Food-tastic

To celebrate the very late payment of one of Hagos's invoices, we bought ourselves the above pack of millionaire's shortbread, which was absolutely delicious.
Of course, you can't take a photo round here (or read a book, or sit on the couch, or knit, or write on your laptop) without a certain ginger friend pushing her way into the action. Look at those lovely stripy legs.
Later on I made my own shortbread. I first made a batch of shortbread about three weeks ago, inspired by Janie's Christmas present. I looked at a few recipes in the cook books I have, and finally settled on Jane Brocket's book, Cherry Cake and Ginger Beer. I was won over by her saying she'd tried several shortbread recipes and this was the best one. We finally ran out of the last batch at the end of last week so yesterday I made some more. I really like the texture of this shortbread. I think it's down to the cornflower.

I started making yesterday's shortbread just before some friends were due to arrive, thinking I'd have time to at least get to the cookie-cutting stage, but the friends turned up just as I was trying to make the dough come together enough to roll, and I ended up having to add more butter because it was too crumbly. Anyway, the first time I made the recipe it was fine. Next time, definitely no chatting while making shortbread. It's also why they were about a minute and a half over-cooked. They still taste good though.
This is the view from Meg's cat flap this morning. Poor wee thing, she doesn't like the snow at all. She looks out the flap, and then looks back at us as if to say, "Can you please make the snow go away so I can go out?"

I went into the village to post my mum's birthday present this morning and everyone was quite jolly and chatty. I think so long as you don't have to go anywhere the snow is fun.

Anyway, time to get on. I'm two hours late for starting work today.