Monday, January 9, 2012

My Challenge


                                                                    Ready and waiting


                                          Jayden our Great Grandson who calls me super nana
                                                          I didn't really get one of the Christmas dinner but here are two of the aftermath thats my pay I made above, see saga below.


the group photo taken with self timer, not easy to do but we all got in.  From right Samara, Anthony,  John, Joanne, Jessica, Cameron (Jess's partner with Jadyn) Courtney pulling a face and in front on right Maddison, Kaitlin and me.  I do prefer groups photo's shot from below but not sure if its possible with self timer.
 I just had to share with you these two.  I decided that I would make a Christmas pudding like mum used to make but the recipe for this one was Macadamia nut and mango christmas pudding, a real twist on an Australian theme.  In the recipe you steamed it in a bowl but me in my great wisdom decided on Christmas day that I would steam it just like mum did wrapped in a floured cloth.  Not taking into consideration that the biggest pot I had was only about 8 inches high at the most and I had to dangle this thing so it didn't sit on the bottom.  But being a Johnson girl and up for a challenge I got a long stick and balanced it on two plastic containers of flour and, wella, it wasn't sitting on the bottom of the pot, the lid was a challenge, see it sitting there doing sweet fanny adams.  Was the pudding a success? well it tasted ok, no, it tasted damn good but was kinda gluggy.  On checking in the trusty Edmonds book, all their recipes you boiled for 4 hours or more and this one only said 2 hours, hence gluggy.  I froze what was left which was most of it, and will heat it in the oven when it gets cooler and that should cook it through, the skin was there, so that was good.
Now am I the only one that is dumb enough to try something new on the day of the party, mmmhm!
This was my attempt at a Pistachio Pavlova, saw it in a magazine, thought, mmmh, that looks good, being a visual person,why not give it a bash.  One reason would be that previous christmas, my 20 odd year old electric hand beater disintegrated in my hand while I was using it.  But, there is a hand beater in the drawer, how hard can it be to beat up egg whites with a hand beater, used to do it before electric ones came into being.  Bloody hell, I beat and I beat, thought it would be good for my chicken wings under my arms, wrong, they are still there,  manage to get peaks but when I added the sugar,  spoon by spoon, could not get peaks, got John on to it, then Stuart came around to finish off the range hood, had him beating, in the end thought, oh well ,will have to do.  Well as you can see above it was about 1 inch high, nothing like the picture in the magazine.  I didn't trust myself completely, I did buy a ready made one as well.  However even though it didn't look very pretty it tasted really good.  We went and bought a electric beater after Christmas, they are cheap as, so will have another go.  It tasted really good with the pistachio's mixed into it.

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