I lost my voice. And am home sick for the rest of the week. I could have done without tonsilitis during this particular week, I have too much going on at work, but that's the way the cookie crumbles I guess. I had a Christmas concert yesterday, it's only afterwards that my voice went completely, but I have another next Saturday so I hope it comes back!!!
We had our first Christmas celebration on Saturday! Joe's daughter Helen was over for the weekend and we did Christmas because we're not seeing each other for the 'real' one. It's really amazing what you can accomplish when you put all your energy into it; we were all really surprised at how Christmassy it was! Everything was exactly as it should be, with the tree, the presents, the yummy Christmas dinner, the drinking starting in the afternoon... We are Irish and Polish after all! ;-)
Helen gave me a gorgeous cook book - all cakes and other sweet stuff - that I'd never heard of. Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache by Harry Eastwood. Do any of you have it? It's a beautiful, beautiful book with lovely photos and wonderful writing. Clearly, Harry loves her food. She (yes, she) also loves creating healthy versions of things we love to eat, like brownies and cookies and cakes. The recipes in this book all have some strange ingredients, such as grated potato, butternut squash or parsnip. And they use rice flour or spelt flour, plus ground almonds, although you can use the same quantity of regular flour if you prefer. I was intrigued that I immediately made the Banana and Toffee Sticky Cake and my oh my is it good! If the rest of the bakes in here are this yummy then we'll be living on a strict diet of cakes for a long time!
I leave you with a photo of my cake - sticky and moist and very, very more-ish. This book makes a brilliant present, maybe one of your family friends would appreciate it?
4 comments:
Looks yummy. I like my cakes fruity and moist :) I’m glad to know that your first Christmas went well. Any other interesting presents? Did you offer books?
Hope you feel better soon!
Ugh, tonsillitis is miserable (I used to have it every few months when I was younger). Get well soon! And your early Christmas sounds like it was a delight :D
I hope you get your voice back soon!!
Your early Christmas celebration sounds wonderful! And that cake looks yummy! :)
Alex - I'll give you the recipe. :-) Joe got me those notebooks you told me about; one for recipes and one for books. They're soooo cool! :-)
Nymeth - It was indeed a delight - what a great way to start December. We decided to do it every year. :-)
Melody - Thanks! It was so great, you can never have enough Christmases, I say! :-)
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