Keep the comments coming for the cookbook

Don't forget to send your comments in until Sunday for the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. It is a beautiful book, as well as having some truly scrumptious recipes - there are cookies (chocolate, of course, as well as others), sweet and savoury muffins, the most amazing brownies (frosted brownie, raspberry cheesecake brownie), pies of all kinds - pecan, pumpkin, apple, lemon meringue; cheesecakes, cupcakes - and gosh, then there is a section for just "cakes" - whatever could be left?!

I watched Nigel Slater last night in his "Simple Suppers" programme - it is a revelation, really, to many, I'm sure, that you can follow a "recipe" which has no amounts, hardly any cooking times, and a lot of choices - you can add this if you like it, but if you prefer that, use it! It's a good way to allow people the freedom to use an idea but to mold it to their own preferences. He made me think of the cookbook I am giving away when he made a meringue confection from ice cream layered under meringue, whipped cream and blackberries and he called it an "indulgence" - it was, and so are the recipes in the book. Delightful, nutritionally unnecessary perhaps, but delightful all the same! Whilst we should all be trying to eat a balanced diet, I am sure that the odd indulgence is good for us.....

I'm working hard to make notes as I watch NS's programmes as I won't be buying the book - Tender (about a cook and his veg, I believe) as although I love NS's books, that one is just too big and expensive! I have been looking at the bank balances this morning and working out why I am just scraping through to the end of the month again without having any savings to put away and I have realised that the cars are the problem again in September. My poor old car had to have a service and there were a couple of problems to be dealt with so my cheque book bore the brunt of that at nearly £300 - so that is where the savings money went!