I'm A.A.P.P.A, I'm A.A.P.P.A....

After a happy weekend catching up on old times, we headed back from Anglesey after breakfast. Jules needed to get back home to Marsden by afternoon, and anyway J was arriving from Sheffield for a friend's 21st tonight.

Before we left, the temptation for the repeat nostalga of Sri Lankan Egg Hoppers for breakfast (Singhalese name Aappa) proved to much for us. The batter for these little dish-shaped pancakes incorporate rice flour, coconut milk and yeast. An egg is fried in it with a domed lid placed over to steam it.

Our hoppers were served with a little of MrsB's Dahl from yesterday and some Seeni Sambol (caramalised onion, Maldives dried tuna, cinnamon and tamarind relish). I hasten to add that MrsB cannot make Hoppers, and I have self-taught myself these going off just memory and intuition. They are not completely authentic, but good enough for us.

Jules, me and MrsB go back a long way, and both Maldives and Sri Lanka has featured in this story quite a lot. This first gelled with a long holiday the three of us had touring Sri Lanka in the late 80s. Jules and I had just earned an obscene amount of cash designing holiday resorts, and decided to go and blow it all in a month of living like royalty. Not clever, but great fun and spent with no regrets. Jules then even came on our Honeymoon cruising Maldives in 1990, and on holiday with us both in Sri Lanka just before J was born there two years later.

We had drifted apart a bit recently, but we put that to rights this weekend, and plan to see a lot more of him from now on. He's a huge part of our family as far as we are concerned, and we love him to bits.

Am writing this blip back home in Knutsford now. Got my Maus book from Friday to re-read later, and also looking forward to seeing our lovely J tonight. It is J's own 21st birthday this Tuesday, so MrsB is on cake-baking duties tonight.

Postscript: You can see the basic technique of cooking Egg Hoppers Sri Lankan style here.