Cooking the vegetables so that they only have to be reheated tomorrow when Bill and Jane come to lunch. Necessary because we only have two burners and a microwave. The frying pan is good stainless steel but not very big, which means endless panfulls. Strips of red pepper, long dark green beans, hard boiled free range eggs cut lengthwise with their dark orange yellow eyes. Time consuming but such an aesthetic pleasure. Later J trims the artichokes and slices the hearts. Truly labour intensive, but I read to him from the third volume of Alan Bennett's diaries as he's sautéing them. Bennet's diaries always such gems it feels they should be saved for dessert - but wifi off, so options limited.
