Apple tart

When choir decide at the beginning of July to have their summer party towards the end of August and someone sends a list around so that you can fill in what you're going to bring (and avoid the problem of everyone bringing potato salad and nothing else), it seems like a good idea to say you'll bake an apple tart (special type of Irish apple cake to anyone who asked). And since you've made that lovely feta, rocket and almond salad from the Ottolenghi cookbook a few times and it's really easy and everyone loves it, not to mention you really need to use up the rest of the bottle of pomegranate syrup you bought and it feels like it'll never empty, you offer to bring salad, too.

And then fast forward a couple of months, it's a Thursday evening after work and it's already eight o'clock but you just got in the door. And you've promised your neighbour that you'll call in to go through her annual charges bill with her because she thinks it's too high. And all of a sudden apple tart and preparing a salad seem like an awful lot of hard work and you wish you'd just offered to bring the bread instead.

Oh well, such is life I suppose. At least I managed to get the pastry made and the apples peeled and chopped before I went down to my neighbour. So once I came back I had a very busy hour making the tart, washing the salad and preparing the almonds, chopping dates, cutting the cheese and making the dressing. And putting all of that into various Tupperware containers so that I can just assemble the whole salad before leaving work to go to the party tomorrow evening rather than everything ending up all soggy and mushed from standing all day. So very, very glad that I have an extensive collection of Tupperware, especially the lovely little purple ones I got recently.

And when you have apple tart to smell and look at, life can't be all that bad. Even if some of what should be nice dainty fork-made steam holes turned into giant craters. Bet it'll still taste good.