Dinner, Eton Mess and Breakfast...

The kids and husbands had a great time at the community pool. While they were out splashing and swimming around, my SIL and I took care of dinner and dessert forthe night. The lumpia, believe it or not, was from the grocery store frozen section. These were beef lumpia. She bought two boxes which had about a dozen each...

I played sous chef to my SIL, helping prep the vegetables...

Her Thai yellow curry consisted of large shrimp and the seafood medley from Trader Joe's (squid, tiny shrimp, and tiny scallops). She thinned out the jarred yellow curry with coconut milk. This dish was a hit and I think next time I'm at TJ's, I will try making this as well...

These are vintage glassware that my SIL bought from a now defunct thrift store in San Clemente. She uses them mainly as dessert glasses which is what we were going to do later...

I wanted to make Eton Mess, the British dessert that was Prince William and Princess Catherine's wedding dessert. I loved it so much at the fair and felt it was pretty easy to make. Sorry I don't have photos of the individual ingredients but there is one of the final product below...

There are so many variations of this recipe, so here is a simplified version that I modified from several sources (Joy of Baking, About.Com, and Barefoot Contessa)

Recipe for Eton Mess

Ingredients:
Meringue cookies (I got mine from Trader Joe's or if you can make your own if you roll that way)
1 lb strawberries
*raspberries (an optional fruit. I made this with a few raspberries)
1 cup whipping cream
1/2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

*optional - vanilla ice cream

Directions:
1) Whip the cream, sugar and vanilla extract together. Chill in the fridge while you're doing the other stuff.

2) Chop up the strawberries. Set aside one third and blend with a few of the raspberries to make a puree.

3) Crumble or roughly chop the meringue cookies

4) Assemble the desserts before serving

    Layer the fruit, whipped cream, and crumbled cookies.
    Top with whipped cream and a drizzle of the fruit puree or if add a scoop of vanilla ice cream
         and drizzle with the fruit puree and more of the crumbled cookies. I also added a few whole
         raspberries as garnish.

I love how easy this was. You can do everything ahead of time and it doesn't take too long to put it together. TC and her cousins loved it, especially the meringue cookies.  I noticed that some recipes for Eton Mess did not include raspberries; I only included in this recipe because that was how they did it at the SD Fair. The bare bones recipe of this would just be whipped cream, fruit, and meringue cookies.  Some other recipes also incorpated a little bit of alcohol into the whipped cream. It's up to you if you want to do that or not.
     
Here is the Eton Mess from the SD Fair's Gingerbread House. I love the cute blingy crown pick at the top. Not totally necessary but it sure looks cool!

Breakfast is usually an elaborate (to us) affair at my SIL's household.  Puts us to shame. Here are the strawberry croissants Bert and I picked up from Cream Pan...

My SIL used up the remaining fruit from the Eton Mess and combined it with blueberries...

She also made French toast with Challah bread...

Bacon was also part of the offerings. Her bacon looks so perfect...

Lastly, she made a few cheese omelettes...

One of the plates I assembled for the kids...

So different from our breakfast of leftovers or just cereal (or in my case, a piece of fruit and a protein drink). We had a lovely stay with my IL's and TC had fun hanging out with her cousins. While at the mall, the girls got a long thin feather clipped into their hair. They both got one lavender striped feather in their hair. Seems like the latest fashion trend. At work, I noticed a lot of students had feathers in their hair as well. Looks cool but I'd be afraid of brushing it out by mistake.

Up next...more of our Bay Area road trip posts...