Butterfly Cake (by sarah)

As promised the butterfly cakes construction is now on our cooking blog.

Salaric-Cooking

I'm hoping to have some of the other cakes and things on there soon!

Information Request I (by sarah)

Ok so I realised that I hadn't actually remembered to put this public so yes request one is now after request II - sigh!

As some of you know I have a cooking blog which I have been neglectful over telling people about!

I am looking for recipes for it, I would especially like all those ones that people don't really think about you know - grans chicken soup that sort of thing. Becca, @ndy and Ella have already contributed. Which is cool.

I am veiwing the cooking blog as a sort of research tool and store of recipes. Any interesting food facts are welcome too 🙂

When I say cooking I mean everything form how to make a sandwitch to making preserves to making wine, butter etc... The blog still need some work as it was sort of abandoned with all the flood stuff and the posts that are live aren't even edited yet but its getting there 🙂

Also any cool food websites you know about - let me know - if you have a food bit on your blog let me know etc...

I still have like a hundred recipes to type up from when we lived at Barbaras for it as well.

My 28th Birthday (by sarah)

For my 28th birthday Alaric made me a butterfly cake out of the left over swiss roll and chocolate from christmas!

I'll be posting about this over on Salaric cooking for those interested in how he did it 🙂 But there was a lot of chocolate involved and Jeany got to lick the pot out - eek!

After she was hyper from that we sent her off to a place called Magic Land in Cirencester for her friend Jame's birthday. She had a great and exhusting 2 hours jumping on soft play kits and the like. Al had forgotten the camera so I photographed my boots and things - I love having a camera again. But I was sad as I thought I had lost all the cool pictures of Jeany sledging as the camera was only showing 2 pictures but it wasn't - it was becuase Al had put my birthday presant in the camera - an SD card that has like 1600 picture capacity on it!

The camera was only showing me what was on the new card and not what was on the internal memory!

He also got me a card reader so I can extract not only these picks easily but all those that are traped on the cards of the old cameras!

I had a nice long bath with defoliating face scrub whilst they were at the party too. Then they came back and Jean had more things than she went with!

Each child had got a presant and Jeans was this book of paper dolls you construct and then dress up - we sat infront of the fire on her road map mat and made the two princesses from it! I'll do a bigger post about them on Salaric Carft along with the lovely Japanese stickers Andy gave her which she decided to stick half of in my diary as she knows I love stickers 🙂 We also made some pictures out of them that are now on the fridge - I'll put these on Salaric Craft too 🙂

Al made me a cheese fondue with crusty bread and raw cualiflower, he didn't get time to cut the other vegtables up but there turned out to be just enough for the fondue dipping anyway!

Barbara came round and we opened a bottle of fizzy wine we'd got as a christmas presant (the fondue was made with christmas presant wine too).

I got out the fluted glasses from the wedding as I now have them back in the house and no longer in storage!

Andy also sent back a birthday presant with Al for me which was four lovely slate coasters which come from the same place as our slate place mats and that we got as a wedding presant. I was so excited about this I decided I should lay the table with the slate stuff purely so I could use them! I also got out the four butterfly napkin rings my brother and his girlfriend got me last year!

Al bought the butterfly cake out - me and Jean blew the candles out and Barbara took her piece over to the Mill to eat but even though I warned her the candle holders where still on the cake she managed to chomp one of them up which she duly returned as her TV wasn't working and she needed Al to go and fix it for her.

Me and Al then put Jean to bed who had had two party loads of cake and sugar and was very very tired! We then played chinese checkers - or attempted to work out from the rules how to play, I eat some chocolate fondue that had ment to be desert to the meal and went to bed.

the end

From South Africa to Gloucestershire (by sarah)

Alaric's Dad Lionel and his step-mother Lynne are currently over from South Africa where they live. They arrived in depested darkest Gloucestershire last night and for Lionel it is a return to the place he was brought up. Tonight we made them a three course meal along with Barbara - this is the first formal entertianing we have done since moving back into the house after the flood.

So I brought out the table cloths and napkins and the nice butterfly napkin rings David and Michelle got us at Christmas. We made yummy lentil cakes with sage in - yesturday Alaric made some of the same lentil cakes with what he thought was the coriander but it turned out he doesn't actually know the difference between my lovage plants and coriander - he thought the lovage were lemon corriander and thats why it tasted odd :/ - still both types of lentil cakes were good 🙂

They sat upon a bed of salad from the garden and we had various dips. We then had ground nut stew cook using the cabbages from the garden (well what were left off them due to this years cattipillar uinfestation). Desert was home-made yogurt and local honey with hazel nuts (I'm afraid these were bought as Jean had eaten the ones from the hedge row I'd gathered.).

The interesting thing to note was Jean's interactions with Lionel - her langage was completely different from how she speaks to dad - eg:

To Dad, 'Ferfer nut?'

To Lionel, 'Grandfather would you like a nut?'

I thought this comparison was very interesting as was the fact she called him grandfather when Al had introduced him as Granddad but Lynne had said Grandfather. I think little bobble has worked out that you can interact differently depending on whats expected of you!

Anyway I did take a photo of the Snells but haven't got round to uploading it yet - I will also shortly be sorting out my cooking blog which I will link to so that you can see the recipies etc... of the fabled lentil cakes!

Cake! (by alaric)

Sarah made me a nice cake for my birthday. It was quite an involved process:

It's really nice - it tastes of honey! The icing came out runnier than we'd expected and ran straight down the sides and pooled around the base, but that was only a minor issue.