A busy week. For the first time since I returned to work, I have done a four day week (instead of three days); I have filled in for colleagues, adding a few extra layers to the workload; and then there was the birthday party – the busy-but-fun bit.

All of this explains the lateness of this post. Although I also thought that as my meal planning cycle is Sunday to Saturday, it might be good to switch future posts to Sunday as well.

The busyness of this meant I once again handed over catering responsibilities to my mum for most of the weeknight dinners. So most of the recipes here are for the dishes for the birthday party weekend. There were sausage rolls from Yorkshire, my mum made a quiche and some little galettes with the cream cheese pastry I had in the freezer.

The weekend was mostly catered via Nigella recipes – my go-to whenever I’m catering for a crowd. Feast is a good starting point, but there are good menus in most of her books, and a guides to children’s party food in How to Eat, Feast and Domestic Goddess that I expect I will be turning to for many birthdays to come.

The Birthday Party menu

Lunch:

• Cheese scones, sausage rolls
• Butternut squash and caramelised onion quiche
• Spring vegetable salad (see below)
• Parma ham, bresaola, salami

Dinner:

• Oven-roasted chicken with lemon and garlic – Nigella’s Forever Summer
• (more) sausage rolls and leftover quiche)
• Jersey boiled potatoes
• Green veg

Other recipes:

• Malteser cake cupcakes from Nigella’s Feast (for the cake ‘mane’)
• Buttermilk birthday cake (from Domestic Goddess) and Meringue Buttercream (from Dan Lepard’s Short and Sweet) to make the lion cake.
• Soft white rolls – from Feast (to have with pulled pork)
• Smitten Kitchen green slaw (ditto)

Without a recipe:

• A spring vegetable salad: baby carrots, sugar snap peas, asparagus, purple sprouting broccoli, and radishes – all blanched and dressed with olive oil and lemon juice.
• Oven fish and chips
• Slow cooker pulled pork

Reading:

• 5 small tips to change the way you bake– Food52
• Clotilde from Chocolate and Zucchini writes about cooking with small children
• So much Barry and Freda this week- RIP Victoria Wood.
• 8 kitchen essentials (as in tools, pots and pans)
• One of my favourite This American Life podcast episodes was repeated recently: Middle School