Salad Days

Thank you so much for your wonderful encouraging comments about the plastic bag skirt - it was especially lovely to get comments from "new" people... all VERY much appreciated. I'm still working on the bodice but will put pictures up when it's finished and let you know about my progress in the competition.

It's been a good week so far - not only have I finished that skirt - but I've more reasons to be proud of Sam. Sam graduated two years ago with a degree in theatre arts and with plans to be a writer. It was never going to be an easy career but he has stuck at some pretty boring temp jobs to finance his dream. He wrote his first novel the year he graduated and has put up with a constant stream of rejection slips from publishers and agents over the past two years. But on Tuesday I took him to Ely where he met with Melrose Books, an independent publisher - and they are going to publish his first novel - "Cold Turkey and the Case of the Missing Crime" - a humourous detective spoof. Needless to say we are all very excited and I'll keep you posted!

No photos to show of Sam meeting publishers... so some gratuitous food shots instead (well it's been a while), The wonderful weather we've been having this week in the UK has meant salads for dinner so on Tuesday it was my favourite Greek Salad...

Which comes from this book.

I especially like the addition of fennel rather than cucumber in this version.

And tonight it was a classic Salade Nicoise which came from Delia's How to Cook Book Two.

Eaten with some crusty fresh walnut bread, a chilled glass of Sauvignon Blanc, looking out on the sun dappled trees in the garden and listening to birdsong and the sound of leather on willow... it doesn't get much better!