I can't be bothd to do anything today but I almost feel like going into a cooking frenzy... almost! Glad I don't have to worry about Thanksgiving though. We're on roast beef (practice run for Christmas Day), roast taters, cauliflower puree, probably yorkshire puds, definitely gravy and some other kinds of veggies as yet unplanned. And I may get round to using the rhubarb I froze months back and the bramley apple I bought a couple of days ago to make a crumble. Maybe. The asparagus soup lunch is off, because the asparagus got tired of waiting around for me! May just skip lunch and go straight into piggy heaven with dinner and pudding.

Dinners are very hit and miss these days, and usually it's easy stuff (pie, chips, peas and gravy for example) or if I go back to the office after collecting the kids from school it's more often eating out or takeaway. I think we do that even more than when we were in Singapore. We had the unusual experience of being the only people in a Chinese restaurant last Thursday - plenty of takeaways but no midweek dining out apparently.

Lynn - are you baking or boiling your ham? I haven't had the guts yet to bake, but I've found a couple of tricks to a juicy boiled ham. I throw in either a pricked orange or apple juice (and some black peppercorns), then a little neglect goes a long way if you leave the ham for a couple of hours after boiling before taking it ut of the cooking liquid - it seems to soak back up a lot of the liquid. I might try baking one this year. Maybe.

Kerri.