 |
| Shepherd's Pie - everyone likes it but me! |
Well it was a Jolly Holiday in the kitchen tonight with our Mary Poppins themed dinner tonight. We went with a very British main course of Shepherd's Pie (during the viewing of the movie I decided that Fish and Chips would've been better considering they plan on doing just that in the film, oh well, live and learn). The dessert was a raspberry tart and raspberry ice.
The shepherd's pie was the easiest thing on the menu after all was said and done. Not much excitement there. I've learned I don't like it very much, ha ha. Yup the picky eater is still a picky eater, however it wasn't bad. Just not my thing. Dad and mom gave it two big thumbs up, though. Mom went back for seconds!
Dessert proved more challenging. What I thought would be simple turned out not to be. I started with the raspberry ice, but that took more work than expected. It was simple enough to make the syrup and puree it with the berries, but when it came time to pour the mixture through the strainer the seeds kept clogging up the little holes! So I spent almost an hour stirring the stuff in the strainer to get the liquid into the dish to put in the freezer! ACK!
 |
| At least it looked good when it came out of the oven. |
Then for the tart I used the same recipe for the crust as I did a few weeks ago for the peach tart. It is gluten free and has chocolate - what could go wrong. I tried to make it work better than the last time, but the problem was the raspberries melted when I put them in with the sugar to make the syrup. The extra berries I planned to bake on top melted into the syrup when I mixed the two. So I ended up with several cups of syrup on top of this already wet dough. The crust on the bottom didn't bake, and the filling didn't set up. Not my best baking experience.
Parents didn't mind though, and said it was good. Duane loved the raspberry ice judging by how he ate it when he got home from youth group. So still successful even if it wasn't "practically perfect in every way."
 |
| Anyone want a snow cone?? |
The funniest part of the night was when mom came home from the store. She went to put the ice cream in the freezer. Not knowing what was in the pan on the shelf she when to fling it somewhere else and ended up with not so chilled raspberry stuff all over the freezer. It looks like a bloody mess in there now. But at least if we need a snack in a pinch we can make raspberry snow cones! I'll admit I was ticked when it happened - I worked hard on that stuff! - but everytime we open the freezer door and you see the bright red going all the way down the shelves it's too hard not to laugh!
Next week is Jungle Book. I have to work on finalizing it - and finding a dessert.
