Fathers Day & The Festival Of Chili!

Fresh back from the fishing trip it was time for another 'me' day - Fathers Day!

As often happens on the weekend, once Alfie awoke he was collected and brought into our room to share a few lazy moments on the bed.  This period of the day never last long, usually as Alfie decides he'd rather jump off the bed to go climb something/see Colin/walk down the stairs.  Today I was greeted with a few little gifts which he lovingly helped me unwrap.

Now if any of you are Gavin & Stacey fans you might remember the 'oven gloves' sketch.  If you haven't seen it, check this out - you'll want to click forward to 10 minutes though.

Basically I've had 'that moment' so many times, and have long been a user of tea towels swearing at blisters and burnt palms.

Well I will risk baking trays no more as my wonderful son got me a pair of these - and they rock!  Le Creuset come up trumps again!

With the dogs walked we popped my new Paolo Nutini CD into the Skoda's CD player and chuckled at Alfie as he danced away during the short journey to Old Warden.

Shuttleworth had a Chili Fiesta going on, and with it being Fathers Day Dad's got in free!

In true Homer stylee I was expecting to end the day seeing space coyote's, but there wasn't a cooked chili to be seen!  It was all about the fruit, how to grow it and how to use it.

It was quite a small show, which was handy as we only wanted a morning out - Tash wanted to spend an afternoon cleaning and sorting the cara-van.  Alfie had fun though, and we all enjoyed a chili influenced lunch before he let us know when he was getting tired and grumpy.

 

Once back home Alfie was carried up to bed from the car - still snoring - and Tash got to work on the cara-van.

I had purchased some gorgeous chili/garlic black Spanish olives at the festival, and with me having been away for the past week there was no bread in the house.

So these...

 

... were added to a spelt/white dough mix along with some oregano from the garden to produce this awesome loaf.

 

To be honest I'm not the biggest fan of spelt flour, but with our friend Linz being gluten free I had taken some down to Essex to make her bread.  The way I bake means I use what I have around me, which means the spelt went into the mixing bowl.  Its made me start to think about spelt a little more, and I'm determined to come up a spelt loaf that I would prefer to eat over a white loaf.  And that's a hard task, especially when you consider I'm working on my perfect white loaf right now!