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Old familiars…


Once upon a time, my children were young (and so was I!) They never liked the smell or the feel of playdough, so when we had wet days I used to turn to my reliable gingerbread recipe. You can find it here - https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/collections/biscuits-and-cookies/gingerbread-men I always add a pinch of anise to it as well, but play with the spicing all you like.


It really is the most amazing dough. A child can play with it for ages without it going sticky and there’s no egg in it so it doesn’t matter if some of it gets eaten raw. I used to make it, divide it in two, and then let each child choose cutters appropriate to the season, which I collected over a period of years. All I needed was to add a pack of tubes of writing icing and you had happy children, I had a chance to have a cup of coffee without being interrupted and all had a tea time treat that kept for a good week in the unlikely event that they got the chance to.


My children are grown up now, but it’s a miserable Sunday when we have the remnants of Storm Ashley and I found some plunger cookie cutters at Mr Amazon’s for Halloween and Christmas so guess what we’ve started the day by doing? And guess how the house now smells. Better than any diffuser, I can tell you. It’s warm and snuggly and home and happy-making. Is that a word? Who cares because you know what I mean and that’s the power of old-fashioned cooking. Here’s a picture of the results, and I wish I could share them with you because they taste great.




I know we hear a lot about our busy lives, but I also know that the average person spends a hundred and forty minutes on social media each day. I’m not average, so I spend my time cooking and reading and puttering to make the house look pretty. Yes, I do go on Facebook, which is carefully curated to be full of things to make me laugh or keep me informed. (Thanks Kim Watts, Jodi Taylor, Cat Laughs, Poole Park Users Group and the RNLI. Also Matthews the Bakers and Sally’s Cookie Addiction and all the sewing groups.) But if it’s more than half an hour a day then I’ll be amazed.


I love Skyping people. It’s how I see my friends a lot of the time these days, especially in the coughs colds sneezes and Covid season. We have online sewing bees. We have tea parties where we bake the same recipes and then eat them together. We have watch parties and no one has to travel or try and fit it in round everything else so I ‘see’ more of them these days than I used to before Covid. I miss hugs, but you can’t have it all, can you?


So, from me in my house that smells of gingerbread and slow cooked beef in beer and mustard, with Yorkshire pud in the fridge and the Christmas puds from last year that I found in the freezer as I run it down for the defrost, I hope you have the happiest of days.


If you fancy some reading, then I’ve tried something different this week on the special offers so let me know what you think, please. They’re on at 99p in the UK and 99c in the US and they’re the first 6 books in the Windy Bay series, which are A fresh start, Starting Over, Second Chances, Endings and Beginnings, Building a Future and A Healing Time.


Windy Bay is based in an imaginary bit of the Studland peninsula, where time goes more slowly and people are kind. What isn’t imaginary is that I live in a similar spot. It’s not a village, but it is a Victorian housing estate built by the amazing Lady Cornelia Wimborne, who was Winston Churchill’s Aunt and a power in her own right. You can find out more about her in one of the current series of Windy Bay - Between the Sea and the Sky and she’s one of my heroines.

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