A lovely evening with our fellow campaigners

My new mate is back - this time much more visible as it was sitting on one of the deep purple tradescantia plants I have in a pot outside the back door.  It is a beautiful thing but noisy as it emits a long sound something like when one of those electrical fly catchers zaps a fly but much much longer.  Anyway I am pleased to see that it hasn't fallen foul of one of the cats.

We had a day in the kitchen because to celebrate our victory with regard to the winter fuel allowance coupled with a thank-you for giving us some wood and a shedload of fruit, we had asked Jeff and Marianne to come for supper.  Jeff has been pretty poorly of late and they are struggling to find the cause so we thought Marianne might appreciate a change of scenery.  In order to try and ensure we were left untouched by the mosquitos when we ate out John had seen that if you have a bowl of lavender water with lavender flowers in it then the biting bugs stay away.  I decided to pretty it up with some floating candles and the petals from a geranium.  I am not sure why the water went all bubbly but I can confirm that we were indeed left well alone although I have no idea whether it was this that had worked but if nothing else it had a lovely smell.

I had decided upon a tapas/meze type meal with lots of small dishes.  We had been given some small courgette type marrow things from our neighbour Persephone which I served raw with a peanut and mango sauce.  We also had been given a jar of beetroot from Liselotte which she had pickled herself and it was absolutely amazing - I can't tell you how flavoursome that was and I served it with orange and feta.  To the right is a dish of homemade tzaziki which I had made.  There was also tahini and green olives and a dish of green lentils and coriander as well as a tomato, mozzarella and basil salad.

Add to that roasted red peppers stuffed with Moroccan cous-cous and halloumi, hasselback roast potatoes, lamb kofta and the Thai spiced dry beef I had made the other day and we had a veritable feast.  It went down really well but the star was most definitely the beef which is so flavoursome.  We sat and chatted outside for a long time - it was one of those lovely evenings when we have no condensation.  Charlie wanted to make friends with everyone of course!