Savannah’s sleepover, Part 1
Jac’s niece Savannah, aged 7, had a sleepover at our place this weekend. As soon as she arrived, all three of us got into the spa (jacuzzi) for a while. We got out so we could make dinner. Jac made chicken nuggets and chips.
The recipe for the nuggets came from the Take 5 magazine 2006 calendar that came free with an issue last year (Jac likes reading Take 5).
The chicken nuggets were soooooooo good. They were crispy on the outside, and the chicken was lovely, moist and tender (that Jac really knows how to cook chicken!). Although we halved the amount of meat, Jac ended up using all of the Tandaco Coating Mix with extra parmesan. The potato chips (or fries, depending where you’re from) were lovely and crispy – Jac pre-cooked the hand-cut chips (yes, that she had cut) in the microwave, and then shallow-fried them in our Sunbeam electric Banquet frying pan. That pan is amazing. Because it gets so hot, you can actually make chips/fries in it, without needing to deep-fry. We’ve also roasted vegetables in it.
We ate the chicken and chips with what I call a “touch pool salad”. You know how little kids often have a plate with cherry tomatoes and pieces of cucumber, carrot sticks and capsicum that they can eat with their hands, rather than a proper dressed salad that should be eaten with a fork? Anyway, I call it a touch pool salad. I chopped up capsicum, carrots, green beans and tomato so it would be easy for Savannah to just help herself. Jac and I ate helped ourselves too, dipping our “salad” into a dish of Paul Newman’s Ranch Dressing. Oh, and we also had sliced green apple (which goes surprisingly well dipped in Ranch Dressing!) and leftover cold corn on the cob too.
After dinner, we went for a walk, and Savannah rode her little scooter. When we got home, Jac and Savannah got back into the spa again. We didn’t have dessert, but Savannah had a glass of milk and a few Nestle chocolate-covered strawberries. Next time I’ll see if I have time to bake some cake.
It was so damned hot on Saturday night too. We have an old air-conditioning unit in our house (both spa and air-conditioning unit came with the house – if it had been my choice, we’d have ducted air-conditioning but no spa), but the actual unit is installed in our dining room window and doesn’t keep the rest of the house i.e. bedrooms cool. Jac dragged the spare mattress out into the family room (which is joined to the dining room) to sleep out there next to the air-conditioning. Savannah had been keen to sleep by herself in the spare room in the double bed, but the heat was too much, and so she joined her Auntie Jac on the floor on the mattress. Pixel and I slept in our bedroom (she took Jac’s side of the bed!). I think Billy Lee was on the window sill, her favourite spot to sleep when it’s hot.