Ewan’s been gone 10 days now…am missing his cheeky smile so much. Wondering whether his love bites have faded at all (or indeed if he has any new ones?). He’s at a summer camp avoiding bears in the wilds of Ontario…with no mobile phones allowed. Took big son Rory out last night to Boho Mexica, a very noisy Mexican (astonishing, yes?) in east London for his 20th birthday. A whole evening with both parents equals time wasted so we had to eat at an unnaturally early hour – food was great, btw – so he could get on with the real purpose of the evening: drinking with his pals. Before he left us we managed to persuade him to come with us across the road for pudding (I just don’t get Mexican puds…too much corn in the cob for me). We went to St John and had eccles cakes (they are the best in the whole world, I kid you not) with a portion of meadowsweet ice cream. Meadowsweet? Yes, me too. Apparently it’s a herb found in the wild. The ice cream tasted of caramel and vanilla – beautiful.
Am deep in testing toasters for November issue of Delicious magazine. The kitchen is buried in appliances, boxes, plastic bags, polystyrene wadding, cold toast. I am pathologically unable to repack the items. No matter how well I try to memorise the positioning of everything as I unleash it all from the box, I can never get it all back in. Never. Apologies to all you PR companies for my shockingly bad packing (and so much for my ‘tidy’ image!).
Got to my eighth toaster at the same time as Rory was heading out to catch his lift to Womad. He has – get this – procured two bottles of absinthe that are EIGHTY TWO PER CENT alcohol. I asked him what he’ll be drinking it with. He couldn’t give me an answer. So that’ll be neat, then? ‘Well, maybe a bit of lemonade, Mum.’ It is a real worry.
So by the time I got to that eighth toaster, I needed a little distraction and thought I would have a little taste of the absinthe. It smelled quite nice. I took the teeniest little sip…and it nearly blew my head off. Like liquid scotch bonnet chillies. I will be sticking to my 12 per centers in future
Like the description of the meadowsweet ice cream. And what a wonderful name for ice cream – brings up images of knee-high cornflowers, poppies and daisies.
The other day I had a chocolate pudding with buckthorn fondant. Had not heard of that before either. The fondant was orange and sweetly citric in taste and went very well with the chocolate.
You now have me scared! I also have two boys but still 6 and 9………I don’t know if I’ll survive the teen years?
Thanks for following me on twitter- I’ll be reading you from now on as you have a lovely voice.
Cheers,
Camilla
Of course you’ll survive the teen years – in some ways it just gets better. Take my advice and don’t do what I did and allow them TV/computers in their rooms – you never see them. One of each appliance per household (regrets… I have so many).
The crunch is Year 10 – one day they are sweeties, the next grunting, smelly, hairy, hormone-heaving, beer (and anything else they can get their hands on) swilling animals. It’s fun, though!