Happy Birthday to Keith!

Today is Keith's birthday. Ironically, it is really the first day since we've been here that we've been apart more than just a couple of hours. Right now, I am drinking my Royal Blend tea and watching it rain.
The school year has now started. The students arrived yesterday - Keith took the train out to Gatwick to meet them and he was back by noon. I had work of my own to do, so I put on my writer hat for a while. When he came back, we took our nifty rolling cart and headed up to the High Street to do a little grocery shopping. We've now become familiar with all the stores in the area and where deals are to be had. We had the students over for a welcome dinner last night. Keith had requested spaghetti and that was a bit of adventure.
Faithful readers will remember that I had a challenge finding the ingredients to make spaghetti sauce. Well, I finally resolved that, and so yesterday we went out in search of ground beef (called mince over here) , fresh bread, parmesan, salad makings, pasta and a birthday cake. We found most things at Tesco Metro. It's a little further to walk but the prices are good. Keith picked out his birthday cake - they didn't have a big selection but he ended up selecting a chocolate cake (big surprise) over the Fairy Cake and the Cheeky Monkey.
We haul our goodies home and I start preparing for the party. I began cooking the sauce, using my Pampered Chef stir-fry pan - my favorite go-to pan. Yes, I brought it from home. I knew I couldn't live for four months without it. It's great for stir-fry, but also for soups, stews and the like.
What I didn't realize until about an hour before we were due to eat is that there was not a single pan in this kitchen to cook pasta in. You need a large pan that allows you to bring water to a rolling boil, then dump in the pasta. Other than the pan in which my sauce was simmering, the biggest pan in this kitchen is a small saucepan. This was a real kitchen emergency - I was beginning to think that I would be spooning sauce over bread! Finally I realized that I could cook the pasta in very small batches. So it took me about an hour to cook a pound of pasta - spaghetti in shifts, you might say.
Anyway, the students arrived and the meal went off without a hitch. We got out the cake, lit eight star-shaped candles and sang happy birthday to Keith. (The cake was small and if I accurately matched candle to year, I would have run out of space. Sorry, honey! You're not getting older, you're getting better!)
We all enjoyed the get-together and decided we'll do it regularly during the semester. I love to cook and will get a bang out of doing it ... but I will definitely check my supplies before I dive in! I'm not homesick in the least (although I do miss my dog!) but I will say that I take having a well-equipped kitchen for granted!
Keith was up early this morning. He and the students went over to the school this morning, then embarked on a coach tour of the city. As I was writing this, he arrived home - the longest we've been apart in nine days. I'm surprised he didn't go over the wall before now!
Tonight, we continue the birthday festivities. We're going to have dinner at Porter's, a traditional English restaurant that we've visited every time we've come to London. If it were my birthday, we might be headed back to Mother Mash, but we'll have to wait a month for that.