Gabors...

Mum's neighbour Effie is single handedly keeping us alive with marrows!!!  These come in all shapes and sizes and are more like a butternut squash than marrows we would be familiar with in the UK.  They have a hard orange flesh inside and can be roasted, mashed, souped whatever.

So the liquidizer can only mean one thing - this beauty is for soup!!  Now that the weather has turned colder and stormier we are turning to comfort food and I love it, soups, casseroles, chillies, hotpots mmmm mmmm.  I shall dust off the slower cookers soon!

The rain that has been forecast came today although not until this afternoon in Drouseia - although when I got up this morning the sky looked threatening this passed over and the morning was sunny, windy and cool but sunny.   We were down in Paphos whilst it rained so cant be entirely sure how much we got save to say there is a couple of feet in the deep end of the swimming pool so guess it must have been pretty hard.

This morning the pool was empty and I climbed up onto the sun terrace to take a photograph of the progress (or lack of it) so far - although the slabs have been taken up around the pool it has been decided that the concrete needs to be taken down further so that there is a good bed for the new tiles to sit on and as we don't want the tiles moving or cracking that seems like a good idea to me.  John is itching for there to be more progress but we have to wait for a settled period in the weather and the forecast is changing daily - fortunately in the right direction - it now seems unlikely we will get the 10 continuous days of rain thank goodness.

I have decided to be on the ball with Christmas this year otherwise the cards and presents (not that we do many) just become a bit of an inconvenience.  I have written the cards that are to be posted as Diana has very kindly offered to take them for me when she nips back before Christmas and I have made all the others so I just really need to write them now a few a day so they are done.

I have wrapped up all the presents so far so that they are not piled up in the spare room irritating John who likes order in all things!  I shall provide him with a roll of paper, scissors and cellotape in the vain hope that I get a few little gifts!!!  I jest as he and I plan to have our own Christmas shopping day next week when we can search out some little gifts for one another.

Basically the work on the pool is our Christmas present to one another because to be fair there is very little that we actually need and when we do need something we just tend to go and buy it.  I get as much fun trying to find the little no-more-than-five-euro gifts for the present game which we will play with Sharon and Sean when we have our own little Christmas together and now with the likes of Jumbo and Tiger in the Mall this is made rather more easy than it used to be.

Boris is bored bored bored with Christmas - we hope that when we put up our tree he will continue to be bored and not take to exploring it - we won't know what his reaction will be because he didn't pitch up at ours until January when the decorations had gone.

I left John down in Emba this afternoon playing badminton and I returned home after pickleball - thanks to Mum and Dad for letting me have their car - it meant I could feed the cats and put the lights on around the house as we were back down to Paphos later for a meal.  It was very stormy all round and as I passed through Kathikas you could see the sun trying to shine through a layer of raincloud.  Hopefully this will mean a better day tomorrow.

This evening we were going to Gabors.  Mum and Dad's favourite restaurant and, as it closes now for three months, we wanted one last meal there this year.  Mum and Dad had invited Sheila and Klaus to join us and so I picked them up and took them down with me and we all met at the Restaurant.  Sheila and Klaus had not been before but I think they enjoyed it.  Apologies for the awful photograph but I had my back to the window and couldn't really fit everyone in!

This is a rare thing - a photograph of John and I!!!  It was a lovely meal - I know I shouldn't have polished off that second bottle of Agios because I will regret the mix of G&T, wine, brandy and filfar tomorrow morning but sometimes you just can't help yourself.

My meal was absolutely delicious - I went off-piste and chose from the standard menu rather than the set one as their herbed cod is lovely and my starter of duck salad superb.  Thanks Mum and Dad for treating us all it was really kind of you xxx

I know I probably burbled all the way home but I normally drive so it was my turn to let my hair down and I did so in style!