Vegetable soup and fruit cake.......

Sounds like a strange mix, but they have been very significant foods in my day today.

This morning I decided to make a veggie soup which would, hopefully, become a few days of comfort food. I put some veggie stock on the element, added some dried lentils etc then took my coffee into the office to check my emails.

Some time later I heard a strange blipping sound and thought it must be a neighbour backing down his drive.

The blipping continued.

I eventually got up to go and investigate and as I opened the kitchen door the rank odour of burning lentils greeted me. The blipping was my smoke alarm! The soup had boiled dry and was smouldering away in a pre-combustive state.

OMG - the stench was awful, the smoke thick in the air. Despite it being a frosty cold morning I flung open all the doors and windows in an attempt to rid the house of the smoke. If there's one thing I can't stand it's bad smells - and smoke smell clings to everything! The neutralising air freshner got a thorough work out through the house several times during the day, but still, of course, the smokiness lingers.

And that's where the fruit cake comes in...........

What better smell can there be than the smell of fresh baking so, in another attempt to neutralise the smoky smell I decided to bake a fruit cake.......

And yes - it smells delicious :)

And I hope it tastes delicious too (just about to go find that bit out as I make an evening cuppa and enjoy a slice of warm fruit cake with it for supper.)

But will it have killed off the smoky smell? Somehow I doubt it but it's made me feel a whole heap better :)

I shall go to bed tonight and thank the powers that be that I'd changed my smoke alarm batteries at the start of winter and that I didn't burn my entire house down today.

Thankyou :)