All Over Red Rover

Another family holiday done and dusted.

After twelve days of fun and sunshine, Bubbles and Knight in Shining Armour flew home this morning.

The psychotic dogs are missing them very much, especially Jack, who has been absolutely spoilt rotten and molly coddled beyond all recognition.

It's now very quiet in our house and Adoring Husband has a big weekend of First Aide training happening with the SES so I will have the house to myself. I plan on editing photos, experimenting with ginger, cleaning, visiting The Motivator and spending long mornings in bed.

I didn't get a chance to post here last night because we all had a very late night.

We invited Best Cousin in the World and Marco Polo to our place to meet Bubbles and KISA for the first time. What started out as a planned barbecue with salads, Adoring Husband as the cook, ended up being a full day in the kitchen for me, because AH was required at SES training for the evening.

KISA is not a cook, not even on the barbecue, and I didn't want my guests to have to cook their own dinner, so I opted to cook a couple of curries. Curries are not my forte. I cook a reasonable Butter Chicken. That's it.

BCITW and MP are Indian Food connoisseurs, and I did not remember this fact until my pots were on the stove simmering away, at which point, I regretted my decision immediately. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, I did a Beef Rendang and a Butter Chicken, with boiled rice, Naan bread and natural yoghurt with cucumber and coriander. They turned out quite nice, though not as full of flavour as the Indian Restaurants, but acceptable.

For dessert, it was chocolate mud cake with chocolate icing and sprinkled with candied pecans. The pecans were candied with maple syrup mixed with a ginger powder that I made with BCITW's and MP's ginger from their farm.

I marinated slices of ginger in a flavoured balsamic vinegar, then dehydrated it in the oven and then ground it to a powder in the food processor. To taste it on it's own, it was very strong and very hot, with a sweet tangy flavour. Because of the strength of heat and flavour, I only used one teaspoon of the powder in three tablespoons of maple syrup.

I drizzled that mixture over pecans and cooked in a hot oven for 12 minutes. After it cools, the syrup mixture hardens to toffee and then I chop the pecans and toffee into small pieces, and then sprinkled it over the icing on the cake.

Surprisingly, the ginger could barely be tasted, so next time, I will add a couple more teaspoons of the ginger powder.

After dinner, and while we were affected by an unknown number of alcoholic beverages, we played Cards Against Humanity. It started out very even, with each of us winning a game. I'm sure MP hit the lead there a number of times, but in the end, I was the victor! Which just shows how sick my mind is!

A good time was had by all and Adoring Husband came home in time to join in for an hour before he had to go collapse in bed.

Everybody went to bed, except for BCITW and I. We sat up talking until 1.30am (I'm certain that she wanted to go to bed at least an hour earlier, but was too kind to tell me to shut up and go to bed!). I could have written a blog post because I lay in bed for almost two hours not able to sleep. It was almost 3.30am when I finally fell asleep.

We drove the kids to the airport this morning, washed the car in The Bay, did a little grocery shopping and came home with just enough time to enjoy a coffee and some nibbles before getting ready for the club.

Tonight, I won $80 on the keno, two pots in the 'lotsapots' and a pie pack in the raffle, which consisted of a large curry pie and a large apple pie direct from the bakery.

I arrived home in time to watch my team, the Brisbane Broncos, defeat the top team in the competition, the Melbourne Storm!! Yeeha!!

Now, it's well after midnight and I am off to bed. I'm exhausted.

I can't believe that I did not get one photo of Bubbles and I together while she was here!

Nite all.