Whatever Wednesday!

 I am doing a "Whatever Wednesday" post here today. By that I mean I am going to just post some random photos of things or events that caught my eye or heart.

For example: tomatoes picked from our and our son's garden. He grew heritage tomatoes from seed this year. He ordered the seeds from a catalog then planted the seeds in late winter under a grow light in his basement. He let us pick seed varieties and when the plants were well along and all danger of frost had passed he handed us our choices to plant in our garden. We are able to share varieties and wow are the heritage tomatoe varieties ever tasty!

Calvin got his official first dunk in the Pacific Ocean last week, at age eight weeks old. Luke was dunked at six weeks. I wasn't there to see Cal get his toes dunked but I did get sent a photo to document the milestone.

Calvin at two months.  He's a good sized baby and smiles readily at his parents. For me...not so much. I discovered he would smile every time I said the word "beach" though.

Hmm...smart kid!

I am still messing around with Indian cooking. I have learned that Indian "Laddoo" sweets take forever to make.  One Indian blogger wrote about how her mother-in-law used to hire a man to come to their house to cook sweets for holidays. They would erect a shed for him to work in and he labored for five full days making the sweets.  She now wishes she had paid more attention to his work as she remembers the treats quite fondly yet does not know exactly how he made them.

One Indian cooking blogger volunteered a "so fast and easy" coconut Laddoo recipe that she has her kids make them while she is busy making more complicated recipes.

I gave it a try and it has gotten major thumbs up from my coconut loving family.  And she is right: A perfect recipe for kids to make.

Ready to give it a try?

No cooking, no baking, just two ingredients:

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

2 cups Dried Unsweetened flaked/shredded Coconut

Directions:

Set aside about three tablespoons of coconut.

Mix the can of sweetened condensed canned milk into the coconut,adding the milk slowly, mixing as you go, until the coconut milk mix bunches together.

You may or may not need the entire can.

Grab about a tablespoonful of the mix and roll it into a ball between your palms.

Then roll the ball in the coconut that was set aside. (I forgot to set some coconut aside so I rolled the balls in the photo in powdered sugar...meh.)

That all there is to it!  

You could use a few drops if food coloring to dye the rolling coconut in order make the Laddoo look more festive or you could push a nut or bit of dried fruit or ??? into the top of the ball to fancy them up.

Whatever is left over after immediately pigging out on the treat should be refrigerated.

Nice, fast, easy peasy gluten free treat to bring to a gathering where one is not sure of what dietary issues may need to be addressed. Lactose intolerant folk need to be warned I guess...can't win now days on serving anything except  purified water I think!