Sunshine and cake

It's been a beautiful autumn, which is just as well for the surprising numbers of tourists who still seem to be visiting Edinburgh. I can't quite imagine how their travel agents sold them the idea of visiting Scotland in November. In fact they've been lucky, but it could have been cold, dark and rainy. (And not just in November... .) Still, we've all been basking in sunshine quite a lot. I wonder if they realise how fortunate they've been?

We had the Edinburgh family visiting as usual today.

Granddaughter beamed.

For pudding at lunch time we had vanilla slices and raspberries. I don't know if vanilla slices are known overseas, but they're pastry, custardy stuff and icing - in rectangles. Delicious! Grandson had eaten his main course (avoiding the broccoli) and was keen to get back to his toys but when he was promised cake, he decided to stay at the table.

However, when a chopped-up half vanilla slice with raspberries was put in front of him, he clearly didn't recognise this as cake and his little face crumpled in disappointment.

"It's nice," said his mum. "You'll like it. Mind you," she conceded, "that's what I said about the broccoli."

He did like the vanilla slice once he'd taken a bite. Another tiny piece of his education in the variety of cake is now successfully completed.

This was nearly a very nice picture of the pair of them.

PS I think I might be just slightly on the mend. Fingers crossed.

90 again

Yesterday we had the third and final celebration of my mum's 90th birthday - and her third cake. First one at Crieff, before the actual day, with my brother and family; second on the birthday with Daughter 1, Son-in-Law 1 and Grandson; and third yesterday with all the offspring, SIL 1 and future DIL as well as Mr Life's aunt, uncle and cousin. For some reason I decided not to do the buffet salad that I usually put together when entertaining largish numbers. I felt I should be a bit more ambitious. So as part of my menu I picked two recipes that I'd never done before - WHY? - and cooked for about 36 hours.

We're complicated to feed because SIL 1 eats fish but not meat, my mum also likes fish, Mr Life doesn't and prefers meat, the girls and I are vegetarian... . I was also aiming to do all the preparation in advance so that I could just calmly whip things out of the oven when it was time to eat. And this did indeed happen, but there was a vast amount of washing up beforehand in preparation for what I fondly saw as one-dish choices. So we had one pot chicken casserole (yes, you end up with one pot, having used every pot you possess as you go along), easy salmon with broccoli (the word "easy" is slightly misleading there) and chick pea fritters (yup, a serious fiddle, just as you would think, though I'd made them before so you'd think I might have known better.) And raspberry choux ring and chocolate mousse, which are standbys but don't exactly make themselves.  

Anyway, it was fine and seemed to go down well and there are a lot of leftovers (because you have to cook enough so that the omnivores can have whatever they like), which is good because if I never have to cook again in my life, that'll be splendid.

Daughter 2 introduced Grandson to some Weebles - wobbly men. He liked them a lot. (Do you see that black thing in his left hand, Ali Honey? That's one of your coasters!)

He played with his squeaky carrot, a firm favourite.

It was so nice to have Son and Daughter 2 together. He lives up north, she lives down south and their visits don't often coincide.

On the other hand, it's so horrible once they go away again.

Tomorrow I take my mum to the oncologist to discuss the bits of cancer which appear to remain in her innards. Hmm.

The young and the old

Yesterday was Mum's 90th birthday. It's very hard to know what to get someone whose possessions, by and large, have just been disposed of. (She's kept quite a lot of figurines, which you can see in her bedroom.) But I think she had a nice day. Daughter 2 made her this long card, with us all holding up parts of the message "Happy 90th Birthday, Granny May" on it.

We put up a banner in the hall.

Grandson charmed us all as usual. He sits most of the time with his feet crossed like this, and just reaches out for things he wants. It's amazing how far he can stretch without actually going to the bother of crawling (and crawling would be difficult with crossed feet).

Here's Mum with her cake. I made it but didn't eat any of it - I don't think you'd get much rich fruit cake with marzipan and icing and still manage to keep your daily food spend down to £1.

In answer to some questions: no, you're not allowed to add things from your store cupboard to your £1 allowance, but you can use them as long as you count them in your £1. (You don't have to buy a whole pack of butter and eat nothing else all day if you want some on your toast.)

Someone asked what I'm eating. For breakfast, a slice of toast with a scrape of marmalade. For lunch, a tablespoonful of beans and some soup. (The soup is a bit hard to value since I make a huge pot every week or ten days using cauliflower leaves and stalks, broccoli stalks - both of which would otherwise go on the compost heap, so do they count? - lentils, onions and so on. But this makes lots and lots of soup. ) Dinner is a poached egg on toast and some vegetables. Tea and instant coffee throughout the day - I count them but drink both weak with little milk, so they don't add up to much.

I'm really missing fruit and salad. And some cake would be nice. But it's not all that hard, though at this moment (10.35 pm) I do feel a bit hungry. It's all very well for me, though. I can eat strawberries on Saturday.

Balance

Well, look. The sun shone for most of the day so we must have made - oh - about four pounds from our solar panels. In about forty years we may have got back the money we spent on them - though actually my mother sits with an electric heater on all day so... . Still, I hope the environment is grateful.

And when I looked at the garden seat where our electrician ("I'm a chubby chap") sat to admire the panels, I see that he's broken one of the struts. Another little retirement task for Mr Life.

I made cherry scones for my mum's visitor. I don't think I've ever put cherries in my scones before but I'd run out of sultanas and actually, cherries are nicer. Especially eaten slightly warm, with butter.

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That was after I'd been to Zumba, where we had a substitute teacher who was enthusiastic to the point of being manic. I've been too tired to do much for the rest of the day, which is possibly not the point of the whole thing. Still, it must have worked off enough calories to make up for the cherry scone I ate. You think?

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It's all a matter of balancing things out, isn't it? Solar panels to make up for electric heaters. Garden seats made suitable for chubby chaps. Zumba to compensate for scones.

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And that's my attempt to get a theme out of the three disparate photos I took today.
And also my attempt to create artificial paragraph spaces by typing *.