I’m off to Charley’s for dinner tonight so have made some of his favourite pudding – Ginger’s Coffee Parfait – and used up the last of my homemade Bisquick making some of Joan’s cheese straws. I’ve eaten about 18 of those already, I think they are GORGEOUS. Hope I have room for Charley’s chicken dinner.
I can’t wait to collar him and make him tell me EVERYTHING about the woman who suddenly appeared on the train platform in Highgate at a quarter past midnight last night urgently wanting to speak to him. It was all very weird as I’d spotted him on the last train home, hiding down the very end of the very last carriage so we’d chatted all the way from Leicester Square to Highgate, then suddenly as we got off there was someone he knew waiting for him on the platform who seemed to have something very confidential to say. I scuttled off to the bus stop and left them to it. I am SO NOSEY and he is SO PRIVATE that I may have to use a crowbar to get all the details out of him. Bring me the monkey wrench also…
Oh, it is so nice lying on my lounge floor in front of the gas fire. I am reluctant to leave it and go into my freezing cold bedroom to change for dinner… I think winter has well and truly arrived.

I had a bash at Gracies Toad in the Hole on Saturday (insert ooers here) and it was lovely. However the only thing that sets it apart from any other T in the H as far as I can see is that the sausages had their skin removed (and frankly nobody needs a little pile of empty sausage skins sitting on the kitchen worktop while they are cooking up a storm, what they resemble doesn’t belong in a kitchen).
This said it’s a piece of cake (well TitH) to make and I managed it to perfection while heavily under the influence.
Incidentally my better half wants to know if Oliver Hardy has any other recipes because I made his meatballs again the other day and she commented along the lines that if anything else he put his name to was half as good as his meatballs she’d happily give it plate room.