DINNER FOR TWO

Promptly at nine this morning the assembled company of dungeoneers departed in a people carrier to Dragon Meet. They began to arrive much earlier than expected and Pa and I were still in bed and my son not sufficiently dressed to receive visitors so a good deal of shuffling about on the landing took place as the company waited to be allowed in. Fortunately no one minded at all and as eveyone was in high spirits all went well.

I decided to have another half hour in bed while Pa did his ablutions then downstairs to a breakfast of boiled eggs and bread and butter which was lovely since the bread was freshly made yesterday. We took our time over the meal, a luxury we seldom have on a weekend and drank lots of tea as we chatted about old times.

I had set myself the task of baking cookies today as the jar are all empty and had been rummaging through the recipe books eventually deciding to make something up myself. I love ginger biscuits but usually the recipies are for the rock hard aptly named ginger nuts and that was not what I wanted at all . Half dipped chocolate gingers tend to melt and stick together without much provocation and so I came up with the following.

Double ginger chocolate chunk cookies

8oz butter
2oz caster sugar
2oz dark brown Mucsavado sugar
2 oz crystallised stem ginger cut into small pieces
4 oz dark chocolate bashed in to small chunks
8 0z plain flour
2 teaspoons of ground ginger
1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Beat the butter and the sugars together until light and fluffy. Sieve together the flour and the spices and add to the mixture with the chocolate and the ginger pieces and mix thoroughly.

Roll in to walnut sized balls and place on a greased baking sheet then press down lightly with a wet fork. Bake in a pre heated oven set at 360oC and bake for twenty minutes. Remove from the oven and leave on the tray for a few minutes then finish the cooling on a wire rack.

These cookies are nice and chocolaty yet the chocolate does not easily melt , the small pieces of ginger give the cookies a kick. If you really love ginger add more ground ginger and more stem ginger.

While my son was on holiday recently Pa and I had a love,y meal of roasted salmon and as it is so easy and quick to I chose to cook it again tonight as it was just Pa and I for dinner. I boiled a few of our own pink fir apple potatoes to go with the dish and a selection of vegetables including baby corn ,mange tout and broccoli spears. A rich Hollandaise sauce completed the dish and we had sticky toffee pudding with fresh cream for afters for which I cheated and used the microwave!

All through the afternoon the garden was full of small birds visiting the feeders and Pa was filling them up with nuts,seeds and suet. The birds are so tame that they continue to feed even when we are close by and our tame robin will peck small bits of food from Pa's clothes with no fear at all. We have a young Jackdaw who has become very tame and will come when called. This morning a flock of long tailed tits blew in to the garden and raided the feeders, these birds are usually quite shy and are not often seen on garden feeders,the Nuthatches too have returned and are constant visitors recently, I think perhaps there will be a change in the weather soon,it will be much colder I think.

I seem to get tired very quickly at the moment and without having done very much work but while this is making life difficult I am too weary to mind very much the fact that I need to rest more often and by the time our early dinner was over and the table cleared I was glad to sink in to a hot bath and afterwards my bed. It is from this haven of cosiness that I am writing tonight with Miss Twiggy for company, she has found my hot water bottle and is disporting herself upon the warm patch near my feet.

I do not expect my son to arrive home until late so I may not see him until morning as I feel tired enough to sleep for a week, I have left the makings of coffee all ready for his return and I have no doubt that there will be quite a tale to be told in the morning, entertaining and funny as always. Sleep tight every one .