There is something about Friday nights that we look forward to in the Menlove/Hafner household. I’ll be honest, unless we have plans to go out or have guests arriving we always do our grocery shop on a Friday night. We arrive at about eight thirty pm, start at the top end where its warmer and pretty much have the place to ourselves. Before Christmas 2007 we signed up to the ’scan your own items as you shop’ scheme. Robert and I are both the eldest children in our respective families so it was fun experiencing another person being just as determined to use the scanning gizmo as I was. In fact it got so heated at one stage that I stopped in the middle of the freezer section and threatened to kick LBH if he didn’t let me have a go. There I was staring up at him demanding that he hand over the scanner so that I could have a go, I may have even stamped my foot, all the while he wasn’t looking directly at me but directly at my forehead. Now, I knew that I had the mother of all zits growing up there and so, apparently, did LBH. Which of course infuriated me even more until, through clenched teeth I uttered “Stop staring at the spot on my forehead!!!!!!!” to which LBH replied - deadpan- “Shall I scan it for you?” bringing the hand held scanning device up to the offending barnacle on my head a zapping a red line across it.

My husband was never  as close to landing in a freezer cabinet full of bags of summer frozen fruits in all of his life and it was only because I found this charade very funny that instead of kicking him I told him off for making me laugh while I was trying my best to be mad. I digress. Right now I’m here alone with a fire going, working away at the computer and waiting for him to come in from work. I thought that I would take this opportunity to show you one of my favourite corners.  It looks that way when I come down in the morning and when I go up to bed at night. Its neat, colourful and serves a purpose. You see, on that table I keep an ever changing collection of cookery books. The bulk of our collection is in the living room and sitting on top of our kitchen cupboards but the ones we use most of all, from season to season, sit right there and are regularly picked upon.

From left to right - Nigella Bites, The River Cottage Year, Nigella’s - How to be a Domestic Goddess (out of site) Apples for Jam, The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook, Hugh’s Meat book, Falling Cloudberries & Peggy P’s Pretty Party Cakes.  Each one serves as a guide to making and presenting food, in all its forms, to the highest possible standard and each one encompasses how I feel about different types of food on different occasions.  I’ve been working with Nigella and Hugh’s books for years now and even my Tessa Kiros books have been in my collection for over 18 months. Peggy is a fairly new addition to the clan, arriving last year and my Martha books were given to me in the summer by the wonderful Barbara. B.
They sit there, in my current favourite corner, upright and ready. Beautiful books, with beautiful contents and created to inspire beautiful occasions. Altogether beautiful.