GRANDCHILDREN UPDATE EARLY JUNE 2018

Each week passes quickly these days.  Here are some recent photos.

 John's photo of Mairi with children in Ben More Gardens outside Dunoon, Arygll

Ishie II, and Alastair 10.

THE TWO MUNCHKINS:

  Ellie fell at Nursery and broke her right arm.  She appears to none the worse for it.  She also appears to be left-handed so is neither up nor down with her 'stookie (Scottish word for a plaster cast).

Ellie showing off her sweetie bracelet.  This is John's photo and he has captured her 'fiesty' character!

Ellie was sent home from Nursery with 'spots'.  So I had her for a day last week.  It turns out they were just midge bits.  My friend Anne says that it is a real problem in doctor's surgeries these days.  Children are sent home from Nursery and are told they must see a doctor before they can come back.  Often the problem, like this one, is not what they thought.  

However one can see the nursery's point of view. They have to be scrupulous about suspected lice, fleas, and contagious diseases.  I have every sympathy for organisations where groups of people are put in close contact with each other e.g. cruise ships, old folks' homes, prisons, as the spread of disease is so much harder to contain.

Meanwhile this photo shows how she came with me to Asda supermarket to find something Mairi told me about: you can buy Morello cherries in the frozen food section.  These are not the usual black, fleshier ones but these are red, 'sour', the kind that are often sold here in blue and white china jars as a syrup conserve which comes from Italy.

 So Harriet and I baked.  This is a test run for birthday.  It turned out just fine!

Harriet was 5 years old on June 6th.  She starts school in 2 months.  That's 3 down and 1 to go. She will go to the same school as Ishie and Alastair; Ishie now moves to the local secondary school.

Here is a recent photo of Indy on a climbing wall near his home in Los Angeles.  He finishes school this week and planning a trip to Florida to see Grandma and Grandpa B and their swimming pool.

Indy in Portland bookshop this week en route to family wedding in Hood River, Oregon.

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 POST-SCRIPT - THE TEST KITCHEN

Teddy is overseeing the chocolate chip cookie test kitchen. Fortunately Teddy knows how to keep a secret... which is that Marks and Spencer's frozen chocolate chip cookie dough make much better cookies than my (Chatelaine cookbook 1954) recipe.  

Now I very carefully tried again (that's the evidence above) to try and figure out why I get the following verdicts:

[1]  Ishie "They are spongier than your other ones (i.e. M&S dough).  She is quite right.

[2] Alastair: "Your others ones are better."  Again ... M&S.  :-(

However, I think I have cracked it: the kids don't like nuts so I omit them in my recipe. Consequently the dough to choc chip ratio is much higher making them 'spongier'.

Solution:  I need to double the amount of choc chips!