If You Read This, You Will Never Visit Me, Will You?

Such a happy morning this morning, with our friend Hayley coming to visit, after the past few weeks had kept us both too busy for much chat at all. But now she's heading off on a three-week camping trip followed by a nephew's visit, and we won't be home again until almost September, so this farewell-for-a-while visit felt special.

Extra-special, thanks to Kay. A while ago her brother sent her mother the loveliest big bouquet for Mother's Day, with all kinds of fruit including melons, grapes, and (oh wow) chocolate-covered strawberries. I'd never seen such a thing, but thought it was beautiful and ooooh, I wanted to try making one. My kids would eat fruit if it looked like that and was on sticks, surely?

Last week I got the most wonderful surprise... a package arriving from the other side of the world, from Hawaii, filled with all the special fruit-holding-sticks from the bouquet plus a pack of 100% Kona coffee, which we can't get here. Oh Kay, MAHALO!

I haven't been able to try the fruit bouquet yet, because my kids can't stop playing with the sticks... but with Hayley coming over this morning, I had a perfect occasion for brewing such special coffee, and to go with it I thought I'd make some raisin-coconut bread. So last night I cleaned up the kitchen (though couldn't manage to kill the rogue housefly buzzing round the open window, arrrrgh), warmed up the oven, pulled out the bundt pan and stirred up the batter.

While I was searching my baking-box for walnuts, I noticed that the fly had finally stopped buzzing. Oh good, I thought.

Then I looked at my raisin bread batter (let me say that again---my raisin bread batter) and thought, Oh jeez.

None of the "raisins" appeared to have any wings or legs, though that sticky batter might hide a multitude of sins and features... so with a fervent prayer to the heavenly Guardians of Cake Batter I stirred in the ginger and walnuts and into the oven it went. The slam of the oven door triggered a buzzing on the windowsill, thank goodness, so all was well.



It's Monday afternoon now, and Hayley has come and gone -- I took a photo from the table for you, there. Seeing Hayley again was wonderful, the raisin bread tasted fine and the coffee was amazing. It's been years since I've had Kona coffee, and my husband had never tried it before, so it was especially welcome to help make the morning visit special for someone as lovely as Hayley is (and she very muchly is).

The coffee was triply welcome for smelling so heavenly, as we could all hold our cups under our noses and pretend that our upwind next-door neighbour really hadn't chosen this very hour to cremate his recently deceased cow, whose fragrance of smouldering hooves came drifting through our open windows. Ugh.

Neighbour FAIL.

Then as we ate the raisin bread I couldn't help but wonder...

...what if there were two flies yesterday?

=*=

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