Food and presents at the weekend...

This post is mainly about cooking and eating - enter if you dare! Ben's birthday was this Monday, but we decided to take a long run-up to the celebrations and have a good weekend of food, drink and presents... Son 1 set the tone by making dough on Saturday, ready to produce his third 'Round the World' recipe - Italian pizza!

Meanwhile, I used the October Country Living recipe to make 'Heaven and Earth' (himmel und erde) for lunch - potatoes and apples with bacon. It was a pleasant addition to a salad-based meal, but maybe I should have used sharper apples.

That evening we ate the pizzas, which were spendid. Son 1 put everything he thought the adults would like onto this one: peppers, anchovies, mozzerella, sweetcorn, pepperoni and mushrooms. I added a sliced organic red onion that I'd bought at the Alterna'town festival that afternoon. The overall effect was delicious!

He produced a second pizza where his half was like the adults' minus the pepper and onions, whilst his brother's half looked rather bare in comparison. What a fussy eater, that brother! However, being specifically catered for like this, Son 2 did enjoy his half of the pizza.

This was Son 1's present to his dad the following evening. He decorated the jar (a useful holder for 'things' in the office) using some wonderful pens which write on anything. I did like his patchwork design! As he'd already got a present, he used the jar as a container for his birthday message instead of a card.Son 2 went overboard on the wrapping (and the tippex 'snail'!) Note the piratical theme - it's important.Aww!

Inside the wrapping was the picture he'd made as a card - a gate into a very spooky wood. Here's a boy who loves googly eyes and sparkly things! Both this and the jar idea came from a great set of craft books which the boys were given years ago - still the source of so many projects. Ben has taken all these things into his office this morning, where they will decorate his desk. Inside these two parcels were the following piano books:The boys love hearing their dad play their favourite music, and Son 1, at least, has the ulterior motive of wanting to learn to play the pieces himself! (Son 2 hates sight reading so much that he's much less likely to try them out.)

So here was my present, bought from one of the excellent Fair Trade shops in Toulouse - there's a very stylish T-shirt inside.Also inside was a book Ben had been thinking of reading - look who sent it to me (via Amazon). There is hope yet for Amazon addicts doing the dottie angel challenge!Rather continuing the orange theme, I made Ben a carrot cake using the last carrots from the garden. Son 2 specified how it should be made, and I have to admit that his variations on my usual recipe were an improvement - in two layers, with thicker icing!Ben picked some yellow rasberries from our rather reluctant bushes, and they made a great decoration.

Happy 42nd Birthday, dear Ben!

On Ben's actual birthday, Monday, we were too busy baking to celebrate much, so it was a good thing we'd gone for the weekend celebrations. His company has a tradition of the birthday people providing crepes, tartes etc, and he always likes to bring something traditionally British. This year he made Melting Moments, which seem almost impudently English to me...and I knocked up some of my very-fast-and-makes-sixty-at-a-time ginger biscuits.
I gather everything went down very well.

Next celebration - Bonfire Night! Always fun with French visitors...