Family Ties

I can't believe it's already been 2 months since I flew back to the good old USA to visit my family. I made the full day trek back to SLC on June 21st and got to hang out with my family until July 4th. 

Sadly, I caught a cold the day before I left Christchurch, so I was pretty sick most of the first week I was there. But we still managed to squeeze in a few very important activities.

• Visiting Aussie – I got to visit my sweet old puppy a couple of times on this trip. He is such a sweet dog, he just laid down by me while I was at the house. I miss that guy so much and I can’t wait until we move back and get to have him back in our family.

·         World Cup  - I got in to town just in time to watch a few of the USA matches with my crazy, sports loving family. It generally doesn't matter what the sport is, we go all out rooting for our team. AMERICA!!! Alas, the fun was over way too soon. But it was good while it lasted!

• Family Reunion - Next stop on the tour was the Crump family reunion in St. George. This was a blast. All the families booked their own accommodation and unbeknownst to us, 2 of my uncles and my grandparents ended up staying in the same set of condominiums. What are the chances?

While in St. George we got to have some great family time. We went to the St. George temple, which was awesome, ate some great food, and spent a day on a reservoir boating and soaking up some sun. We had great weather! A special thanks goes out to my cousin Daniel who taught me how to wakeboard since I decided I’m too old to water ski (mainly because I don’t want to drag forever behind the boat – so lazy!)

Here’s a couple pics from the beach. I forgot to take a camera on the boat…oops!

 

Love that red sand!

• The end of an era – The 8 year quilt has been completed!!! (See my blog post from September 2013 for more history on this project http://www.brianandkristynn.blogspot.co.nz/2013/09/the-8-year-quilt.html).

My mom treated me to this wonderful surprise of having my quilt professionally quilted and it looks amazing. Thank you so much mom, I love it!

My mom and dad are so cute!

•        Saying Goodbye to a friend – Our family dog, Nephi, was very loving towards me while I was staying with my parents. I like to think he knows who I was even though he was completely blind and I haven’t been around much the past couple of years because he was excited every time I came into the room and petted him. He got really sick after I left to come back to New Zealand and my parents had to put him to sleep. I’m glad I got that last chance to give him some love. You were a sweet dog, Nephi!

I had quite a few highlights while I was in town and it was so great to see my family. Thanks for taking time to hang out with me!

Master Chef (sort of)

Our tax team decided to do another activity together and the verdict this time was to go to baking school. I know what you are thinking, what a joke! We all know I don’t bake, but I figured if I had an instructor I really couldn’t mess it up.

When I found out we were going to be baking some bread as part of our course, I made everyone laugh when I asked if we were supposed to make the bread from scratch. I’ve never done that before.

So the other night we headed on over to Strawberry Fare Baking School, which is a baking school associated with a very popular dessert restaurant here in Christchurch.

Luckily we weren’t doing one of these 5 hour courses – they offer an evening course for groups where you get some dinner in addition to learning how to make a couple of desserts. We started off with some drinks until we got started. I got paired up with Caitlin, a new graduate who started with PwC about 8 months ago. She is an expert baker, so I was in good hands.

The first item up was making some ciabatta bread. I was excited because this is such a yummy type of bread.

My friend Quynh Tran and her fiance Andy

Waiting for our dough to mix. Notice I picked the pink Kitchen Aid?

My cooking buddy Caitlin Gray is making sure our bread dough is getting thoroughly mixed

All ready to let the dough rise!

Once the bread dough was made, we set it aside to raise for a bit. Then it was on to our first dessert: Crème Brulee. I was a little bit nervous about this one because it seems intense and I can’t make pudding anyway. But our instructor was awesome and Caitlin kept me on the right track. I forgot to take pictures of the prep, but I will have some later on.

After getting the crème brulee going, we also made a gluten free chocolate raspberry cake. We used some amazingly yummy Belgian dark chocolate that we kept sneaking while we mixed everything together. Once the batter was mixed, we used these really cute triangle tins to make the mini cakes in. These are something I would actually like to use in the future (with a cake mix of course).

We added some frozen raspberries to the cake and it's ready to go in the oven

While the cakes were baking, we began finishing our creme brulees. First, we added a thin layer of sugar over the top of the pudding.

Our instructor is on the left and my colleagues Laura Cotter and Jason Page are adding sugar to the creme brulee

Here's mine before taking a torch to it!

Now for the fun part. We got to use little torches to carmelize the sugar to give it that crispy top. It was pretty fun!

This was basically the end of our instruction. We got to add some little drizzles to the make our desserts look beautiful and then it was time to eat some dinner. Just in time because we were starving at this point!

Not too shabby if I do say so myself :)

Verdict: super yummy

Our bread was done by the end of dinner, so we got to take that home with us as well as the extra mini cakes. It was actually a really fun night. The cake wasn't too bad, but I probably wouldn't attempt to make a creme brulee again - too much time and effort for how much you get out of it in the end. I'd much rather by it at a restaurant!

Brian and I enjoyed my ciabatta bread later and it was soooo good!