Chez Mum's Dinner Event - Original Beef Roast, French Bread & Date-Caramel Cake

My husband has a very large family. His mother is one of 10 children which makes for a lot of family members all over the world. I entertained two of his cousins' adult children this week. One young man is from Hong Kong the other is from London. I decided to bow out of cooking one dinner and ordered in but when the second dinner materialized I was stumped. I do not eat out a lot, as you know, because I invariably get ill from one thing or other. So this time I decided to make my Beef Sirloin Roast and have dinner at Chef Mum's.

I also made my now most favorite dessert of all time, Chef Gaskin's Sticky Toffee Pudding that I learned from him in College.

I was a little skeptical of making this dessert given that our visitors were from London and after all this is a British dessert. Apparently, it was a favorite dessert of one of our guests, sweet Lucy. She said she loved it and judging by her plate, she was not fibbing.

I also made some french bread using a recipe from school. It always surprises me when I can get bread from water yeast salt and flour. It is so simple and the only trick is to mist the oven for the first 10 minutes of baking. I made the branch shape loaf so it was easier to pull apart.

I have to thank my daughter and baby chef because, honestly, none of this would have happened without her help. She is now officially my sous chef, she moves around me in the kitchen like soft wind caressing me and clearing a path and setting up mise en place like a pro. The dishes I use are cleared like as if by magic. By the end of the day I am not nearly as exhausted, and I am usually surprised when I have energy left. That is because I used all hers to make the kitchen magic happen. Thank you, baby. My daughter also edits all my posts. How lucky am I? Extremely.

~ Hugs from Mum