November

Its nuts that it is November already! October seems to have flown by in a flurry of unseasonably warm days with visitors even swimming in the pool, unheard of and probably a bit bonkers, days at the beach, t-shirts and sandals and now suddenly dark nights and woollies.

Had our last visitors the lovely Saskia, our niece, and her equally lovely boyfriend Oli. They stayed with us for a week for the Fires de Sant Narcis.

Sass has been here plenty of times so knows the city like the back of her hand so we left it to her to show Oli round, poor guy has been walked the length and breadth, they have also eaten in all her favourite places, Zanpanzar and La Bistrot to name but two. Plus tested out some new ones, an organic wine place (must get the name of that for future reference) and Foment where we found our friends Joan and Anna now work.

A fan of ice cream she of course had to sample Rocambolesc and took a particular fancy to this one which is decorated not with a cherry but a miniature toffee apple for a proper bonfire taste.

Of course, no stay would be complete without my paella and found some utterly delicious jumbo prawns to finish it off. Put them on a train to Barcelona on Thursday and have been receiving little updates all weekend so it seems they took the sunny weather with them.

Tonight is the fireworks and the end of the Fires for another year and now it will be all the preparation for Christmas. I have my cake ingredients and usually it is made by now so that is first on my list next week. I don’t feed it with booze anymore but it will get a tipple of non alcholic berry juice to keep it nice and juicy. I haven’t decided on the theme this year for the decoration but am sure something will inspire me in time. In between times we have been invaded by the living dead and trick or treated, I’m not sure which but they went to some effort to scare the living daylights out of us appearing silently on the doorstep. 

Other work on the agenda is to finish sorting through my kitchen cupboards, bought myself some wire storage racks to find that they are slightly too large to fit so I have to lower the shelves by a couple of centimetres which wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t all firmly screwed in. I can see this is going to be a much bigger job than I anticipated!

I also have a new toy, a Ninja Foodie, which to the uninitiated is an Air Fryer, Pressure Cooker and heaven knows what else rolled into one. It is sitting unpacked with its instructions on the newly assembled steel catering table as I didn’t have sufficient worksurface to accommodate. Everyone who has one assures me it is idiot proof but have not got round to even plugging it in as too much on elsewhere.

The too much on elsewhere has been writing not one but two websites both very different. It has been great to feel purposeful for a while and I do love tinkering with graphics, branding and marketing so not much of an excuse really. They are fully developed now and subject to tweaking I hope at least one will be launching before the end of the month.  Am available for new work if anyone needs a hand with their social media although full blown website we are looking at January now.