Ulog5 – 2 more family birthdays, a pretty little leaf and a recipe tweak

The weather is even nastier today with pouring rain and gale force winds. So I thought I’d stay inside, and do kitchen and computer jobs. I tested some different versions of yesterday’s recipe, but first let’s look back at some of what I missed earlier in the week.

Happy birthday, Sift’s Mum!

You may remember that Tuesday was going to be a celebration of @sift666’s mum’s 80th birthday. Her remaining relatives are all in England, Sift is an only child, his dad left us last year, and we don’t have children, so it was a quiet lunch, just the three of us. We booked for a buffet lunch at Whitby’s restaurant in the James Cook hotel, where we went for her birthday last year, and which she liked.

It was a little fraught getting Roo2 in time, as we ended up not being able to order it online. It had to be ordered by our local shop (20 minutes walk away), and picked up from there. Luckily they rang us about 10am saying it had arrived. So 11.30am saw me Ubering over there to collect it, then jumping on a bus, and meeting Sift (who was carrying the other presents) on the bus.

The restaurant manager had rung me in the morning and we’d arranged for a Happy Birthday platter to honour the occasion, as that would be a bit more subtle than bringing out a cake. They did a nice job of it, and the manager was also very helpful by hiding Little Roo 2 till it was his moment to shine.

The Whitby lunch buffet is what I would call a medium level buffet. Nicer than somewhere like Valentine’s but not overly upmarket. Just the right ambience to feel special, but not overwhelming for her. And Tuesday lunchtime is relatively quiet – unlike our outing to the Genghis Khan last week!

Here is some of the range of food, though there were other things I didn’t get, like the carvery, the vegetarian dishes and the selection of gourmet ice creams:

Cold dishes

Hot dishes

Dessert

Cheese board

My brother’s little Leaf

My brother bought a little electric car called a Nissan Leaf, and has started Ubering in Lower Hutt. His house has solar panels, so he can charge it essentially for nothing. Most Uber drivers will be making SFA because of the fuel costs, but he’s making some ok money driving for 2-3 hours each afternoon. A bit of extra pocket money which he’s saving for some family overseas trips coming up.

He’s loving his little electric car and enjoying the work! We haven’t had the chance to get a photo of his little Leaf yet, so this is a generic one, not his. Most modern cars are a bit boring, but I think the Leaf is a really nice shape, and it’s lovely to be driven about in.

Image source

Why am I telling you this now? Because we arranged for him to come and collect us after lunch, drop us home, then deliver Sift’s mum home with Little Roo 2. She would have been happy going home on the train, but it was one way we could make the day a bit more special.

Another 80th!

My mum also turns 80 this year. You can read about some of her entertaining exploits on @andysantics48’s blog here and here.

Our family is a lot bigger, with four of us children plus partners, eight grandchildren and some partners, and 2 great grandchildren. Add in a few aunts, and some family friends and we’re looking at round 25-30 people, at my brother’s place in Lower Hutt.

Although it’s not till the end of next month, we need to start planning. We want to do a This Is Your Life style slideshow, with lots of family photos and commentary. But a lot of photos need to be scanned.

We started on that this week, when my nephew came to help us out in the Nature Foods office on Wednesday. He plugged in the scanner, and got about 100 of them scanned. Another 100 next time he comes, and that should do it.

This is one of the photos he scanned – of me at about 2 years old, with mum and grandma. Ooh, @sift666 is going to have his work cut out trying to make some of these photos look better! Photographer unknown, maybe my dad?

Not all of the photos will be for the slideshow. I also want to put together a family tree with photos that all the grandchildren can have a soft copy of, for their children and so on. @ravenruis, I want to pick your brain at some stage about which software would be best.

Tweaking yesterday’s recipe

Since not everybody has access to coconut butter (creamed coconut), I retested the recipe today with some different options

• no coconut butter, just extra chocolate – this worked fine, and the result is a bit firmer. It was a little harder to mold though.
• tinned coconut cream instead – a little softer than the coconut butter. Very nice to eat, but harder to get out of the mold. Probably need to freeze it a bit before unmolding.
• coconut oil instead – ok, but melts even quicker, so maybe only half the amount. The texture of the peel came through as crunchy in this mix, so you wouldn’t want to include that.

Thanks for reading

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