America's Test Kitchen

I like to cook. So when we moved here I sought out good food and new recipes. Although I constantly lament the poor food choices available I am happy to say that I have found a good source of American recipes at Cooks Illustrated. They test different food brands and products (much like Choice magazine in Australia) but best of all they support the idea that cooking from scratch is preferable to cooking from a packet (and it usually doesn't take much longer). They have a tv show called America's Test Kitchen which demonstrate some of their recipes. Although they do sometimes cook with corn syrup I have found that on the whole their recipes to be very good (ie lemon layer cake from Andrew's birthday) Generally the process they take is that they determine what they want to cook and then they use different ingredients and cooking techniques until they determine the best way to produce that particular item, often trialling the different recipe variations 100 times. It does mean that the recipes always work unlike some recipes from famous international chef that don't always turn out the way you expect. In any case if you have some free internet browsing time check out their database of free recipes. [Bear in mind though that Australian butter performs differently to American butter due to a different fat content but that is a story for another day]

I like purple!

Lucy's favourite colour is purple. Purple clothes, purple food and purple toys. Anything purple is claimed as 'my purple'. When Andrew was in Boston he bought her a few little presents: a purple handbag, a purple cap, a purple book and purple socks. In the same week I bought her some purple crocs. Now that she is moving into a regular bed I have ordered some purple sheets and a purple blanket. Should I be feeding this obsession???

Product of the week: F150

According to Wikipedia the F-Series is a series of full size pickup trucks (utes) from Ford sold for over 5 decades. The most popular variant of the F-Series is the F-150. It has been the best selling vehicle in the US for 23 years and the best-selling truck for 31 years. Analysts estimate that the F-Series alone makes up half of the Ford Motor Company's profits in recent years.

These cars are HUGE! It seems that Southerners like their cars big, red and with a confederate flag on the front number plate. With gas prices rising to $4 per gallon (roughly $1 per litre) everyone here is complaining. I usually tell them they have it good given that Oz prices are, I believe, $1.60 per litre but they don't want to listen. And they don't want to give up their gas guzzling cars. The F150 is the most common car in Wilmington and given some of the narrow streets around here it is scary driving next to one. I'm surprised I don't see dozens of side mirror casualties strewn about the place.

Weekend water fun

To say it is hot is an understatement. Every day over the past week has hit 100F degrees. In fact today it was too hot to go outside and it is only dropping to around 27C degrees over night. The humidity is high. To put this heat in context our grass is scorched from the sun!

With all of this in mind the past few days have seen us doing lots of water related activities. Our neighbours hosted an end of school party which encompassed a very large water slide and a cookout. Lucy went down the slide with Andrew many times and then ate 4 hot dogs. 4 regular sized hot dogs! I was most surprised that she didn't wake up in the middle of the night with a stomach ache! She was very disappointed that the slide had to be returned the next day and has kept asking for 'pool party'. On Saturday we headed over to the beach to enjoy the cool waves and last week we enjoyed a work pool party by the sea (Lucy swam for an hour).

We have a 'frog' pool set up in the yard for Lucy and we are thinking about buying a big blow-up pool for the adults to sit in too. If the heat continues like this (and it only gets worse in July and August) we will definitely be heading in that direction. Or else sitting inside in the air-conditioning!

Outer Banks in pictures

Home grown produce

We reaped our first crop of basil on the weekend and immediately made pasta with pesto. The pesto came out bright green and it tasted amazing! Whilst pesto doesn't always look the most appetising, especially to toddlers, Lucy didn't even blink when it was served to her and just chowed in. Drop round sometime for a jar of the green stuff!

Product of the week: Weber

Andrew finally got his birthday present, a new Weber grill (bbq). He was very excited to try it out and had some lamb chops cooking within an hour of receiving it. We did a lot of research into grills and it seems that to get anything that won't rust within one season you need to spend some dollars. We heard lots of good things about Webers so we bought this one from Lowes and had them put it together for us. Lucy decorated it with lots of happy birthday crepe paper. For the past 4 weeks she has not stopped saying 'happy birthday' often breaking out in song to wish 'dear lucy' a happy birthday. I'm lucky if she only says it 25 times a day. She obviously enjoyed her birthday VERY MUCH! In any case, the birthday for Andrew lives on as he enjoys his new toy, the first component of the 'outdoor grilling area with a woodfired pizza oven'