This time I am just sharing a quick and easy, but tasty and elegant hors d'oeuvres idea to serve with a glass of bubbly. These were a prelude to a big Saturday BBQ dinner of Greek chicken and lamb souvlaki served with roast new potatoes and my rice and orzo pilaf, tsatziki, asparagus and a Greek salad last weekend. An old colleague of husband's was visiting and we had a fun night of lots of food and quite a few glasses of cava and rose.

We'd spent the day with husband on an NHS diabetes education course and I had retrogressed to the annoying swot I was in school and turned into Hermione Granger with my hand up in the air for another comment or question when everyone else was ready for a break with tea and biscuits.

With diabetes they shouldn't really have been having biscuits, but first on the queue was a 6 foot 5 and 20 stone biker looking dude so I didn't want to make a big deal but gently whispered to husband my concerns about biscuits. Husband just pretended he didn't hear me and completely ignored me tugging at his sleeve. He glued himself to the biker and had two very large biscuits with his cup of tea.

After the fun afternoon foot care / amputations session the traffic at the biscuit tin seemed to go down a little.

I got the idea for these appetisers from myself, actually. I did similar nibbles a few weeks ago when we were staying at my parents little island in Finland. My parents deposited me, husband and his younger son (older son was getting drunk and losing his possessions in various places in Europe, also called interrailing) on the island the previous afternoon and came the next day with my brother and his wife. I had prepared three kinds of little crispy rye bread cups to serve with a welcome toast of sparkling wine. The cups were spread with a rocket and pesto cream cheese and then filled with either smoked lamb or gravadlax and dill or mozzarella and pesto.

I set all this on a little table outside and reminisced about a similar occasion some years ago when I had prepared glasses of Pimms and some nibbles on that same garden table ready to welcome my cousin and his husband to the island. My parents' effervescent labrador got completely overexcited by these totally amazing people coming to see her and quite possibly to rub her belly or oh my gosh maybe even throw the ball on this very best of days. She was always very bouncy in a Tigger kind of way and now bouncing around the yard she managed somehow to place one of her bounces directly under the table and sent the whole thing flying, Pimms and all. She then ran to hide in the clover field behind the cabin realising she'd messed up. No one was even angry with her really- you couldn't be, there was not a bad bone in that ebullient, chubby little body now happily bouncing on the eternal clover fields of heaven.

This time I didn't have these excellent rye cups, but I had a pack of Swedish Rahms mini croustades cups from a little delicatessen in Notting Hill - I think Waitrose sell them too.  I did smoked reindeer (substitute with any other smoked or cured meat like bresaola) with goat cheese and parsley, mozzarella with homemade pesto and basil and soft blue cheese with roasted cherry tomatoes. But you can fill these with anything, my smoked salmon mousse / spread would do beautifully.

Husband returned home from holidays 4 days before me and during this time he had missed my sexy body cooking so much that on Monday night when I barbecued him lovely organic lamb chops he completely overdid it and had stomach pains all night wondering if there was something wrong with the chops. I had bought them on the day from the little farm shop near my work, so I know there wasn’t anything wrong other than the fact they were so expertly cooked to delicious perfection J that he just had too many.

Poor man. As one of many cheerful and optimistic Finnish proverbs says “Too much fun will end in tears”.

Lucky I had planned a lighter dinner for Tuesday. This is a really quick and simple recipe for those weeknights when you don't have hours to spend preparing dinner. You can be flexible with the veg and use any fish or seafood you like. I had a pack of king prawns in the freezer and some Finnish flame smoked salmon, but you can use any salmon in case you don’t happen to have Heimon Liekki salmon at hand.

It turned out very tasty and I plated a reasonable size portion for husband. All-round success apart from a little mishap with photography. While looking for the best angle to photograph this awesome culinary masterpiece I dropped my iPhone on the plate and broke the plate. It was from IKEA not Wedgwood thank God, not that I have any Wedgwood plates. So it was a financially manageable loss.

Oops

Thank God also that it was the plate that broke not the iPhone. They're surprisingly robust these iProducts, my sister took a bath with her husband's iPad and the iPad survived. Her husband wasn't best pleased whilst hanging the device out to dry, but with my sister you have to moderate the expression of your displeasure or she might not talk to you for three years.

I on the other hand stepped on my iPod Shuffle with a stiletto heal. They were lovely pointy toed green suede L.K.Bennett heals. There was a heal sized and shaped hole in the screen of the shuffle after that. I took it to the Apple Store and said that it just went like that all of a sudden, I don't know what happened, a manufacturing fault perhaps? They just looked at me like I was deranged and didn't replace it.

I had got it for free from an advertising agency. Those were the days when bribes were still called corporate gifts. So I suppose it served me right. Easy come, easy go. Or as we say in Finland "If it comes singing, it will go whistling" or something equally stupid.

Easy lemony prawn and smoked salmon pasta (serves 4)

350g wholewheat or spelt pasta

150g prawns

150g cold-smoked salmon

1 lemon, zest & juice

4 spring onions

1 courgette

Generous handful of cherry tomatoes

150ml sour cream

Salt

Lemonpepper

¼ cup Dill

¼ cup Parsley

Oil

Cook the pasta in salted water according to the instructions, drain preserving some of the cooking water.

In the meanwhile devein the prawns, chop the courgette and spring onions, halve the tomatoes, zest and juice the lemon, chop the herbs and cut the salmon into bite size pieces. Heat a tbsp of oil in a non-stick frying pan. Add the onion and courgette and fry on medium heat until they start to soften (if you want to add a clove of garlic I won’t hold that against you, I bet it would be nice). Add half of the lemon zest and juice, the herbs, tomatoes and prawns and fry until the prawns are almost done, mix in the smoked salmon and cook until the salmon is done. This should only take a minute unless you are using raw salmon, in which case add it earlier.

Add the sour cream and the rest of lemon zest and juice to the pasta with a pinch of salt and lemon pepper. Mix in carefully the prawn, salmon and vegetable mix. Check for seasoning and add salt, pepper and some of the pasta liquid if necessary. Make sure it’s hot through, garnish with fresh dill and serve with a salad.