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I LOVE summertime!
We enjoyed some very summer-like weather out in the sticks this last week. Complete with a dip in the kiddie pool of course.
I know this photo is blurry but I love it so…
Yes, I totally drank my chocolate iced coffee in the kiddie pool. Them’s the perks of being a full-time mom.
My Dad grilled for lunch and dinner… it was so nice. He even let me grill some apricot halves I had a hankering for after reading this post. You should try it. They were DELICIOUS! Just like little bites of apricot cobbler. Mmmmmmmm!!!
Then I kidnapped my niece for a few days of fun at the beach. Nobody appreciates the surf more than a twelve-year-old from the desert. She and her boogie board are best buddies.
And of course Bug was all over the beach days as well…
The water is perfect right now. If I didn’t have a little kid to watch with my eagle eyes, I would swim out past the buoys and just float with the pull of the ocean. I love doing that. One of these days I’ll do that again…when I teach Bug how to swim! Maybe this summer, I hope.
If you’re looking for a place to vacation, I can’t recommend my beach enough. I’ve lived here fifteen years and I still love it. I wish I could offer my house as a bed and breakfast but sadly, that’s not possible. And of course hotels around here are super expensive. But I hear if you’re diligent you can get good deals in Laguna Beach… anyway, here’s to summertime! I hope you enjoy it wherever you are at!
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Beignets!
I’m out in the sticks visiting my family for a few days and everything here reminds me of all the things I love about summer. It’s hotter than heck, as it always is in the high desert. The apricots are falling off the trees, leaving that sticky sweet fermented smell in the air. Days are spent hiding out in a darkened house, listening to the fans blow or plunked down in a kiddie pool wearing a too-small bikini you haven’t seen 1999. I love it all.
While I was out here, CC surprised us by making beignets for breakfast the other day. She was going to stay up late the night before and make special dough just for the occasion but something happened with her iphone alarm clock or whatever and she ended up just using that store-bought biscuit dough that comes in one of those pop-cans instead. No loss for us, they were delicious!
It took me right back to New Orleans where I first discovered these lovely fried doughnut things. All we needed was some chickory coffee and a few vampires. I looked and looked all over my computer for my old pictures from New Orleans but I think they were sadly lost in the crash of 2006. I know I have them somewhere on a cd but man, trying to find a batch of photos in my boxes and boxes of archived images is worse than finding a needle in a haystack. One of these days…maybe when Bug is in school I’ll tackle that project.
In the meantime maybe you’d like to try a batch of beignets at home!
First you roll out your dough really thin. CC said the most important thing she figured out was it’s super important to keep the dough cold. She worked with small batches and kept the remaining in the freezer while she was pounding and rolling.
Then you cut up small 2-inch squares or rectangles from the dough and fry them in about 1 cup of oil. Lots of recipes say to fry in enough oil to cover the beignets but I watched CC and she didn’t use that much. I think you just have to turn them a lot. When they are toasty and golden, remove them from the pan and let them cool on some paper towels.
Then drop them in a bag with a bunch of powdered sugar and shake, shake, shake!
Shake your Bootay! (You’ll need to shake it a lot to counteract all the calories you’ll soon be consuming.)
And then go enjoy them in the backyard so you don’t get powdered sugar all over the place!
