In a previous life ...

In one of my previous lives, and I've had more than a few so far, I used to bake, and to cook impromptu dinners for other people. 

I loved it but it was another time, before the pressure of a long list of things 'I must do' arrived.  Back then, I was a mother and a housewife, a dog owner, a wanderer but on a very small scale, while following my first husband's teaching career round the South Island of New Zealand.

I moved to Istanbul, the oven didn't work.  No baking was done.  Impromptu dinners were usually the stove-top cooked Persian Chicken.  Two years later and I arrived in Belgium where I was introduced to strange and unknown idea of a gas oven and really, I hated it.  Ours was a dodgy one.  The first and the second. 

Suddenly, due to an almost-Christmas-Eve oven failure, we have an electric one that almost works and voila, we're hosting Stephanie and Catalina tonight.  There's a big fat tasty Shepherds Pie ready to cook, with sultana scones as a dessert.   A 'dessert' fit for an Englishwoman and this homesick kiwi.  And quite immodestly, I'm delighted with the results.

And it seemed, to me, like the perfect way to say thank you to Stephanie and Catalina for inviting us along to our very first English pantomime here in Antwerpen on Sunday afternoon.  It was divine.  So very much what I had read of growing up but never actually attended.

Tot straks from this kiwi in Belgium