Monday 30th November

Mondays are always hectic even when there are no guests. And one of the most annoying things is that it’s the busiest day for electronic phone calls or surveys. My answer is always NO on a Monday and I tell them to call back another day.

Our lovely weekend guest Jennifer left Sunday morning after coming up to see her father to celebrate her sister’s engagement. We talked food and home renovation and I showed her around the house, giving her some food for thought and hopefully some inspiration.

A lovely couple has returned, Tom and Marion. She is having an operation at St Georges and Tom stays with us, visiting her daily. We cheer her up by sending in homemade goodies – last time we introduced Tom to Banoffee Pie and I showed him how to make it!

It’s been nice to have a few sets of guests who stay for a week or more, you really get to know them. The routine falls into place very quickly, but there is always the silent pressure that you need to give them different tastes for breakfast be it a different fruit, bread, a new jam or a different cooked dish or even display things differently.

On a fun note, we got some of our Christmas cooking and baking done!! We made a Muesli based on a recipe we found on line from a website called Nutrition Stripped and we also managed to bake the first batch of Rich Fruit Cakes that we plan on giving to relatives and friends.  It’s a tried and tested recipe and the secret to making it a great cake is to drizzle some sherry twice a week on the top of the cake whilst its maturing – it can be eaten after two weeks but if you can bare to leave it a month, it’s even better. We’ll be posting these recipes on Tuesday alongside the vegetarian mincemeat!

I came across a great new product when I went to the annual Christmas Fair at Dulwich College – Buckshot Original Small Batch Sauces – The brown sauce is absolutely divine!