Catching up

When I have a little break from things for whatever reason, I find it hard to get going again.  I used to find this when I went on holiday when I was at work.  I worked jolly hard before I went on holiday to get things in tip top form, then when I got back somehow I  lost my stamina, and was not as effective as before I went on holiday for at least a week.  Thus it has been this week.  I had meant to get down to writing up about our holiday, but with catching up with the washing, a long walk on Sunday to keep up the fitness levels we had built up on holiday..then each day slipped by, thenWednesday, then Thursday, it was chatting with my sister in Australia today which has lit the torch!

So starting with Wednesday this week...this was the day of the September Show for the Kenilworth Horticultural Show.  I decided earlier in the week what I would enter.  The garden gave forth mean offerings, which I did enter, but no prizes this time.  We had many more entries and they were very good.  I decided to enter two jars of jams in the jam, marmalade and jelly section, a jar of chutney in the chutney and pickle section, chocolate sponge cake, scones, and fruit cake.  Feeling very pleased with myself, as all won first prizes...except for third prize in the fruit cake section.

I realised what let my cake down...I used natural 'uncoloured' cherries so maybe these did not show up, and instead of using blanched almonds, those were on the 1st and 2nd prize cakes, I scattered flaked almonds on the top.  When doing this I had a quick thought as to whether that would be OK, but I had no whole almonds in my stash, so took the short cut!  I took cake to the Library to share....instead of sweeties from our holiday, which incidentally I had forgotten to get.

Usually we get paper gift vouchers for Waitrose, but this time we had the plastic gift cards.  So I do not know how much each first prize got, must be about £2, since there were two in each envelope...what a shame to have all that plastic waste!  But I shall add them to our stash of plastic cards to use when filling etc when decorating.