Along with my favourite brother, Fitz, arriving last week, we also had old school friends from France come and visit. The ladies could only stay for a little bit but Etienne was with us until Saturday. A good time was had by all! There were drinks at the sailor's bar:
There were delicious meals enjoyed out on the lanai:
There were ridiculous faces:
And then sadly, Etienne had to leave us; don't feel bad though - he's off to Australia now, the lucky bastard. Au revoir, darling! We'll come and visit you next time!
Boy, did the house ever feel quiet with just Fitz and I; we were exhausted from all the running around and hiking we'd done with our froggie buddies, so after one last grueling workout we hit the hay super early and slept like logs. Apparently there was a thunder storm but neither of us even twitched.
Sunday morning we were up bright and early, intending to work out. Fitz actually did because he's dedicated and follows through but I ended up copping out after about fifteen minutes - I was just too tired! Also, I was too excited because it was PANCAKE SUNDAY. Seriously, I look forward to Sunday mornings all week long and this was especially fancy because my twin brother was visiting! It was really gross and rainy, too, which made it perfect pancake eatin' weather.
Pancake Sunday Protein Pillows
(recipe doubled to serve two)
6 egg whites
4-5 Tbsp almond flour
4 Tbsp almond milk
1/2 tsp baking powder
Beat egg whites until stiff peaks form. Mix in other ingredients to make batter. Pan fry. Note: these don't bubble like regular pancakes, so you have to really keep an eye on them so they don't burn.
Oh. My. Goodness. These were so worth the wait. They made enough for each of us to get four mini-pancakes. I layered mine thusly: pancake with Earth Balance, cream cheese and berry sauce (raspberries, blueberries, blackberries, cherries, peaches, strawberries), pancake with almond butter, pancake with greek yogurt and more berry sauce, plain pancake topped with more berry sauce and a dollop of greek yogurt with cinnamon. It was like almonds and fruit and yogurt were having an illicit menage a trois and just happened to climax in my mouth. Amaaaazing. We ate them with fresh peach slices (three cheers for fruit barriers that block sweet sauces from mixing into savoury sides!) and scrambled egg whites.
(to make the berry 'sauce' just take a bunch of frozen berries and fruit and stick them in a bowl in your fridge; as they defrost, all the juices will meld together and you have a great topping for just about anything. No need to add sugar, either.)
After stuffing ourselves, we went outside to do yardwork and boring chores. It was neither thrilling nor exciting but we got a lot accomplished and the time flew by. All the shrubs got trimmed, the lawn edged and weeded and mowed, garden tended to, new herbs planted, the driveway pressure-washed and we even managed to clear out the gutters! Before we knew it, it was time for lunch!
What was supposed to be a light meal turned into something a little more substantial: spinach salad with salmon, mixed olives, onion, cucumber, tomato, sauteed mushrooms, and Gorgonzola crumbles, with a side of watermelon because it's the 4th of July! (Also, hello summer with your 69 cent-per-lb melon deals.)
Holy doly. This was so tasty. I ate TWO giant bowls of salad plus four, count 'em four, wedges of watermelon. Ohhhh man it was way too much but it was totally worth it.
Lunchtime in South Africa also means drinks. We had a fairly well-stocked fridge because we'd planned on celebrating the fourth this year. There was... quite a lot consumed during our midday noshing. Perhaps a bit too much as we both ended up passing out entirely for a good three hour nap soon after.
It started out innocently enough with some organic sparkling, blueberry-infused water:
Meh. I wasn't impressed. We moved on to some wine:
And there was beer leftover from Etienne's very first Costco run:
I didn't mind the Hefeweisen (it wasn't good, per se, but it was drinkable) but when I moved on to the pale I almost gagged. Only managed one bottle of that and even Fitz, who once drank standing water from a rusted tin can he found under a tree, couldn't do more than one.
Clearly we needed to get the taste out of our mouths so we soothed our palates with a little Newcastle:
And then had some cider:
By this point we were pretty well and truly gone, so it seemed like a great idea to try our special treats. We'd each bought a pint of Rogue, a brand neither of us have tried. Fitz got their hazelnut brown ale and I got their oatmeal stout (it had Shakespeare on the bottle!):
Fantastic. I liked mine a lot more than I liked Fitz's but both were pretty stellar.
This is where we cue the whole zonked-out-on-a-blanket-on-the-grass-for-three-hours deal. When we woke up it was coming on six o'clock and the bredie (which is just an Afrikaans word for stew) that Fitz had made was smelling mighty tasty! And then I discovered that he'd put steak in it. That jerk. =(
Thankfully there was leftover salad to go with my green beans. They didn't smell as good as the stew, but they were still miiiighty tasty and by then the salad had marinated a bit more and gotten even more scrumptious.
Fitz's bredie was pretty basic: steak, tomato, peppers, onion, garlic, celery, cabbage, and seasoning, but he thickened it with a hazelnut roux so I was pretty disappointed that I couldn't taste the results. He also added an extra-special American ingredient, in light of the occasion: collard greens! He says it was delicious so you get to take his word for it. ;)
And because Fitz is incredible, he also managed to track down Tusker:
Tusker is the beer of choice in Kenya and whenever we go camping in Nairobi (god, that makes it sound like we go all the time; we've been a handful of times, the last being in 2003. We have family friends there, we're not just weirdly extravagant or anything like that), we live off this stuff. It's absolutely fantastic - but so so hard to find stateside. I don't know where he got it (and he's not telling) but when he unpacked that box and revealed that he had a case, I could have kissed him. Brava, my bru, brava!
To go with our Tusker, we had delicious American Patriot's for dessert. Greek yogurt flavoured with lemon juice, vanilla bean, nutmeg and cinnamon, layered with blueberries and raspberries. Mmm.
There were also sparklers!
... which I then dropped because I was scared they would burn my hands off.
While lighting the sparklers we learned that I would be the worst person in the world to be stranded on a desert island with. 'Strike Anywhere Matches' my ass - I burned through twelve of those suckers trying to light the sparklers. In the end, I just got a candle from inside, lit that, and then held the sparklers up to it until they ignited. So unless we happen to have a bag of Jo Malone Wild Fig & Cassis home candles when we shipwreck, you better have aced your Boy Scouts survival classes because I will be of no help.
As if we weren't stuffed enough, we capped off the evening with tea and cherries (we bought a whole new bag and so these had to go), complete with pip-spitting contest (Fitz won):
All in all, it was a delightful day and a wonderful first 4th. I hope everyone else had just as swell a time!
And now I'm off to revel in the fact that today is just an ordinary 5th with my bed, a good book, and a mug of Trader Joe's rasperry tea. ;)
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