November 1st Nanaimo Bars and visiting friends.

Early Nov. 1st Ana and I went grocery shopping to find missing ingredients for the Nanaimo Bars. We needed wafers to replace the graham cracker crumbs, icing sugar and more butter. We will use cornstarch and real vanilla from vanilla pods to replace the custard powder.

We had a wonderful time making the bars. She did most of the work and I supervised. Paulo was happy to eat them. The whole experiment has been declared a success and Portugal now has Nanaimo Bars.

We spent a quiet afternoon. I sent some postcards and Paulo and Ana were busy with the website. Around 4 o'clock we headed out to visit friends for a birthday. It had rained most of the day but we thought the worst was past. Half way to the friends we discovered that there was a road washed out and we had to detour to higher ground to avoid the flooding.

We arrived safely and I was made to feel very welcome. One of the couples had just returned from Calgary, where they had spent the last two years. There was lots of food including Ana's special carrots, quiche, leek pie, apple pie, potato chips, beetroot chips, roast chestnuts, olives, iberico ham, cheese, and regular ham. Everything was delicious and I learned to eat roast chestnuts by dipping them in coarse salt. I was treated to Mateus Rose and we finished off the night with Birthday cake.
The ride home was uneventful as no roads were flooded and the rain held off until we were safe and sound.