What's Cookin

Will and Audrey both had final projects due in school last week that involved cooking.  Will's was in English. Since he has been studying Shakespeare, he had to find and cook an old Elizabethan recipe from the original version.   He found this online:



To make the best Bisket-Cakes
Take four new laid Eggs, leave out two of the Whites, beat them very well then put in two spoonfuls of Rose-water, and beat them very well together, then put in a pound of double refin'd Sugar beaten and searced and beat them together one hour, then put to them one pound of find Flour and still beat them together a good while, then put them upon Plates rubbed over with Butter and set them into the Oven as fast as you can and have care you do not bake them too much.

Well, we didn't have new laid eggs to start with.  We had to make due with Sam's eggs. Same for the Rose-water. We substituted with Tap-water.  No idea if the sugar was double refin'd, and what the heck is searced?  We did NOT beat it one hour as we cheated with electricity, but we still beat it for a good while.  We were sure to get it into the oven as fast as we could, as evidenced by this picture.

  

  We did indeed take care to not bake them too much, and surprise surprise, they didn't turn out half bad.  Definitely not worth an hour of beating, but edible for sure.

A few days later we were busy making eclairs for Audrey's French class.  Eclairs were way more work and more detail than the bisket cakes, and took us two days of slaving over a hot stove.  We made everything from scratch- filling and all, and of course they turned out delectable.

 
  I am still de-stickifying my kitchen however.

In the middle of the eclair making, we snuck away to downtown Salt Lake City and went in search of Brigham Young's grave, which we discovered was not in the Salt Lake City cemetery, but downtown, in a tiny little park sandwiched between two apartment buildings.  Kind of an odd place to bury someone of such renown, but those old pioneers were an odd bunch.  And it is a nice little place to visit 

Eliza R Snow is buried there too, along with some of Brigham's other wives.  A few of them have nice big markers, and then a few of them just have tiny little plastic-covered cardboard place cards stuck in the ground.  That was a little weird too.  Makes you wonder if they did something to not deserve a nice headstone.  Also, I was surprised to see that Eliza's marker (which is nice and big) reads "Eliza R. Snow Smith"  I'm kind of surprised and impressed that they included the the Smith on there.  No Young though.  I think she always did like Joseph better.



And it's not every day you get to read with Brigham Young.

 Olivia got a major kick out of the fact that the book he is reading has actual words on it.  It's 2 Nephi, if memory serves. 

These two were just hanging out enjoying the grass and the sun and summer.  They also played truth or dare, and Audrey kissed a rock. Alicia kissed Brigham's statue son, who really was kind of cute.

Two visionary men

Love this girl

And this is as close to a senior portrait as we are going to get for this guy.  He graduates in two weeks.  Yikes!

Today was Memorial Day and we wound up spending most of the day in the car, driving to West Jordan for a family picnic then to Brigham for the kid exchange.  After we got Will back, we headed out for burgers.  Our version of a stress-free Memorial Day barbeque.

And now, crazy week starts.  I am working the next four days,  Audrey is totally stressed out over  several big  school projects she  still  has to complete, Duncan has graduation and end of year activities on Tuesday and Wednesday, and there are about 54 little details to attend to for Olivia's baptism on Saturday.

I need an organizer.