Cakes

Yesterday Greengirl posted a Blip on the Goodwill pie they had for Christmas Day and it looked so great I just had to Google it. Found out it is one of the recipes of Anna Jones, the lady who makes wonderful vegetarian recipes, stuff so good even omnivores like me are happily trying out her recipes. On the same page as her Goodwill Pie was a link to carrot and cardamom  cakes and seeing I do have a lot of carrots and plenty of cardamom I just had to try them out today. I was silly in diminishing the amount of syrup, so they weren't very sweet, but they are certainly moist and full of nutty goodness. We also had lots of mascarpone left to make a kind of icing :-) We've just had our second Christmas dinner, only 3 courses but still with son no 2's seafood dish starter , the 'gourmet' main course and son no 1's 'tipsy laird trifle' pudding I am ready to do nothing for hours to come ;-) The Dutch are a bit peculiar, we have two days of festivities and meals for every major Christian event, all over now. The washing up has been done, the menfolk are watching Arsenal's game, unfortunately not a winning game, I think.

The extra is of the European green woodpecker who came to have good dig in our front garden this morning, these birds are really skittish and rarely come out of the woods so I was very happy with this rather rubbish shot from a weird angle behind the sink.

Thanks so much for your comments, stars and even a heart for yesterday's squirrel and cougnou, you were most kind.