Friday mornings are busy times. I like to do a little cleaning-up in the house befor the week-end. So the bathrooms get their daily swipe, and so does the kitchen, but I also do a quick vacuuming. Before that, though, I decide what to bake for the evening's dessert, and today it was an apple pie. An apple-cinnamon-raisin pie, to be more precise. I'd given my husband a choice; plum pie or apple pie. His response was predictable; he loves apple pie, and it's been a while since I last baked one.

I decided to thaw out of the freezer a portion of the egg-bread dough I'd saved from baking small individual egg breads last Friday, so when we came back from our afternoon ravine walk I made tiny croissants to go with dinner. Much earlier, before we left for our walk, I'd prepared the chicken soup and the matzo balls to be cooked as dumplings in the soup just before serving. I like chicken soup to simmer away on the stove for hours.

I bake most of the pies I make in a pottery pie dish our youngest son made for me many years ago. And when I roll out croissants of the very small size that today's are, I use a very short, stubby rolling pin he had made for me as well, years ago. He made a number of rolling pins of various sizes and they have all been well used over the years. Like his father, he enjoys puttering about and working with wood.

And oh yes, on Fridays I also knead up plain bread dough for pizza bundles we'll make on Saturday. The dough goes into a covered bowl and rests in the refrigerator for a day. Saves me the trouble of making it on Saturday morning. I like to think of Saturday as being my 'day off'. I'd bought fresh sweet basil when we'd last shopped, so I decided to bake the chicken breasts with chopped garlic, sweet basil and sliced tomatoes drizzled over with olive oil.

Oh, and potato kugel. Another one of my husband's favourites for Friday night; basically grated potato, onion, beaten egg, salt, pepper, sprinkling of flour, it all gets dumped into a pre-heated casserole dish simmering with olive oil. I sprinkle olive oil lightly over the roasted cauliflower as well.

The apple pie has cooled down nicely. The chicken soup is simmering on the stove. And I'm preparing to bake the rising croissants, and when they're done it will be time to put the chicken in the oven, along with the potato pudding and the cauliflower.

It's Jackie and Jillie's special dinner too, since they get to share the chicken that was cooked in the soup. It's shredded and goes atop their kibble for their meals for the rest of the week. The fragrance of it wafting throughout the house informs them that they're not forgotten.