A little baking and some littles painting

When I rummaged around the fridge for produce yesterday, I found this never opened pint of heavy cream.  It was hiding on a middle shelf way in the back.  It was almost a month out of date but I was brave and opened it.  The cream was just fine so I mixed up a double batch of a tried and true biscuit. 

  Biscuits 

I've made this recipe many times.  I keep the biscuits in the freezer and then just take out how many I need to bake for a breakfast.  The recipe uses cream instead of milk and shortening and is very quick to mix up.  

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  I was wanting to bake something from the Mary Berry cookbook I showed in the previous post and I picked this very simple Fork Cookies recipe.  I doubled the recipe and added some vanilla.  

This dough mixes up fast and was in the oven baking in very little time.  

We packed some in a tin for our house and some in a jar for my parents. 

I like this recipe a lot, it makes a nice butter cookie.  It was not the grands favorite cookie though, they didn't think the Fork Cookies were sweet.  

4 of the grands had a Friday night sleepover here. 

We had homemade pizza and fruit for supper.  Then we walked down to a little pond in our neighborhood where the children climbed in a big tree and threw sticks into the pond and just had fun.

 With supervision from their uncle, they painted a dozen Sun Catchers from a kit.  It was a good project for the older 2.  The younger 2 enjoyed painting 1 each and then they were off to play.  

Use what you have

Hello everyone

We shopped at the commissary last Saturday and I haven't been to any grocery store since then.  While our pantry and freezer are still pretty full, I knew we had used all the bananas, grapes, melon, leaf and romaine lettuce.  Grand children will be here today and maybe more family for supper so I wondered if I should go shopping. 

I looked to see what was in the fridge.  I found about half a pound of strawberries that were still fresh so I washed and quartered them.  

Then I found 5 nice oranges so I peeled and separated them. That will be plenty of fruit for today. 

There was only a quarter head of iceberg lettuce and I knew that would not make a family sized salad but when I added half a bell pepper, 4 shredded carrots, some purple cabbage, red onions and tomatoes, it turned out to be a very nice sized and delicious looking salad.  

So,  I don't have to go the store today!  

I also mixed up pizza dough in the bread machine.  It will hang out in the fridge all day until I make pizzas for supper.  

I'm sure I will shop for produce tomorrow to get through next week but I feel so thrifty using what we already had for today's meals. 

I've been looking through this recipe book.  One of the authors is Mary Berry.  We have become a big fan of hers by watching The Great British Bake Off on PlayOn on Roku.  I think it is in the 6th season now.  Some of the episodes are also on YouTube.  Australia and Scotland also have versions of the Bake Off and they are good too - much better than the American version that aired here in the summer of 2014.  

The British version focuses on the baking skills and the history of different baking traditions.  It is also a family friendly show.  But it will make you want to go in the kitchen and whip up some scones or croissants. 

Yesterday,  baby Jackson was my laundry folding helper.  He was happy while I was moving all the laundry around as I folded it but by the time I decided to take a photo, he was tired of it all.