Scones and Giada

'Ello everyone!

As I'm sure all of you know, the Royal Wedding between Catherine Middleton and Prince William occurred on Friday. I decided that I wanted to watch this event, and my mum suggested we make scones for the morning of the wedding. We decided to make cranberry blood-orange scones. They were utterly fabulous, darling. I quite enjoyed them. This was my first time making scones, and I did need some help from my mum. First, the butter wouldn't cooperate and it wouldn't blend with the flour! Then the dough was very sticky and most of it stuck to the cutting board. Finally, I rolled the dough too thin and had to do the whole dough thing over again! I have to admit, I went a little crazy with dough as you can see in the picture.... but in the end, they turned out splendid.

For dinner that night we decided to have fish and chips. I had been watching a food/travel show and the host went across the pond to England. She had fish and chips, and I said to my mum, "We should try making baked fish and chips!" My mum loved the idea and so we tried it out that evening. We took cod and coated it in Panko, a Japanese style breadcrumbs, and baked it. To make the chips we sliced potatoes very thin and covered drizzled them with olive oil, salt and pepper and baked those as well. It was delicious!

My dad had to go to England to do some work. One night he decided to order Indian food. You might not know this, but England is known for having very good Indian food! My dad ordered Tandoori Chicken, basically a chicken roasted in spices, naan which is very thin dough with subtle seasonings, kind of like flatbread, and Lamb Vindaloo, a curry-like dish that is usually very spicy. My dad said the Tandoori Chicken was amazing; he said it was one of the best he's ever had. The naan, he said, was delicious as well. My dad said that the Lamb Vindaloo was spicy, yummy and "lamb-y".

This weekend I went to a big cooking event in Atlanta called the Metropolitan Cooking and Entertaining Show. My mum had given me tickets to see Giada de Laurentiis, my favorite Food Network chef, cook at this event! Before we got to see Giada, though, we walked around and visited a lot of different food booths and tried some of their food. I tried chocolate-covered toffee, fudge, relish, pound cake, orange juice, bread and olive oil, stir-fry, barbecue chicken with hot sauce, dark chocolate peanut butter and (believe it or not) spicy peanut butter! My favorites were the dark chocolate peanut butter, the barbecue chicken with hot sauce and the fudge. My mum and I did some shopping too; we bought 2 jars of the dark chocolate peanut butter, 1 jar of the spicy peanut butter, some different hot sauces and spices, a garlic peeler/chopper, a cookbook signed by Giada de Laurentiis, and one of Mario Batali's cookbooks. Then we got to see Giada cook. She made orzo with a tomato vinaigrette, salmon cakes and a strawberry parfait with a brown sugar crumble on top. It all looked delicious! I had a wonderful day, and I hope I can go again next year.

Thanks for reading!

Lizzie Marie