Grow up........

I went to a 60th birthday party and she's not one of my parents' friends she's my friend.....when did my friends start turning 60? I made (almost) 60 cupcakes, to take with me, using Lily Vanilli's madeira seed cake recipe, omitting the cream and jam interior and adding the omega-3 seed mix instead, to make the healthy option......yeah sort of.

Also this week I realised I'm older than the Prime Minister......that's never happened before. How can I be older than the Prime Minister?

Top tip: go to the cinema and see Beasts of the Southern Wild...astonishing on every level.

Brought to book.........

It's taken me a year to read a book. Over a year. Freedom by Jonathan Franzen; it's a great brick of a hardback book but a year is a long time.
"You must read this," a friend had said, giving it to me, "I couldn't put it down."
So I did, despite not being able to pick it up. Or rather I didn't. The thing is I could only read it when tucked up in bed, propping it up against my knees. It was way too big to fit into my already over-flowing handbag or be secreted amongst my I'm-not-paying-to-put-it-in-the-hold luggage and come with on holidays and mini-breaks. And so it sat in the bedroom while others took the bus. Yes I did read other books over the year. Slighter volumes that travelled better. In the end I decided to just push on through and finish the book but it just wouldn't end. It went on and on. And when I did finally finish it....... I was a tad disappointed. Some of it was good, some of it was great, some of it was boring but to be honest I didn't really like any of the characters.

My new year's resolution was to actually read..... not watch..... something by Charles Dickens and as luck would have it, there was upon the shelf high up in the hallway, a copy of Great Expectations. I do hope it is with a happier heart that I can report upon the enjoyment I hope to find betwixt its yellowing pages.

Top tip: Nurse Jackie is back on Sky Atlantic....... top telly. If you don't have it put the boxset on your Christmas list.

That was the week.........

This week I mainly .......
ate cake at Ottolenghi's...... sublime

worked with Ralph Fiennes...... great voice, beautiful eyes, utterly charming
and had dinner at the Afghan Kitchen in Islington...... beyond delicious

Top tip: As Patti Smith said: 'Don't be afraid to make mistakes. Don't be afraid to be broke.'

The sea, the sea.......

 I went to Dorset and saw the sea.

 When I was a kid we went on holiday to Dorset every year, Weymouth, for two weeks to stay with my father's relatives. As kids we loved it. I can understand now, why my Mum was less enamoured. For us it was all about  buckets and spades, donkey rides and running to see the man who made sculptures out of sand, pockets full of pennies to play the machines in Alexandra Gardens, ice-cream and crab sandwiches, collecting seaweed and searching rock pools with the bamboo handle of my shrimping net, collecting eggs from my Uncle's chickens, beetroot fresh from the garden turning the salad cream pink and zig-zag cut tomatoes which we never had at home.

For my Mum it was cooking on someone else's stove, washing up in someone else's sink and finding things for us to do when it rained. Which of course it did quite a lot. Coming from Sussex, we had to get up when it was still dark in order to 'beat the traffic', and eat a picnic breakfast of food we never normally ate for breakfast: scotch eggs and cold sausages and tea from a flask which we would spill in the back of the car, while my Dad shouted at either my Mum for telling him to take the wrong turning off the Stonehenge roundabout or us in the back for fighting. And then there was always, at some point, the endless hours waiting for the man from the AA to come and fix the car.

This time I went by train, in daylight, it only took a couple of hours. I went to the Watch House Cafe and drank good coffee, we shared a dish of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and Eggs Florentine. I walked by the sea at West Bay and the sun shone.

Top tip: go to the sea, the sea and blow away the cobwebs, the cobwebs.

Cherry and Seed Madeira Cake for the menopausal.......

Regular readers might have noticed my enjoyment of baked goods in general, cake in particular. I find cooking quite relaxing too, all the chopping and  mixing and stuff. So, with winter looming and a particularly lovely picture of a Cherry and Seed Madeira Cake in one of the Sundays, it was on with the pinny.

This recipe comes from Lily VaniIli who has a bakery off Columbia Road flower market at 6 The Courtyard, Ezra  St. London E2 7RG. I think it was the word Madeira that caught my eye. That and cherry. I like cherries and believe there a few greater pleasures than a brown paper bag filled with fat, ripe cherries. I think I thought there might be Madeira wine in the cake. There isn’t. Or perhaps I planned to take a glass while making it, who knows. I don’t know enough about baking to know the difference between Madeira or Victoria or Pound cake. I just know I like eating cake. My son likes baked goods too and at times like this, when I have weight-gaining food lurking about, I can rely on him to eat most of it in one sitting, thus removing any temptation from me. So, I set to. However, I did not have poppy seeds as recommended in the recipe, along with pumpkin and sesame. 

But being a menopausal woman I do have bags and bags of omega 3 packed mixes of pumpkin, sesame, linseed, flax and sunflower seeds. So, I decided to combine cake with healthy eating and make a menopausal-mixed-seed-and-cherry-Maderia cake. It worked a treat and was utterly delicious. And I ate half the cake before the son even came home.

Top tip: there are few problems that are not better ruminated over with cake, get baking.