Fringe Festivities

Yesterday was the day of the Family Celebration of Stella and Tony's Diamond wedding anniversary, held in Mount Martha.  It was also the day after Tabitha's birthday.  Those of us based in the UK were, sadly, unable to make it to Mount Martha for the family do there, so we decided to have a Fringe Festival at our place, both to celebrate the wedding anniversary and to celebrate Tabitha's birthday.

I did manage to helicopter my way into the Mount Martha celebrations, courtesy of the wonder of modern technology that is FaceTime (other video conferencing technologies are available!).  At 5:30 am, Tupton time, it was bright and sunny, the birds were singing and I was sitting in my bed with a mug of tea and an iPad, joining in the festivities on the other side of the world.  I was not, as rumour had it, naked.  I was fully and properly clad - in my pyjamas.  Not unreasonable, I thought, at 5:30 am!

Then at half twelve, not only did the heavens open but Tabitha, Gareth, Cally, Freyja and Simon rocked up to our place.  I was properly dressed by that time.  In fact, I was properly dressed for the second time, having changed from my tracksuit into something more appropriate for a festivity shortly before they arrived.  We had individual lamb pies for the omnivores and red lentil and vegetable pies for the vegevores. With that we had mashed potatoes and a huge bowl of mixed salad. After we had an apple and blackberry crumble that Gareth and Cally had prepared for us, and a birthday cake that I had made.  We toasted Stella and Tony, then we toasted Tabitha (That's a lot of toast - fortunately I had extra butter lying around :-P  ).

We did not have rice pudding ;-(  We were supposed to.  I had prepared it.  All three of my slow cooker recipe books said you can make rice pudding in your slow cooker.  They all had more or less the same recipe.  I followed it exactly.  And the rice was almost as hard at the end of the 7-8 hours slow cooking as it had been when I put it in.  So I put the "rice pudding" in the oven with Gareth and Cally's fruit crumble.  The crumble baked deliciously.  The rice pudding turned into a gluggy mess which this morning was set so solidly that The Builder pretty much had to hack it out of the baking dish I had transferred it into.  We couldn't even give it to the chickens.  It had to go in the garden and food waste bin ;-(  I won't do that again.  In future, all rice puddings will be made by traditional means!

Apart from that, though, it was a lovely afternoon.  Though I think Cally may have had just a tiny tad too much sugar, what with a helping of crumble and custard, followed by some birthday cake and raspberries.  She was ever so slightly hyperactive in the afternoon. :-D

Happy birthday, Taffa

I think Cally enjoyed her slice of birthday cake