Family Fun

Phew that was an exhausting weekend! Jp's dad was in town so we had dinner at one sister's house on Friday night and another sister's house on Saturday night. Although we weren't cooking the dinners, we still made and brought the dessert plus had to drive an hour each way to get there.

For Friday night, I made a carrot cake with fresh peeled and grated carrots and cream cheese icing. Jp knows his dad well and told me to only ice 3/4 of the cake and leave one end plain. I followed his instructions and it was a good thing as there were a couple of people who didn't like icing.

On Saturday I baked peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies AND made rice pudding. My rice pudding recipe has me simmering the milk, sugar, rice and raisins for about 45 minutes until it's thick enough for the spoon to stand up in it. I know there are lots of other faster/easier recipes but I find that this recipe is really worth the slow simmer and stirring as it's so very rich and creamy. Many people come forward to tell me their easier version, but everyone likes my rice pudding! Even his sister who worked at a hospital for many years, who wouldn't eat rice pudding because she felt it was made from left over dinner rice and tasted horrible - she actually gave it a try and said it was good. That's pretty good of her to try something that she had an aversion to for so long.

It's hard these days is trying to align everyone's likes and dislikes and what they can/can't eat -  but I've taken my brother's advise to just make the food and not worry about it - some couldn't eat the peanut butter cookies, some didn't like the rice pudding, some didn't like the cake icing... you just can't please everyone and really, why should I expect to and why should I try? There were other choices and I don't think anyone left the table hungry.

Sunday my back muscles were screaming and I was very slow moving in the morning. My neighbour invited Eco and I over for a play date so Eco burned up a whole lot of energy romping with their dog and I didn't have to walk her - that plus some Aleve helped a lot. Eco doesn't necessarily pull during our walks but she does like to make a sudden stop every now and again to sniff something and that jolt seems to pull a muscle or two. Do you have that with your dog?

I did put up an Etsy shop for some of my baby hats, but I'm still tweaking it so I won't post the link yet. The two hats in my previous post have already sold - yippee. I like having 'mad money' in my pocket.  This weekend I started this hat, but I need to add the ties on the ear flaps so here's a quick snapshot only:

I would love to see that on a little baby head. 

Wouldn't you? Who? Hoo? 

You!