I've had a cook-in this morning. Why is it that most of my cooking sprees aren't really planned but just happen in response to circumstances? Take today:

- I made rice pudding because we had too much milk (but it's waiting on the side to go in the oven because I'm grilling salmon for lunch and I can't use the grill and the oven at the same time.

- Meanwhile I have some dough in the breadmaker which will have to wait its turn for the oven - this is pain de seigle which is a sort of sourdough bread which has been busily fermenting for the last three days, but it has to end up being baked today (actually it took one day longer than it should've done because I forgot to add the refreshment for a couple of days, but that's the nice thing about this sort of bread ... within reason, it doesn't matter how long you leave it.

- Then yesterday I got a supermarket order delivered which included minced beef, which I decided to get on the spur of the moment, so when it arrived I had to decide whether to cook it straight away or freeze it. I decided to make bolognaise sauce and freeze that instead so... a trip to the market this morning for mushrooms and now I've got some cheese sauce busy churning away in the sauce maker so I can make lasagne as well (wonderful invention this - it stirs it for you so you can leave it to chunter away for half an hour and come back and it's done!).

So... now the pud's in the oven, the dough is rising and the bol and sauce are cooking so I've got a few minutes' peace to type this.

Just to add to the fun, Edmund is off work today and is making cherry jam because we've got a bumper crop of cherries for the first time since we moved here 7 years ago and have beaten the birds to it for once!