Since leaving university Andy and his friends have met up once or twice a year in a gathering that has come to be known as "Harcourt" (named after the house/street they shared). Each year they take it in turns to organise the weekend, and this year it was Andy's turn, which meant I had the task of feeding this gruesome looking crew. Originally a strictly lads only affair the arrival of various small people has led to the invite being extended to wives, girlfriends and children. I'm pretty happy about this as although I've only known them for about 2 years rather than the 10 or more years they've known each other, it's a brilliant get together, always loads of fun, really nice to see how much of an effort they've made to stay in touch for all this time. Harcourt has become a definite highlight of the year for me. As we've not been working over the summer we've had a lot of time on our hands to organise things and after a brainstorming session at the pub we got a little over excited (drunk) and decided it should be a Hallowe'en themed fancy dress weekend, hired a clown and set ...

I started this post weeks ago, then got distracted, so it's now well out of date and the recipe for summer pudding using the then seasonal fruits is not seasonal anymore, but since I've got his chance to catch up I might as well do it as it was really easy and a lovely treat. It's a couple of months since we were there now, here is a little post about our stay at Plan-it Earth in Sancreed, which is pretty much at Land's End in Cornwall. I think I might have mentioned it before, it's a seven acre small holding which runs eco-education courses and has two yurts for holiday rentals. We'd gone there wwoofing, intending to stay for just three days, but ended up staying over a week. It was a really great place. We learnt loads and had a great time. As an added bonus for the first couple of days we were able to stay in this lovely yurt before the next guests arrived. The first day there was a bit of a downpour and we spent most of the morning weeding the polytunnel, dashing out into the garden to pick artichokes and redcurrants in any dry spells. ...

A while ago I signed up for a food parcel swapping thing organised by The Happy Sorceress at Dispensing Happiness. The idea is you put a small parcel of goodies together and are given an address somewhere in the world to sent it to and in return you get something sent from someone else from somewhere around the world. How exciting! Some kind of mix-up meant it took some time to arrive but a few days ago I finally got the slip saying I had a parcel to collect from the post office. Yipeeee. I think my original parcel had got lost in the post (booo) and it seems in the end the person who had actually organised the while thing ended up sending me something herself, which was really good of her. This is what I received: [caption id="attachment_21" align="alignnone" width="450" caption="Blogging by Mail Food Parcel"][/caption] Having sampled most of the contents (quite an enjoyable process) I can now give you a run down of what was in the box. The first thing I went for was the Clark Bar. It was some kind of peanutty thing coated in chocolate. Originally made in Pennsylvania. Very nice indeed. Anyone who fancies ...