More rabbit than Sainsbury's

Much has happened this week. The most important item of news is that Nicky has been offered a new post in the library Fit for the Future reorganisation. She received a phone call on Wednesday afternoon, was offered two posts and accepted one of them. She is feeling very relieved.

With Thursday being our wedding anniversary Nicky had booked Thursday and Friday as annual leave. We were planning to do the coast to coast walk on Thursday but the weather was quite wet, so we changed our plans and decided to go for indoor activities. We started off with breakfast at Catroux, a café in Westmere which we had heard good things about. It specialises in using organic ingredients, many of which they produce themselves. Nicky had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and granary toast, and I had poached eggs and bacon with granary toast, and it was all excellent. We had tea and coffee afterwards and a nice chat with a couple of young mum's on the next table.

We didn't have a particular film in mind but thought that the cinema might be a good option. A bit of web surfing introduced us to The Time of Their Lives with Joan Collins and Pauline Collins. We liked the look of the trailer so headed off to Newmarket for a late morning screening. We were the entire audience, and though the film was undemanding and somewhat predictable, we enjoyed it and the premiss of older people coming to terms with the lives that have lived and lives they want to live.

After a latish lunch when we got home we drove out to the Arataki Centre to look at this years photography competition winners. On the way in we met father and daughter Lions supporters over her from Sheffield, so had a good chat. We enjoyed the photographs (of the Waitakere Regional Park) and visiting the centre again. After having fish pie for dinner we had a quiet evening and watched Grand Designs.

To celebrate the solstice, our wedding anniversary, and enjoy the company of some of my fellow Deep and Meaningful members, we had invited some over for dinner on Saturday night. So on Friday morning after a late change to my work plans I started making a 26cm (approx 2kg) Christmas Pie - chicken, bacon and drunken cranberries in a hot water crust pastry. I had work in the afternoon and evening so was pleased to get the pie made. Nicky did a little shopping for Dawn who we discovered is down with a virus and has been for about 10 days now, before spending most of the day cleaning.

Saturday morning started off quite grey. The Free Beaches Polar Plunge (to celebrate the winter solstice) was planned for 9am, so I headed off to St Leonards beach on the North Shore after breakfast. To my surprise I was the last one to arrive - four others were already there. The tide was higher than I expected and the water was cold (Bill kept assuring us that it was 2 degrees warmer than last year but that didn't make it feel any warmer). Our post dip socialising was brought to end when the rain came, so I headed home after dropping Daniel off at the nearest bus station.

A little while after I got home Steve called in and collected Nicky on the way to Stella's for Scrabble. I started rearraging furniture in the lounge and then moved onto cooking. When Nicky returned she continued with the cleaning that she had started on Friday. I prepared capsicums stuffed with onion, mushroom, sun dried tomatoes, cashews, walnuts and sultanas. roast veggies and jacket spuds and kumera. These choices were because one of our guests eats no animal products. As a result, he doesn't go to many food-related social events which is a shame because he is a nice chap and good company. For dessert I made a vegan version of my Christmas pud recipe and changed the breadcrumbs for rolled oats (because of the skimmed milk powder used in the bread).

The food all came out very well. I was pleased with the pie and very pleased with the pud. It was too soft to up-end out of the bowl but tasted great. Maria brought some quinona-based mouthfuls for pre-dinner, Kat arrived with rice crackers, cheese and grapes, and Wendy contributed an avocado, persimmon and spinach salad which had other fruit and nuts in it too. Cheryl’s vegan chocolate cupcakes went very well with the Christmas pud and custard. Kat and Valera (the vegan) are both Russian and had not experienced proper Christmas pudding before so split what was left to home with them. We had some noisy and lively conversations and it was a great evening. Nicky and I were also pleased to use our “wedding anniversary gift to ourselves” table cloth for the first time. It is big enough to cover our 6x4 foot library table (quite hard to find) and is a red and white Maori design. It looked stunning. Lots of leftovers but a great evening.

The Pie

I obviously didn’t drink enough water during the evening (or too much wine?) because I woke with quite a bad headache this morning. However, after taking a couple of doses of Paracetamol, doing the ironing while Nicky was at church, and having a post-lunch snooze I felt much brighter. Today has been bookended with showers but the afternoon was sunny so I headed out to Karekare for a walk and a paddle as I had been given permission in-spite of the fact that library ladies were expected for a Matariki afternoon tea celebration. On my return I joined there game of Pictionary. After their departure we tidied up the lounge and had some lobs for tea. It will be tellyboxing this evening.

Take care, Rick