Lemon cake and meeting our neighbours

It can be a difficult thing to meet your neighbours in this city. I always think that when you move in your neighbours bake you cakes and come over to introduce themselves and say 'Welcome' to the neighbourhood/the floor/the apartment block. In this crowded city I realise that we live pretty close with our neighbours. With one set of neighbours we share the cries of their baby through our wall, early in the morning and late at night too. To the other side, we share the TV with our elderly neighbours. They are hard-of-hearing so they turn up the TV rather loud.

To give them credit, they share our life too in a sense. Our big dinner parties on Tuesdays, our video nights with friends on Thursdays, our 'bricolage', handyman work which happened late Wednesday night last week to fix our bedroom curtains. We know each others' rhythms pretty well without knowing names. 

I decided to change that.

Feeding a crowd - lost for ideas?

Within my circle of friends we often have people over for dinner. Not just one or two people, as a normal french person would do; mostly because everyone lives in such small apartments that anything over 4 people becomes spatially challenging. No, me and my friends seem to have 'large groups' of people; mostly because we have so many friends. I often get asked the question 'What can I cook?' , 'How can I feed 8 people?'

So, after some consultation and personal trial and error, I am giving you a collection of recipes that work for larger than normal numbers and are not too expensive on the pocket.  They are all recipes that I've cooked for groups of people, hence they have been tested on numerous taste testers. The good news is people are still coming back to my place to eat.

Oat Soda Bread

I was browsing through some of my favourite blogs the other day and following my whimsical fancy, clicking here and clicking there as I wanted, I happened upon this delicious looking idea for homemade bread.

Heidi has a blog called 101 Cookbooks and manages to make healthy attractive and desirable. I love it. She was inspired from a friend of hers who made this bread. So I'm simply being another link in the chain for spreading this good recipe and good health around.