Tarte fine

I hosted my English book group yesterday (now my only book group as I resigned from the French one). The host always does simple nibbles, and somehow I seemed to spend most of the day fannying around spending hours producing not very much food. I was exhausted by the time they arrived.

It was a lovely evening though. We discussed Crossroads, which we all adored. I'd never read any Jonathan Franzen before, and I was really impressed (as was S by the racket we made enthusing about it). And it's the first part of a trilogy, though volume 2 may be a long time coming.

Anyway, one of the dishes I made which didn't quite work was a Lindsay Bareham recipe for a tomato and pesto tart. I ended up with a sheet of baked puff pastry which I hadn't used because I ran out of pesto, and for lunch S transformed it with the leftover roast tomatoes and tiny scrape of pesto, with some labneh and a squirt of orange juice because we had no lemons. It was delicious, much better than my version, and looked lovely too. I might put it on my blog.

Footnote: my tarte aux noix got full marks though!

As for today, no I did not watch the funeral, was not even tempted to, but it was hard to avoid on Twitter. I must say that a) Britain does pomp and circumstance better than any one else, b) it must have been heaven for press photographers, and c) I'll be following up the beautiful music chosen, I believe, by the Queen, including some pieces I have sung.

NB everyone please do the Blip Central team a favour and stop posting copyrighted images from the TV!

Back to the village gym class in the evening, first time in two months, argh!