Alternative pursuits

What a lot of rain there was flying about today! And when I first sat up and looked out at the Firth all I could see were white horses on a grey sea and the red and white of one of the Western Ferries crashing through them and looking very small - and all I could think was that in three hours I was going to be on it. However, by the time we were on board the wind seemed to have lessened slightly, and we were travelling in the direction of the wind, which always helps - though I was glad the car wasn't at the forward end of the boat. (It's not really a bow, is it, on a ro-ro ferry? )

This was all in aid of a hair cut for me - though the relaxation of having my hair washed and being served an espresso by my hairdresser before he started cutting, to say nothing of the increasingly scurrilous political discussion we had while he was busy sometimes seem as important as his skill with the scissors! We had thought we might have lunch in Tonino's next door, but as Himself had been utterly soaked by a car passing through an enormous puddle in the gutter we decided it wouldn't be much fun and came home instead.

I spent the afternoon making a cake. Totally out of character - I only ever make a Christmas cake, now that I'm not making blue iced cakes for a small Rangers fan (and that was 40 years ago!). But I came home last year from that cooking holiday in Puglia fired with the thought that I might try to recreate one of the desserts we made, and when I was ordering stuff for Christmas from Sous Chef I noticed Almond Flour and bought a wee bag. It's been sitting in my cupboard since, and the time has never seemed right to make this cake and the date on the wee bag has moved closer to its sell-by date and ...so today, because it was raining and because friends are coming round for afternoon tea (!) tomorrow I thought I'd give it a bash. Now, this will sound daft to all you domestic goddesses out there, but it took me ages to assemble all the bits, separate the eggs,  beat the whites, produce enough lemon zest ... and my kitchen is tiny and there were a lot of bowls, wooden spoons, beaters, jugs, egg shells, sugar ...

Anyway, 'tis done. I'll let you know. My photo has absolutely nothing to do with baking; before I started I thought the porch needed sweetening because that's where a lot of our shoes live and in the damp weather ... So I lit the incense burner, popped in a few shards of oud, and left it to fill the porch with fragrant smoke. Hate to think what would have happened if I'd kept it on the multi-smoke-alarmed environment of the dining room.

Incense burner (can't really call it a thurible) courtesy of one of #2 son's trips to the Middle East.  I love it.