Mexican Night revisited

What a fabulous day yesterday! I spent a happy couple of hours being Nikki's kitchen bitch as we prepared the Mexican dishes for tonight's meal: Mexican 7-layer dip for starters, Cheesy chilli beef enchiladas and Mexican pasta bake for mains and pumpkin pie for pud (OK, that might have been where the Mexican theme came crashing down, lol).

With those either wrapped up and shoehorned into the fridge, or baked and cooling on the stove as appropriate, we hopped a bus into town for some gentle browsing and shopping.

The traditional stops - Waterstones; the Apple Shop; Sinclair's Oyster Bar - were supplemented by Habitat (Phil & Vicky were after some posh crockery and we found a replacement pepper mill since ours has gradually been intermittently refusing to emit even the smallest particle of pepper dust for a few weeks); Lloyds for lunch (Sinclair's was full); and Hotel Chocolat (where we bought some chilli chocolate penguins and some exciting-sounding Aztec Chilli drinking chocolate); and HMV (several Pink Floyd CDs to progress my desire to replace my vinyl collection, and a couple of new movies from the 3-for-£20 selection) after which the girls and I caught the bus home leaving the serious shoppers to carry on for a couple more hours.

We ate fairly early and as usual had vastly overcatered, but that was OK as it meant Mexican pasta leftovers for our Sunday meal as well as an emergency food parcel for Nat, and then settled down in front of a flickeringly friendly fire to enjoy an evening of reality with both X Factor and Strictly. Top that off with some rather fine wine and a glass or two of brandy and the whole thing added up to a pretty perfect day.