Cooking all day

A busy day today as we'll be fifteen for supper tonight. We've invited our friends in the village for a Welsh meal as we do every year around St David's Day. I find it quite a challenge to cook a Welsh meal because I grew up around the Mediterranean and that's the food we've always eaten - I always want to put garlic and olive oil in everything! But it's fun and we depart from the Welshness when it comes to drink - with plenty of local wine. The evening usually goes on well after midnight.

Tonight the menu will be: laver bread and bacon on toast (with aperitifs); salmon, leek and cheese bake; lamb stew with stwnts (carrot and parsnip mash); apple tart and cream. With coffee we'll serve an amazing Italian Easter cake which one of our friends has insisted on contributing to the meal.

The sun has come back after a rainy couple of days, but there's too much to do indoors. I put some photos of the rain in the garden on my blog yesterday.