What a day!

Before I get to the huge day I had yesterday, I have a bit of catching up to do. As you know, on Saturday Mim came over for dinner, we had porchetta and I promised you a picture of the dessert. This is it, or was it because it is, of course, long gone.

Just so you know, there are two slices missing here. I could eat a slice that big but I didn't. It is from Nigella's How to be a domestic goddess and she calls it a gooey chocolate stack. Such an inelegant name, especially as it reminds me of dacquoise which has a lovely name. Whatever the name, chocolate meringue layered with chocolate creme patissiere is absolutely beautiful.

The cricket came to a sad end last night but on Sunday afternoon while watching the first final, Andrew and Toby discovered that the front courtyard makes a great place for a little game of cricket. I took about 500 photos trying to get one with Toby actually hitting the ball. This was the best I could do.

On Monday night, inspired by Kristin, I made my own granola. I used Nigella's recipe (duh) from Feast. Now I am having breakfast every few hours. I went to bed early and then began my long day.

Bethany woke up crying at 4am, having had a nightmare. I tried to go back to sleep but didn't manage it so just waited until 5 when my alarm went off. I picked up Chrissie, my friend from work, and we caught the 6.30 flight to Sydney. We went straight to Borders and bought 77 books for book club! Of course there are only seven titles and they are:

Foreign Correspondence which is a memoir of Geraldine Brooks

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

The Unknown Terrorist by Richard Flanagan

Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriela Garcia Marquez

Swallow the Air by Tara June Winch

His Illegal Self by Peter Carey

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Then we rushed up to the State Library in time for morning tea, which was lucky as I hadn't had any breakfast. We were there for a Readers Advisory seminar. Readers Advisory services are all the things libraries do to get people reading for fun. I won't bore you with details of the seminar but it was great. We went to Chifley Square and had a delicious bento box for lunch. The seminar finished at 4 but our flight didn't leave until 7 so we went to Haigh's!

As you can see from this unflattering photo, I was pretty excited. So excited, in fact, that I forgot to buy chocolate frogs for the kids and had to buy them Krispy Kremes from the airport. Haigh's was full of Easter chocolate, which was a shame because I would have liked to have seen it as it usually is.

It is hideously expensive, but I bought myself this beautiful box of dark chocolates.



This man had been working on this drawing in the Pitt St mall for 110 days.

We caught the train back to the airport and chatted until we boarded tha plane at 7. We left late and arrived late so I didn't get home until 9. Considering I had been awake since 4, I was doing pretty well. I had some granola for dinner, watched the cricket and was in bed by 10.30 which is very early for me.
I like this picture because the clouds look like the sea with an island in the distance.