Sarah is a gem!

Last night we had Joy and Grahame around for dinner, and because we were working right up to the close of business, Sarah and I shared making dinner. I made pear and parsnip soup - very yummy indeed. Just sauteed onion, peeled, chopped and sauteed pears and parsnips, with about 3 tsp pf curry powder, then some liquid vege stock added, a few gratings of nutmeg and some salt. Then all pureed with a stick blender once the pear and parsnip were tender, then reheated.

Sarah made a dish that she had created once when she had a surfeit of silverbeet (swiss chard to UK people). She sauteed a finely chopped onion, then sweated heaps of silverbeet (about 5 times more than you think you'll need), placed both of them (the silverbeet drained) into the bottom of a large greased casserole dish. Then she broke up and spread a chunk of smoked salmon and about 300g of feta over the silverbeet. Finally she covered that with 6 eggs beaten with 1/2 cup cream, and sprinkled grated cheddar on top and baked it for about 30 minutes in a 180 deg C heated oven till the top was browned and the middle was set.

Absolutely scrummy - the man I am married to who absolutely "hates" feta, devoured a bigger helping than anyone else at the table... (He also absiolutely hates pumpkin and kumara and parsnip, but he loves soup made with these vegetables - go figure!)

Dessert was chocolate pots, stewed Omega plums and whipped cream (my creation).

And today we were working at the dining table (real paid work) and our IT specialist was away having one of his last appointments to do with his eyes. Sarah struck a problem, left David a message and then decided to solve the problem herself.

She had an 'aha' moment, and said quite calmly 'I know what I'll do!' and leapt up with the fly swat and madly started beating around the back of one of the laptops, the cables and the printer, shouting 'I'll get you, you bastard!!'

As I collapsed in laughter, she had to explain that there were two things going on:

1. a fly had flown past that had to be annihilated, just as
2. she was going to resolve the IT issue.

The situation reminded

• me of my early and very techno-phobe days where I had a cartoon of Garfield whacking his computer screen yelling 'Compute this, sucker!' 
• Sarah of Basil Fawlty yelling in a hysterically upset fashion while using a fallen branch to beat the mini when it broke down ...

It is a very good thing we work from home. We would be a severely disruptive influence in an open plan office!