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No elbows on the table - what about wheels?

This Indian summer-that-isn't-an Indian-summer continues and another hot day followed yesterday's record breaker.

Littlest wriggled into our bed at silly-o'clock and wriggled and wriggled until I gave up and we both got up. In what century did I last have a long lie? I'm not really complaining, because with eldest away at University, I am only too aware of how brief the years will seem when Littlest is still happy to climb in for a cuddle in the mornings and wriggle restlessly, full of energy, waiting to bounce, joyously, into the day. I suspect I left my early morning get-up-and-go in the last century, with my lie-ins.

On a hot, early autumn (the leaves are falling off the trees) day in England - particularly, a hot, early autumn Sunday, it is a fact - no, almost a law of human nature - that the menfolk will rise late, and peer outside, before declaring, in a statesmanlike, bossy, terribly important puffed-out-chest sort of way, 'get me my oven glove, manly apron, and sharp weaponry (long handled fork, spikey thing and metal tongs) for I will cook the last barbecue of the year.

Of course, this is no surprise to womenfolk, who being capable of reading the weather and more than capable of understanding the primaeval instincts of men, will have already been shopping, or in primitive man language,  left the home to hunt down the raw ingredients and deliver the killing to her man. And after she has done this she hovers nearby passing basting sauce, bottle opener, damp cloth for the wiping of the furrowed brow and she witnesses his incredible need to spear the sausage (ensuring it is dead), burn the chicken into submission, inhale lots of smoke while blinking at the beer bottle and swigging from it - no girly glasses here!

And no glass of wine for his wife - he is far too busy. It's just as well she put a bottle in the fridge. (Editing note of honesty here - my particular specimen of manliness, although keen on barbecueing, is not as Neanderthal as I may have implied - he usually remembers the wine!)

So we were having a BBQ:

Time to chuck together a marinade for the chicken legs



Olive oil; balsamic vinegar; mixed herbs, salt and pepper, tomato paste; mango chutney and juice of one orange - mega yummy; mega sticky. Tossed; fried to brown the chicken; oven baked on a low settling for an hour and finished off on the BBQ.

Four-legged-friend and I went foraging - the most successful thieves have an accomplice, someone to seek out the tastiest bounty and then watch out for cars, or farmers, or a passing rabbit and bark a bit, to warn them off; very territorial and protective.



Foraged fruit, plus sweet shortcrust pastry, plus victoria sponge cake mix, produced a bramble bakewell tart. Dusted with icing sugar.



Love my cookery books, love recording who cooked what, for whom and when. But when it comes to Victoria sponge - what with four children all needing birthday cakes, fairy cakes, pudding toppings etc etc - I am beginning to run out of space:




And the best bit - in 2008, Littlest wrote this - mummy loves 'Littlest' - we had just baked her birthday cake, with lots of chocolate



Memories are wonderful things.


Back to the BBQ on a hot, hot, hot and windy afternoon - due to breeziness and need for shade, we moved the garden table and chairs to the back of  the house and narrow back patio.



Who (can you see him) set a place for the Panda?

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