Kind wishes extended to you and yours on this first day of the new year, my dearies

We consider ourselves unobliged to make a resolution as on the 30th day of December last year we (Mr HC and myself) CLEANED THE OVEN. Now absolutely ALL the signs and symbols on the fiddly shiny fascia have been deleted, along with the grime and baked-on grease of dinners past. Cooking will be so much more instinctive and unpredictable than ever before. However, the thermometer can currently be read through the glass door, so clean as it now is.

New year's afternoon eve we cooked: two quiches, 16 bread rolls, one stollen,lentil and tomato soup for 11, prawn risotto for 10, one raspberry pavlova. All satisfactorily well received, I believe and none burned or under-cooked.