Hot wet Bastille Day

It's Bastille Day and we got invited to Becca and Manu's place for their annual Bastille Day picnic. Yippee. It was a very hot day, well, really a very hot week..even month! There hasn't been relief in sight for a while. We've had 2-3 nights of storm but it didn't help things all that much, except that it woke us up even more with all the lightening and thunder.. and debating whether the leave the windows opened or not. Open, too bright and noisy.. closed, too hot!

Anyway, yes I digress. We got there, and there was a lovely spread already in the garden. A nice long table was set in the shade. I'd made my glass noodle salad, ever so popular. If anyone's interested, I've included the recipe down below. .... it was a great picnic.

Ahhh, but once lunch was out of the way, Becca brought out the 'SLIDE'. It's a long water slide thingy, where you slide down with water splashing. The other kids really enjoyed it. Becca took each of them by an arm and foot and flung them down the slide. Oh the kiddies totally enjoyed it and can't wait to go back for more. OUr little Bibou? She didn't like it at all! :( Daddy said that it was probably because I'd flung her too hard or something. She started cring as soon as she went down the slide. oh no! She didn't enjoy it at all. I managed to calm her down, and she was fine. She wouldn't go down the slide anymore, but she had a wonderful time running up and down the slide, splashing water.

After the kiddies had their fill of water fun, it was ice cream time. It was sooo hot that the kiddies were either naked or just plain diappers / nappies. They were all happy to be without clothes. They all enjoyed the cool ice cream too.

Oh then, big treat. Daddy broke out the guitar. Daddy played all the usual favorties and all the kiddies were bopping and clapping and singing to the tunes. Especially our little Bibou of course. Oh she was beep-popping away as you can tell in the pix on the right. Swaying and swinging.

After dinner, Daddy played some adult songs. It'd cooled down a bit already. Then Bibou came up to me and asked me to play ring-around-the-rosy. Ella joined in the we three gals had loads of fun. They really went 'down'! After that, well, they decided it was more fun to play horsey on Mummy! And play horsey they did. They jumped and jumped and jumped up and down on me. The little rascels even took turns to jump on my back. They were playing leapfrogs. I'm glad they had fun, but suffice to say, I had difficulty getting up and had a sore back for the next few days!

All too soon, we had to leave. Needless to say, Bibou 'hit it' as soon as the car got started. She was off to lala land, having had a 'hard' day of fun and water. Thank you sooo much, Becca and Manu.

As promised, here's my ever popular glass noodle Salad recipe (oh and taking a tip from my friend Serene, a picture of it too!) :

GLASS NOODLE SALAD

Ingredients:

Glass noodle

Ground pork

Shallots finely sliced

Green / spring onions finely sliced

2-3 bird chili (small chili)

Thai Fish Sauce

Sugar

Juice of about 2 Limes

Direction

1. Soak the glass noodle in cold water first until the ‘tightness’ is gone (but not cooked), then drain

2. Finely sliced all the condiments (Shallots/onion/spring onion/chili).

3. Pour enough cold water into the ground pork and minced together so that the pork is not ‘clumpy’ but has a ‘thick soup’ consistency (this will facilitate cooking the meat later)… but it should not be liquidy….you cannot / should not see any water.

4. Boil water in a pot. Put glass noodle in when water is boiling, stir and then drain. The noodles should be soft (but NOT mushy! – so lift it out quite quickly). Run cold water so that it does not cook further (and become mushy) and also will not stick together.

5. Boil water in another pot (or same pot!). When it is boiling, gently pour the meat into the boiling water, stopping a few times and giving it a swirl. Let it come to a boil. By then, the meat should be cooked and there should not be any clumps / balls. Drain the meat immediately. Recommend that you pour cold water over it so that it cools down.

6. Once all ingredients have cooled, put them together in a big bowl and mix with shallots / onion / spring onion and chili. I normally use a scissor to mix and cut them together… so that the noodles are not too long.

7. Next, put lime juice (freshly squeezed), sugar and fish sauce in and mix well. You need to keep stirring, mixing and tasting until you get the perfect blend. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how much of each ingredient to put it as it depends on how big your dish is and also your taste.

Enjoy experimenting!