Sylvia is home for a week in July!

   Sylvia was home for a week before she launched off to girls camp, and then scout camp.  What did we do?  First we picked up the kids' exhibits from the fair. Her beautiful beaded bracelt got a blue,  her bowl and 4 photos of Maya got reds.

Her epic picture of Clemenza (one of our chickens) got a blue, plus a yellow "award of merit" ribbon.

 Ephraim got all blues on his wooden stool, 4 photos of "chicken backs" and pottery bowl!

      Then we did some baking.   We had two more bakes to do from the season of the British Baking show we have been watching.  Episode 9 was themed "patisserie".  One of the contestants made "macarroons", which pop up quite often in this show, so we decided to tackle this odd looking cookie made from egg whites and ground almonds. 
      The recipe we used had them filled with a chocolate fudgy filling, which was delicious.  We learned that you need to have almonds very finely ground, and the powdered sugar finely sifted, or else you will constantly get globs clogging up your decorating tip as you squirt out the batter in circles. - We found out the hard way.   I'd do these again.

    The grand finale of the season, Episode 10, had the baker's making a "pithivier" for one of the challenges.  You have to make a rough puff pastry, then you fill it with a sweet or savory filling. We decided to try one of each. The dough was incredibly tough to roll out. I'm not sure exactly where we went wrong.. but a wrong turn indeed did happen. 

 They didn't look as puffy and flaky as they should when they came out. When we cut into them, you basically needed a sledgehammer.   The shell was so tough!
     All was not lost, the fillings were good (we used grilled brats and roasted potatoes in the savory pie, and a mix of eggs and almonds in the sweet pie - from this recipe).  We ended up scooping out the fillings, and tossing the shell in the garbage.  We are not pithivier fans!

    Along with baking, Sylvia had to do some meal cooking for her "cooking merit badge" pre-requisites at her upcoming scout camp.   She made a delicious sausage - hashbrown breakfast casserole in our new dutch oven for one of her meals. We will defiantly be using this recipe on future camping trips!

 She had lot of other pre-requisites for camp that were not as fun as cooking.  She wrote a couple of essays on environmental topics for her Environmental Science merit badge.  She went thought the house and did a safety check of each room, as well as helped put together a family evacuation duffel bag for her Emergency Preparedness merit badge.

 She gathered first aid supplies for a family and personal first aid kit for her "First Aid" merit badge class.

It was a busy week for Sylvia, but we managed to fit in a lot of computer gaming at night, as well as watching several episodes of "The Flash" on Netflix.  We will miss her while she is gone the next couple weeks.  More time to party with Ephraim!