22. Ask R To Make A Carrot Cake

I used to love carrot cake, but since I've been allergic to citrus I haven't been able to eat it, as most carrot cakes contain orange or lemon. A while ago we found a recipe for one which just included a little lemon juice in the icing, which we could easily leave out (I can't have even the tiniest amount), but it sounded rather more effort than the cakes R usually makes, and contained other ingredients which we wouldn't normally keep in the house, so he never got round to trying it.



Yesterday he finally made me a carrot cake. It was indeed a big effort, as it required a lot of mixing and we only have a very elderly hand mixer, so he probably won't make it again. The icing is also a bit on the sweet side, without the lemon juice. But the cake itself is nice, and it will be a change.



Happy new year!

17. Buy (And Eat) Some Pecans

We regularly buy walnuts and cashews to eat whenever we are peckish: they are ideal snacks for people with diabetes. We also buy almonds, hazels, and brazils because R likes to have some with his oats for breakfast. For some reason we never normally buy pecans, although we both like them.



So I bought some pecans from the lovely people at Goodness Direct. And very nice they are too.

4. Have Some Smoked Cheese

R is about as fond of cheese as the late Oliver Reed was of alcohol. He eats cheese every day, and he eats it in large quantities. I, on the other hand, quite like cheese but can't tolerate a lot of dairy, so I eat a small amount about once a week.

This means that all the cheese we buy is cheese which R likes. And most of the time that's OK. But the one cheese he really dislikes is smoked cheese, and that's my favourite.



It took me about a fortnight to eat this. It's processed food (which I hardly ever eat), it's probably not that good for me, and it's certainly not very photogenic. But never mind, it was a treat and it made me happy.

2. Eat A Summer Pudding

It's my favourite pudding, and we hardly ever have it, partly because of the effort involved in preparing it, and partly because of the cost of organic soft fruit (I can't eat non-organic soft fruit because of my MCS).



As you can see, this one collapsed when it came out of the bowl, but it still tasted good!