Yes, Ylläs (and some other) entries are still going to happen! From 09:00 last Sunday through to 23:00 last Friday 100% of my computer/net time belonged to work. I was in Germany dealing with some stuff. Getting back late on Friday night I turned off all the computers and spent the entire weekend computerless. A rare luxury, but one that means that things don’t get done.

When I got back from Germany a box of goodies from my mum back in WA was waiting for me. Plus, I grabbed a couple of bottles of whisky from the tax-free in Heathrow. Plus, we did a trip into London on Saturday and visited a catering store and Borough Market.

The image above contains, left-to-right & top-to-bottom:

• Quattro Foglie ORO — Extra virgin olive oil from the EEVO stall at Borough Market.
• Mum’s Quince Jelly — My all time favourite!
• Promite — Never found this in the UK, I hate Vegemite and love Promite.
• Mum’s Brinjal Ajvar — An Indian eggplant chutney, Kat’s favourite (she eats it from the jar if I’m not looking!)
• Mum’s Duhhah — Perfect with the EEVO we got!
• Mum’s Indian Tomato Kasundi — Great with everything.
• Mum’s Tangerine Dream marmalade — Never tried it but it’ll be good.
• Three wines from “back home” — The brute force of Aussie wines is quite a shock after months of mellower wines.
• Aberlour 12yo — My favourite of the two, sweet and smooth.
• Cragganmore “Distillers Edition” — Good solid flavour, maybe a “lighter” cousin in flavour to my favourite: Lagavulin 16yo. (No apostrophe on the bottle?!)

We also grabbed a couple of great cheeses, including the organic, unpasteurised Stilton that I can’t get enough of. At the catering shop we just picked up a few things missing from the inventory:

• Butter Dish — I hate keeping butter in the fridge but we didn’t really have a spare dish with a cover and couldn’t be bothered with cling-flim.
• Food Mill — The best way to make many soups and tomato sauce, alas, not the classic Moulin (the one they had was too big and too expensive).
• Mandolin — Again this isn’t the mandolin but an 80% cheaper Japanese rip-off. Will see how long it lasts.
• Conical sieve set — Hard to find but most useful, they didn’t have any muslin unfortunately but that’s easy to find elsewhere.
• Grater — It is so hard to find a good grater!
• Oil Jars — With pouring spouts so I don’t get an oily thumb and don’t splosh too much EEVO on dinner.

Joy.