A happy weekend

Our weekend started slowly with a lovely sleep in followed by a leisurely breakfast.

Then we headed out to my sister's house mid morning to pick some more mulberries.   I ended up getting a few for my bowl which was a miracle as Little Miss R ate 2-3 times more than what's shown in the picture below.
 

My sister was off on holidays later that day so we came home with plenty of goodies from her fridge which would go off otherwise.  It's certainly helped me with my menu planning for the week and the bottle of cream that had just about reached it's due date gave me a good idea for dinner.

 

 

I used our big slow cooker to make up a stew.  It certainly doesn't look the best but is chock full of beef, potatoes, pumpkin, sweet potato (kumara), carrots, spinach, onions, cannellini beans, red lentils, some herbs, beef stock and probably a couple of other things I've forgotten.

 

DELICIOUS.  I've also put half of it in the freezer so we can take camping with us in the school holidays.

 

Instead of toast or bread rolls, I decided to make some cheese scones to go with the stew.  These go really well with soups as well and I love having them for breakfast the next morning if there's any leftover.

 

They're so easy to make.  Just mix 2 cups of self-raising flour, 2 cups of grated cheese and 1 1/4 cups of milk together.  It's a really wet mixture so I just plonk spoonfuls onto a baking tray to cook.  No kneading, rolling or cutting out which is just how I like it.

 

 

Depending on the size, cook them for between 10-20 minutes in a moderate oven and you have yummy, easy cheese scones which everyone loves.

 

 

 

 

Then I made dessert which the whole family were pretty excited about.  We rarely have dessert so it did cause quite a stir in the house when I said I was making one. 

 

Remember the mulberries we had picked in the morning?  Well they were to form part of the Fruit Galette.

 

Mix 1 x 250g pack of light cream cheese, 1 egg yolk, half a cup of icing sugar and 2 tablespoons of cornflour together.  (Pictures 1 and 2 below).

 

Then mix 2 cups of fruit (I used mulberries and strawberries), with 1 tablespoon cornflour, 2 tablespoons sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract together.

 

 

I use 2 frozen sheets of puff pastry and divide the mixture in half to make two galettes.

 

Place half the mixture in the middle of one of the sheets of puff pastry, leaving a wide border around the edge (middle bottom picture above).  Then fold the sides over to enclose the galette, brush the pastry with the left over egg white and sprinkle with a little sugar.  Cook in for about half an hour in a 200 degrees celcius oven.

 

 

So we had a nice hearty dinner, followed by a tasty fruit dessert served with cream and ice-cream.  It was SO good.

 

 

I've also been spending my time organising things for our camping trip.  Nine days to go now and we're going for at least a week, possibly more at this stage so I want to be organised.

 

 

I've got the kitchen stuff organised as well as all the bedding which all has to be put inside the trailer.  I can't move it out so that I can open it so I need hubby to do that in the next couple of days. 

 

I really want to have the tables, chairs, tarps and everything else we may need packed BEFORE he goes back to work this shift.   It may sound very organised but he arrives home late on the Monday afternoon and we're heading off on the Tuesday. 

 

For the sake of our marriage I want to have as much as possible packed into the camper this week and then all we have to worry about when he gets home next is packing the food and clothes in.  It will truly make for the start of a happier holiday if I can get that done.

 

 

I've also been re-arranging the tool box at the front of the camper too.  Hubby just throws everything in it and we have to ferret through it all when we want to find one thing.  I quietly spent some time on Sunday using my old laundry detergent buckets to put ropes, tent pegs, tools etc into so that we can access them easily now.

 

 

 

 It's much more organised and Hubby was impressed when I made him come out to see what I had done.  I'm sure he'll be happier when we're actually camping and he needs to grab things quickly and he can find them easier!

 

So it has been a busy weekend doing stuff around the house then a late Sunday afternoon trip to the beach which I'll write about in another post.  Only one week left now until the school holidays and we're all so ready to get away for some camping fun.

 

xx Susan