Simon and Nell boiled cake?

OK, so I'd like to talk Simnel Cake. Here we are, enjoying one, but I'll be the first to say that I knew nothing of this particular Easter cake before. According to foodie Dudley at www.s4c.co.uk/dudley

The name simnel is derived from the old French word simenel via the Latin term used to describe the finest flour for baking cakes, simila.

There is a suggestion, however, that simnel comes from a legend when a man named Simon and his wife, Nell, were debating whether to bake or boil the cake for Mothering Sunday. In the end, they did both and modestly named the cake after them ­ Sim-Nell!

OK class, so which theory do you prefer? I'm no Delia Smith when we come to the subject of cake-making, but boiling? Baking AND boiling?

Check out the recipe I found, by Mary Berry. I don't see where it says 'now boil your cake', do you?
It's interesting how Mary Berry used 11, not 12 marzipan balls atop her cake. The balls symbolise Christ's Apostles, and people use 11 or 12 depending on whether they think Judas should be counted or not.

Our one (pictured) had 12 balls. I guess Supermarket chains don't like to leave anyone out.

Now, chocolate eggs!
Yes, my one is huge, and white, the best chocolate made by my favourite English chocolatier, Thorntons. They ice any name on your egg for free. These are our Hawaiian names (if all that chocolate wasn't sickly enough to make you nauseous) iced on my egg, and Eric's brown bear. It's a Canadian thing.

I got to see my cat, Sam, on Easter Sunday.
He resides at my folks house (he's set in his ways, plus another hungry mouth to feed right now etc. etc) and is neither a chocolate nor a simnel cake fan, so was pretty moody. He likes to bite my huge beady necklaces like teething rings lately.

On Monday, I got up early and, deciding against going to an audition which would mean relocating to Tokyo, hauled my behind to the gym to work off some of that white chocolate. My gym is on the top floor of the Bentall's Centre, known to all Saaf Laandiners with no elocution lessons like myself and Amy Winehouse as the 'Benoo Cenaah'.
There's something really foreboding about a mall with nobody in it.

In other news, sometimes it snows in London. This is Wimbledon station,
and this is snow.
Yes, I know many Canadians/Norwegians etc. will scoff at my statement, but these kind of swirly snowy situations are rare for March in London.

The $20 Kebab

Yes, really. In Norway, Alesund to be exact, this passes for that well known English (yes, English!) post-pub-crawl institution, a donner kebab. That's right, there are chips ('fries' to those from the States) in that polystyrene package. It doesn't even come in a pita bread with optional hot-sauce. But the real kick in the preverbials comes when you look at how much one of these sets you back. 100 krone, or £10, or $20.

Eric and I ate it on a park bench, and shooed away pigeons as Eric yelled "For $20, you're getting NOTHING! I GET IT ALL!" Yes.

I just can't eat it!

It's been just over a week now since the Great Wall trip in Beijing, where I bought this yoghurt/jelly/ready-meal/whatever it is, from the convenience store en route. It just keeps staring at me on my shelf, dark and ominous with the little pot of viscous orange stuff on top of it....I keep thinking: "It has TURTLE SHELL IN IT!" At least, that's the way it looks, right? See the little picture on the label? I'm so curious and yet so freaked out by the idea of how it might taste to me (and my uneducated palate) that I don't know what to do. I mean, what if I actually LIKE it? Then would I eat it all? And would I then feel ill, and a wave of revulsion would rise up inside me at myself? And why, when, let's face it, I'm a carnivourous lady, is the idea of turtle so wrong to me? Oh, what possessed me to buy it anyway?! I feel like I have some kind of duty now to consume it as an adventurous and open-minded traveller.