Cakes and Cooking and The Fact of No-Robin Anymore

Some of the gorgeous homemade dishes for bring-and-share lunch on Saturday.

A five birthdays' lunch.

I made the birthday cakes.

Nigella's Clementine Cake - the one where you boil the clementines for 2 hours and then whizz them up into a pulp and stir them into eggs and sugar and ground almonds and nothing else. Almost the same recipe as Claudia Roden's Moroccan Orange Cake.

I didn't have clementines or enough oranges so I boiled up a whole orange and two lemons and made a glaze of lemons and Seville orange marmalade for the top and called it Orange and Lemon Cake...almost a Clementine cake....if you think of that rhyme  - 

Oranges and lemons say the bells of St Clements.

The other one was also Nigella's  - Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. My addition was the chocolate avocado  frosting. Whizz up 2 ripe avocados with some cocoa powder, maple syrup and vanilla essence and you have a deep and  light silk icing made in heaven. Both cakes all totally dairy free, and gluten free but  fortunately not taste free.

Cooking and baking are good for me at the moment. It's what I know how to do. It engages and distracts and absorbs me. So when I'm triggered by some thought, some memory, some  regret ...or  suddenly overwhelmed by the unbearable fact of no-Robin to pull me into focus, I can chop an onion, break an egg and let my hands and the urgent call of lunch bring me back into the depths of myself.

On Sunday I made lunch for my sister and vegan friend. Soup - green and creamy with leeks and spinach. Little cubes of root vegetables roasted with garlic. And to sprinkle over them a jar of Dukkah - ground up roasted  hazelnuts and seeds - cumin and coriander, flax and chia, sesame, black pepper and sea salt. A piquant  salsa - avocado, peppers and tomato dressed in lemon oil.And in the absence of green salad the crisp and sharp leaves of pak choi.

Today. 

I have been in the kitchen all afternoon - not cooking though - at the table - writing cards - remembering the last weeks, remembering Robin, his face inside the card. The lovely artist who painted the picture of him, and from the very beginning used to take him out, calls in with a card and photos of Robin that she took over the years on their outings. We have a cup of tea and we remember him some more - what a big space he took up in our lives - in the same and different ways.

And we laugh and cry a bit at the unbelievable truth of no-Robin in our lives anymore.