This weekend we were back in the hood.  And by hood, I actually mean The Bubbe’s house.  Yes, Zippy, our daughter, spent her second birthday weekend at her favourite person’s house, in a sleepy cul-de-sac in Essex.  ‘The Shiny House’ – as Zippy now refers to it – is the residence of her 83-year old great-grandmother and home to a bed that I slept in 25 years ago.  A bed that The Husband and I had been lying awake in (me, with added bonus of glorious pregnancy heartburn) for two-out-of-three nights, whilst our hot potato of a daughter span between us on the antique springs like a fan-assisted oven.

But Saturday night was different.  We went out (for what felt like the first time in, like, forever) and ate take-away pizza with grown-up friends, and talked about grown-up stuff.  Like how funny and brilliant Dan Savage’s campaign is to redefine the meaning of US Republican candidate Rick Santorum’s surname.  I mean, really high-brow stuff.

And when we got back to ‘The Shiny House’ at a positively raving night-of-a-time of 11.30pm, we found Zippy in bed with The Bubbe.  So, The Husband and I slept. For seven hours. SEVEN WHOLE HOURS!

The next morning, feeling jubilant, exhuberrant and not un-dead, we headed to a kosher deli in Barkingside to get a nice spread for Sunday lunch.  Now, I can’t speak for the whole Diaspora but – like any self-respecting, self-opinionated Jewish woman – I will.  Beigels (or bagels) are to Jews what a roast is to the British.  No Sunday is complete until you and your family are satisfyingly slumped on the sofa with a belly full of boiled bread.

Being a bit of a bread-making fiend, I’m surprised I’ve not yet attempted to make my own bread bracelets.  (Although I do think it has something to do with my past proximity to great beigel bakeries – Gants Hill, Brick Lane, Stamford Hill – and why compete?) But now I’m a west country bumpkin I’ve just got to try.  And surely between Claudia Roden and the World Wide Web, I should be able to muster up a recipe that is AGA-proof.  Otherwise, I’ll be filling my Cornish pasties with lox.