Fatherhood Friday: Adventures In Cooking
Ok so this isn’t a normal type of post but it was a fun experience so I thought I would share.
About a week ago Emily suggested that we make gingerbread houses (I’m pretty sure she meant real life sized ones, or at least dolls house sized ones) since every couple of weeks we make gingerbread men while Samantha has a lunch time sleep and then decorate them the next day at the same time. Sam usually wakes up once we have done most of it but there are always things left for her to do as well (usually eating the decorating things and left over dough as well as cutting the last few shapes out).
So I thought what the heck lets give it a go…
I drew out a quick sketch (thank you 5th form technical drawing) to make sure it was kind of what Em was thinking and then made up a small model to check it would work and also to be used as a cutting template.
We made the gingerbread like normal and just after we had finished making it Sam woke up so she got to help ( I secretly think that she knew we were doing something fun and woke up so she wouldn’t miss out).
We made enough parts to make 4 gingerbread houses (since this was a trial run) and the rest got turned into a conglomeration of Christmas trees, teddy bears, people etc…
Into the oven they went and 15 minutes later we had some slightly distorted but still entirely usable house pieces …
At this point the story was put on hold due to the fact that the next day when we were due to ice and decorate them Samantha had a blinding 30 minute tantrum and didn’t go to sleep and was grumpy for pretty much the whole afternoon.
Friday comes round and things go to plan, Sam goes to sleep and we mix up some icing ready to decorate (I was going to make the usual pink icing but Emily insisted that I make chocolate icing). I put together the first house but made the mistake of putting the walls on the inside of the ends which meant the roof didn’t fit so it had to be pulled apart and re-done which made it look a bit messy before we decorated them.
After they were all put together we put them in the fridge for 30 minutes so they would set and started decorating the rest of the gingerbread.
We each decorated 2 houses and I think for a first try at making them they turned out pretty well.
Nikon D70s, 18-70mm Lens.
The Great Sunday Bake Off Fundraiser
The Great Sunday Bake Off was an event to take some home baking to the people of earthquake stricken Christchurch. The idea was that lots of people bake and then drop what they have baked off which would then be loaded on a bus and transported and distributed in Christchurch.
http://www.thegreatsundaybakeoff.org/
The response they got from Wellington was great and they ended up having too much to fit it all in the bus… The leftover was sold as a bake sale and the money, matched by BP, was donated to the Red Cross… They ended up donating around $16000 as well as all the baking that went to Christchurch.
A good effort all round!
Here are some pics from one of the drop off points at Civic square after I had dropped off some ANZAC biscuits that Amanda and the girls had made in the weekend.
Nikon F5, 50mm f1.8, Ilford HP5+ 400 ISO Film, CanoScan 9000F Scanner.
Darkhalide Photography 
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