What a lovely evening that was yesterday. we started off in the restaurant where we enjoyed a lovely penne pasta dish packed full of loads of different vegetables, pine nuts and rocket. I even splashed out on a lemon tart pudding. We lost track of the time a bit and had to rush over the road to the picture house, where the introductions had begun.

Viscera was exciting and very modern. Afternoon of a Faun was touching, gentle and wistful, beautifully danced. Swan Lake pinged me back to my children’s childhood. They each had a little story book (different stories) and a cassette, – remember those? You may be too young. The story book had the same words as those being read on the cassette, to help with  their reading, with various bits of music for atmosphere. One piece during the Cinderella story ballroom scene was from Swan Lake, and every time I hear it, it reminds me of those little books and tapes, and two little faces with earphones on.  Awww

The final piece was choreographed by the wonderful Carlos Acosta and was his final dance as a lead dancer for the English National Ballet, he is retiring. Doubtless he will do something within ballet, far too valued not to. The piece encapsulates the essence of Carmen, even including a little singing. It was very sexual in parts, Carmen was extremely sensual and the emotions invoked by the dancers were wonderful, very moving.

Whenever I see ballet, I am reminded how very strong the dancers are. The boys pick up and hold the girls, sometimes at arms length, with no apparent effort at all. And the girls, goodness, how elegant and powerful they are. Moving with grace through impossible poses and sequences. At one point last night, the lead woman dancer positively threw herself into the arms of the male lead and he caught and held her with no backward body movement at all.

Enjoy four short ballets in one evening with this quadruple programme:

Liam Scarlett has used Lowell Liebermann’s thrilling Piano Concerto No.1 as the inspiration for his similarly audacious choreography in Viscera.

Jerome Robbins’s uses Debussy’s evocative score in Afternoon of a Faun, where two dancers are absorbed by their own reflections & each other.

George Balanchine’s Tchaikovsky pas de deux uses a fragment of music from Swan Lake for an 8 minute display of ballet bravura & technique.

Carlos Acosta choreographs & dances the lead role in his new production of Carmen which focuses on love, jealousy & revenge.

As I ate out last night, we didn’t use the leftovers from the Wednesday WI lunch, So it’s an easy dinner this evening. There is enough leftover chicken casserole for us both tonight. Lots of new pots and beans too. We’ll have some of those as well. Cold potatoes are very sating, so I shall stash those in the fridge, and combine them with the beans in salads over the next few days. If it looks like they won’t get eaten in time, I’ll pop them in the freezer and use them in soups.

There were a few bits of baquette leftover, so we had some of those with our lunchtime soup today. And there are several pots of lemon mousse left, I miscalculated that a bit. So as it’s my ice cream recipe, that was easy to deal with, I just tipped it into freezer boxes and it has changed from ‘lemon pot’ to ‘lemon ice cream’! If you want to make the ice cream, or indeed, the lemon pots, use about 3 lemons to the 150g of condensed milk recipe amount. Zest and juice all 3 lemons, and mix it into the mixture.

To remind you, 150g condensed milk, 100g value yogurt and 150ml whipped double cream all mixed together. Flavour with anything you like. Eat as it is, or freeze it. No need to stir during freezing or using an ice cream maker.

I am currently thinking of all kinds of Christmas flavours – cinnamon or mixed spice, with toasted flaked almonds on top; mincemeat stirred through, with maybe a splash of booze; a Baileys one; you could use up some of those weird and wonderful liquers that everyone seems to have in the drinks cupboard too!