Jim jam tarts

Every day on the short tube to work I am utterly entranced by the ad for 118 or something suggesting you ask them where to book for valentines. It has a fake tube map linking to 'st pancake', 'puddington', charring croissant' etc. In honour of my love (being in this case this advertisement) I made some jam tarts this evening. Unfortunately I ran out of jam so had to make 2 marmalade and 2 peanut butter. DF suggested I get some more jam but 1) it would have been nothing compared to blue granny's jam and 2) I was already in my tartan lounge wear post post-work bath so wasn't leaving the house.

I was going to share them with everyone but the boys all gathered together to watch something boy so I ate them all by myself in my room whilst the jam mingled with my tears of loneliness. Not really, I was on the phone to Dave F so I was more than fine. The only real problem was that the jam stuck my mouth together so I couldn't talk much. And the marm and peanut ones were both awful in their respective ways.

Eurgh. I'm going to bed!

Surprise!

Had a wonderful surprise party for bob last night at the estate. Had pink and white balloons, (1) party popper, and a whole secret balcony of guests lying in wait. Bob arrived and thought i'd just had too much cava bien merci I was fizzing over with excitement so much but then I let the lid of the guest pot and she was genuinely surprised.

We ate tiger prawn and chilli spaghetti:

1kg spaghetti

Tiger prawns

cherry tomatoes pan roasted

2 med chillis chopped

1 lemon zested and juiced

flat leaf parsley chopped

Cook spaghetti according to packet, add prawns for last few mins, drain well and add rest of stuff, return to heat for at least 3 mins and mix carefully.

Here's a tip for you. Never try to cook spaghetti for ten people at once. We'll be finding it worming around the house for days.

For birthday cake we had Chocolate Steamed Sponge Pudding:

I had a practise run the other day with Pink Granny and we made a cranberry one. Very nice and fresh. Perfect for our lunch. As people who remember the name of my SimsPets dog will attest to, I do love a good pudding. Tip: Put the extra sauce in a jug like granny did rather than tip it all over the pudding so it's like a floating chocolate island. As unfortunately, people laugh at you for that.

Recipe:

Grease 2 pint pudding basin. Spoon in 1/4 of chocolate sauce (melted 150g choc, then simmered with 150g icing sugar, 150g butter until all melted, remove from heat and stir in 2 tbls milk). Then mix together 225g self raising flr, 85g caster sugar, 115g softened butter, then add 1 large egg, 8 tbls milk, and mix well. Put into the pudding basin and firmly cover top with foil making a bit of a handle as well to pull it out after. Stand basin in a pan with water half way up basin sides. Bring to boil then simmer for 2 hours, topping up boiling water if necessary as can't boil dry or go off boil. Pull out after 2 hrs, tip onto dish, and spoon chocolate sauce over or put in jug if there's too much.

Back to the present and after dinner we played a riotous game of the cereal box game, gave bob her gifts and wiggled around to beyonce and ricky marts. Easeh Easeh.

The night crept off to sleep with Dashy singing and guitar playing Bob and I a lullaby in bed. It was ever so soothing we drifted right off but not before Bob had commented that Dashy should make an album of bedtime lullabies for cool parents to pop on for their children. A sort of David Gray for the under eights.

Ooh the postman just came whilst I was writing this and I had got so fired up about birthdays that I forgot it wasn't mine and that the parcels weren't for me. What a shame.

oh p.s we had birthday breakfast in bed this morn with toast jenga and softly softly boiled eggs a la delia. Got to test out my new swan eggcup. It looks like it's enjoying nibbling the toast here.

Bye for now my eggy breads xxxxxxx