Daily bread

Turns out I didn't need to make quite this much (fourth loaf not shown). We hadn't left ourselves too much to do today; apart from baking the bread, it was mostly assembly, and once the bread was done I used the still-hot oven to bake the onion tarts for which I made the pastry and cooked the onions yesterday.

It was still ferociously windy (swimming was horrible -- I gave up after ten lengths) but we had faith in the weather forecast which said the wind would drop in the evening. It did, somewhat, and in the early evening we set up tables behind the house, where it's more sheltered. Once people started arriving, it was all a whirl and I didn't take a single photo -- didn't even think about it. But I had taken the precaution of preparing this one earlier. 

I couldn't say how many people were there, but Ingrid counted and said 32, which sounds about right. Lots of people brought food, so as usual we had more than enough. To the point where I had to tell S to stop cooking pinchitos because everyone had had enough, and I didn't get the cheese out -- we skipped straight to dessert. This time everyone went mad for trifle, and it was gone in seconds. I didn't get to try any of it (although my secret weapon is a smaller untouched one in the fridge!). The cheesecake that I didn't drop on the floor went down pretty well too.

Unfortunately there are virtually no street lights behind the house and S was reduced to carrying standard lamps outside. It started to get a little chilly too, so we wrapped up at about 11:15, did some very minimal clearing up and dishwasher loading, and were in bed by midnight. I'm thinking we might invite fewer people next year ...