apologies for absence, and limes

Gosh I've been away for a while! Sooo sorry, it really wasn't intentional. In fact, I'm not even entirely sure what happened. Life kind of got in the way for a few days, and then a few more, and then we went to the seaside (the seaside!!), and now we're home and life's doing a jolly good job of getting in the way again.

Phew!

So, much as I would love to show you all my gorgeous, sunshiney-seasidey photographs, and tell you about all the fun I had paddling in the sea, and running about on the sand, and seeing lovely friends, and family, and generally driving around the countryside ooohing and aahhhhing at the autumnal scenery, I'm going to save that for a day when I have the patience to sort through the hundreds of photographs I took.

Instead, today I want to talk about limes. Do you remember wayyyyy back when I bought all those limes? I've just realised I didn't tell you what happened!

Well, there's not much of a story. An impulse purchase, of an entire box of limes, for £1.85. What a bargain! I thought, not giving too much thought to what on earth I was going to do with an entire box of limes. Sixty one limes, to be precise. Goodness me!

I managed to give 13 of them away to unsuspecting friends, waxing lyrical about lime-filled G&Ts. Another 10 went to a harvest festival (I know I didn't *quite* harvest them myself). Twenty of them went into the biggest pan of lime marmalade I've ever seen, along with what felt like 14 bags of sugar. We then managed to give away two jars, but there's still five left. No photographs, but I think it'll be around for a while.

(and it's brown, not green, but it does taste rather marvellous)

Anyway, the other thing I did was whip up a quick lime drizzle cake, which I was *very* proud of.

Look at it there, all limey in the sunshine! Just an ordinary sponge cake (I never bother weighing ingredients, but if you want to it's just the weight of 2 eggs in self raising flour, margerine and sugar), cooked until done, then the drizzle poured on top.

I've never had much success with drizzle cakes, and it turns out I was rather underestimating the amount of sugar that goes into the drizzling. You might notice I've rather overestimated it in this cake. But it was so tasty, soooooo tasty, that I think I can be forgiven.

So, there's still 13 limes left, evidence of possibly the most daft, and most inspired, impulse purchase of recent years. Another cake might be in order, and several G&Ts. Any preferences?