Food

There has been a definite food theme this weekend. I finally got to see Julie and Julia which I absolutely loved. The film tells the parallel stories of Julia Child who learned to cook whilst living in France during the 1960s and brought French cooking to the US and Julie Powell who set herself the challenge to cook everyone of the 524 recipes from Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in just one year. Not only that she blogged about it too. I remember watching Julia Child on TV when we lived in Massachusetts in the early 1980s but knew nothing of her story which was both uplifting and sad in many ways. Meryl Streep's portrayal was amazing although quite exhausting to watch at times. And watching Julie Powell struggle her way through the endless recipes in a tiny New York flat was equally exhausting. The film raised issues about blogging which seemed very familiar (who are we writing for... that buzz at getting comments that never really goes, etc) but it also told two very tender love stories. An excellent evening's entertainment... Stewart thought it was "OK" but a girl's film.

And so I came home inspired to cook... of course Birthday Cake was on the agenda

Mavis's excellent Apricot and Almond cake with just a few tweaks.

I also received my seed swap package from Twiggy this weekend which contained a fabulous array of goodies. Flower seeds all beautifully packaged with cross stitch labels, flowery fabrics, gift tags and not only a recipe for chilli jam but a sample jar too.

It looked so good I just had to make a couple of jars for myself... which was loved by everyone who tried it. In fact Ben, who was home for the day on Sunday took a jar back with him (along with half a dozen eggs, some damson jam and a bag of sweetcorn and tomatoes).

A good excuse too to use up some of my home grown chillis and some of the glut of tomatoes. I think we have had about 12 kilos so far... made into endless soups and sauces but still going strong.

After producing a vat of meatballs in homemade tomato sauce I finally tired of the cooking... and found another way of entertaining myself with tomatoes....