cheese, chocolate & summer living

Michael and I like cheese. We also like a bargain.

So, when cheese goes on sale (our threshold is $1/100g), we stock up. Cheese usually has a date of at least 6 months, sometimes even longer, so we've never had a problem with it going bad before we can eat it. Although sometimes I wonder if we eat too much cheese.

Summer is a great time to eat ice cream (then again, I think anytime is a great time to eat ice cream). There's a local ice cream shop called BDI, that has spoiled me with the most delicious hot fudge (I can't even eat Dairy Queen's now). Problem is, it's not particularly economical to go there every time I want a little ice cream. So, I thought to myself, I wonder if I could make hot fudge sauce at home? I started with a google search. Found a recipe that sounded good to me on the Eagle Brand website. I decided to go all out and use some of my swiss chocolate instead of cheap chocolate chips.

It was super easy, sweetened condensed milk, chocolate, a little butter & water melted together on the stovetop, add some vanilla, and voila, hot fudge! I'd say it's pretty darn close to the stuff from BDI. I also doctored mine up and added a bit of cinnamon, because in my books chocolate and cinnamon go together like peanut butter & jelly.

Michael and I recently spent an evening at a friend's place. They had turned their gazebo into an outdoor living room, which we thought was just great. So, we decided to cozy ours up a bit too. Michael started by hanging some lights.

He also found this chain downstairs leftover from hanging our chandeliers, so he put that up so we can hang lanterns from it.

Then we dragged our ikea chairs in, so we had a comfy place to sit.

After all this was set up, we decided to test it out by having an outdoor movie night.

It was lovely!

And, last but not least, here's an update of the garden growing: