Let them eat cake...

and lamb curry and veggie curry and sides....

As I had prepared most of the food yesterday I had an easy morning in the kitchen. Poor Anna had a long and tricky journey to get to us from Cambridge - she missed her train to London by one minute and then there were bus replacement services for most of her route, so she had to take a more circuitous route to get to us. However her journey was made very pleasant by a lovely +80 year old man that she met on the platform at Cambridge - they coincidentally travelled together for most of her route and she found out that he is Mr Mackie from the delicious Mackie's of Scotland ice cream company, and is from Aberdeen. They also make chocolate and she found out who he was as she mentioned she wanted to take Adam to a chocolate making day as a treat but it was too expensive, and that is when he told her who he was and that Mackie's makes ice cream and chocolate, and then he invited her and Adam for a free tour and chocolate tasting of their factory in Aberdeen! What a sweet man. 

Anyway I collected Anna from the station in the next village as she could not get a train to our village. I then made all the sides for the curries - raita, tomato sambals, and of course a Durban favourite, sliced banana. Durban, where I grew up is famous for its curries - having the largest Indian population of any city outside of India - and banana is a popular accompaniment to a curry.

We later had this cake for pudding - a gluten free pistachio cake made from crushed pistachios, ground almonds, rice flour and orange juice and zest. (and of course eggs, butter and sugar). We are not really a cake eating family but a birthday requires cake! There is an extra of us eating in the kitchen.

We also had a long Facetime call with Adam, while he walked around his condo complex to show us what it looked like. While his apartment is small the complex looks amazing with a gym, pool, BBQ areas, convenient Amazon lockers, a very easy lifestyle. At 7.50am it was cold but with deep blue skies and sunshine! He has settled in and is enjoying his new research too - how circadian rhythms affect immunity, looking at the immunity cells themselves to see if they 'keep time' and if cancer immunotherapies can be enhanced by improving the 'time-keeping' of these immune cells.

Meriel flew to Africa this morning for work so was not able to join us. A ceasefire may have been reached in Gaza but the civil war in Sudan is ongoing and more people have died there than in Gaza, yet because the media are not as focused on the problem in Sudan many people are unaware of the terrible conditions and loss of life there. The UK government does issue aid and support to Sudan but the displacement of people there and the famine is still horrendous.