Potboy

The clan gathered this afternoon, and to celebrate we made a cake - that is, R, the Boy Wonder and I made the cake, and then everyone else ate some and complimented the Boy on his culinary skills. I chose Nigel Slater's mincemeat slices because the recipe looked easy - which it was - and because I thought B would enjoy dropping the dollops of mincemeat into the cake mixture - which he did, though he clearly felt that they needed to be stirred through it, and dissuading him from simply going ahead and doing this wasn't easy. In consequence of being rather under-stirred in some respects and over-stirred in others, the cake ended up looking a bit wonky, but it tasted pretty good.

Fun as the whole cake-making process was, it turned out that clearing up afterwards was even better. Here you see the Boy rinsing utensils and bowls before handing them to R to be stacked in the dishwasher. After this he cleaned both sinks, exhaustively, and then mopped the floor, which by this stage was awash. By the time he'd set the dishwasher running and been extricated from his Petit Prince apron (supposedly child-sized, but with a certain amount of growing room still available, I'd say) it was time for the cake to come out of the oven to cool.

Later B did some more food preparation, cutting olives in half for the pasta dish R and I were making for dinner. Watching R holding each olive in turn between his thumb and forefinger, while the Boy sliced through them with rather more enthusiasm than accuracy, G commented, "You're a braver man than me."