,
• sock creatures