Cool.

Cooler today with the occasional shower.

It's my birthday today and this morning I had a surprise visit from a friend who brought round these dwarf chrysanthemums and a card. I was glad I had made those cookies to go with our coffees.

Reading yesterday's post I wondered if I'd been a bit harsh about the water quality at Combe Martin only to find an article saying the same on a local news site.  

With nothing planned for today I thought I'd have a try at making cloud bread, something I'd seen on-line. The main attraction of the recipe being that you can add colouring and flavouring to the very light whipped egg whites to which is added a small amount of cornflour and sugar. You can also add broken up biscuits and/or sweets. The colours made for some interesting and Instagramable photos. I only had some ginger biscuits (wasn't going to use yesterday's cookies) so I broke those up and added ginger to the mixture as well. The result was tasty but very sticky. Looking at alternative recipes I think the one I used didn't have enough cornflour. Also other versions used the egg yolks as well. These are not to be confused with a savoury version made with cream cheese into individual fat pancakes. To use up the egg yolks I made bread pudding with left over seeded bread and used dates instead of sultanas. That was much better than the cloud bread.

More photos of the new flooring. Peering through the darkness at the kitchen I can see that some of the old cupboards have been replaced, as Peter and I planned. But Peter and the builder decided to put back the original sink. So all my efforts to choose and then order the new sink, cupboard and tap were for nothing. Even once the new kitchen is chosen and ordered it will take at least three months before it is installed and I really wanted to have a clean new sink to use in the meantime. In the top photo it can be seen that the windows and French doors have yet to arrive. Such a shame to be losing the bay window but instead the terrace will be bigger without major building works.