7th September

Continuing on the theme of daily achievements I can report that I....

Baked an excellent loaf of sourdough bread without recourse to measurement tools.

Finished a superb bottle of Damson Wine so delicious that it made me want to cry.

Listened to a potential Ted Talk from my nearly eight-year-old granddaughter on the pointlessness of homework for primary school children. It was such a well thought out argument that I couldn't help but wonder if she had been listening to the same programme on Radio 4 that I'd caught a couple of days ago. Impossible, as she'd have been in school at the time. Bolstered by her argument, we polished off homework in about seven minutes flat then moved straight on to Horrid Henry on Netflix. She was middling on the spelling of 'sequencing' but she convinced me that it wasn't crucial.

Made (for the third time) that delicious tomato salad so good that I am duty bound to share the recipe. It's from The Guardian courtesy of Anna Jones.

This is my take.

Some tomatoes. Preferably home-grown, include a green one.

Put in a colander, sprinkle with sea salt and let liquid seep into a bowl. Discard liquid.

Add finely chopped chilli. Mine are home-grown. Yum!

Add two cloves of amazingly fresh and deliciously juicy home grown garlic cloves. Yum!

Season with black pepper. Add one part red wine or balsamic vinegar. (I'd run out so used cider vinegar - was OK.) Then three parts olive oil. Look, I know this is boastful but I used home-grown, home-pressed olive oil straight from Sicily. A gift from Hannah's boyfriend and probably the culinary highlight of my entire life so far.

Believe me, this is undoubtedly the best tomato salad ever.

Every Picture: Happy Birthday Dede

Today's post is all about Dede whose birthday it is. Dede is number six in our family of seven and the youngest girl. I cannot conceive what it must be like to have four older sisters but this I know, Miss Dede was well able for the role. No chance that anyone, in any family, would ever overshadow the Ginger Mouse. That was Daddy's pet name for her but she was no mouse. Anyway, in Daddy's book, mice were toughies.

Interestingly, Dede was the only girl in our family not to get through that silly 11+ exam, not that it ever worried her. Before long she achieved qualifications in catering, worked her way around Australia, ran the Regent's Park Open Air Cafe for several years and got into location catering when the Irish film industry was at its peak. Then she headed back to college, got herself a First and, more recently, a Ph.D. To say that I admire her and am immensely proud of her would be a huge understatement.

To add to her achievements she's also a dog lover.

Well done Dr Dede. 2016 was a bit of a stinker of a year but at least we had Sligo. Happy birthday love.