I’ve gone all Stepford Wives and started baking. I realised I might be getting a little carried away when I made cupcakes from scratch yesterday for a playdate. After I iced them, decorated them with little edible hearts and artfully arranged them on a platter with strawberries and watermelon (was going for a pink theme), I paused and thought: I’m trying to impress five-year-olds, what have I become? Only a short pause, mind, because today I baked cookies to take to dinner at a friend’s house. Went for a vintage Margaret Fulton recipe. Didn’t have any clear cellophane to wrap them in, had to settle for yellow, which has cast a sickly hue over them, but presentation has never been my strong point. Actually, the presentation thing has me a bit worried, as I’m on canteen duty this week at the Sprogs’ school and I might have to make sandwiches. Sandwiches that are neat and professional looking. Deep breath. There is nothing neat about me. Husband used to refer to the humus beside my bed as “cholera gulch”. And he’s no slouch when it comes to grot or other finer details in life (his fingernails … don’t start me). Ah, well, there’s always an up side – it might mean they don’t ask me back again.
TONIGHT’S MENU: Friend is cooking trout.
housegoeshome 
Go on buttering duty and use the cutting guide when cutting. Let someone else make the actual sandwiches and watch. I’ve learnt a few things from watching the ladies in the kitchen at church.
At high school DH and I worked together in the school canteen (sad) and we had the privilege of cutting and buttering the rolls in the mornings before the Mums came in. It was warm in there near the pie oven, beat freezing your butt off on the cold concrete of the quadrangle.
Good idea – buttering duty it is!