A little Work and a lot of Play

Apart from Christian's visit to the specialist to see about his artery problem, the upshot of which is that he needs surgery to sort it out, the weekend was about having a bit of social time. Friday afternoon we were invited to a 66th birthday tea part chez Anne. French, Brits, Danes and she is Catalan, united over a very gooey cake, wine, muscat and tea.Then in the evening we defended our last quiz victory but this time only managed 2nd place equal with the Mayor's team. That makes, each of us having won one and now a draw, so no hard feelings which we sealed over a nightcap at his house.
Yesterday we didn't bother with the market, it was blowing a gale so the telly seemed much more inviting. Well, there was "Silent Witness", which seems to be getting more and more gruesome, to catch up with. By the time I got around to doing the dessert that I'd promised to take to Maggie's in the evening, it was late afternoon. I hadn't been able to decide between a chocolate, ginger or coconut cake and what do you know? I found a recipe in one of those excellent Australian Women's Weekly cookbooks with all three ingredients. That was the good news. The bad news was that I'd put the oven shelf in lopsided so the cake came out .... lopsided. My first reaction was to run out to the bakers to buy something but one was closed and the other was sold out. In the end, I fell back on Delia's "Christmas Dried Fruit Compot", a favourite rapid store cupboard faithful and cut the cake into small squares to go with it.The cake actually tasted pretty good and I've just had a look to see if I could find the recipe on their site to share with you but there were 1851 results for chocolate ginger cake, so if you're interested you'll have to search for yourself! Maggie fed us (Martine,David & Laura)venison and Yorkshire Pudding washed down with several bottles of wine.
Today, the wind is as strong as ever 130km/hour but we ventured out to our favourite restaurant to see for ourselves if the rumours of its closure are true. They are. What a blow! You'll know if you're a regular reader of this blog, just how often we've eaten there. I feel really disappointed that José said when we were there on the 1st that they were reopening on 1st February after a holiday. Where on earth are we going to go instead and eat such good food for an exceptional price? You know what they say? If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Decided to cut across country to Sant Llorenç de la Muga to another favourite restaurant of ours which we hadn't been to for a long, long time. Well, we'd found Mas Salelles which was a lot closer. First of all, we had to double back when we found the road blocked by a fallen tree. We tried to help another motorist move it out of the way but with no luck. Luckily, restaurants stay open for lunch till about 4pm as the other restaurant was closed as well. Only open between 23 June and 31st August which seems strange as it has rooms too. Quite an investment to leave idle. Ended up in a traditional Catalan restaurant, where despite it being Sunday, there were only another 4 diners. more proof that the crisis is hitting hard, especially in Spain.
A cheery note to end on .... Christian is looking well, isn't he?