Life is not too short to stuff an egg.

All recipes copyright Anna Vaught

You know that high tea I was telling you about? The waves of nostalgia? Actually, I'm not sure I ever ate stuffed eggs as a child, although I surely peeled a lot of hard boiled eggs. Something funny happened there. On with the show. Here is what to do.

Boil some good free range eggs for around three minutes. Rinse them under the cold tap and then tap them gently, pulling away all the shell. One of my earliest kitchen memories is of doing this with my mum. She liked to add halved, hard boiled eggs to summer salads. As do I. Now slice them in two and scoop out the yolk, mix it with a little mayonnaise (you could any leftover from that recipe I gave you the other day or from a jar of Hellman's), ground pepper (maybe white), a pinch of dried mustard powder and, if you like, some chopped chives. Put it all back in. Done. Note: if the yolks are too hard, then the filling won't quite work. It has to be unctuous.

Serve this with some ham sandwiches made with proper chunky brown bread. Clearly I am deeply predictable because when my Mr goes out to get bread for me he asks "the one with the open texture and the shiny crust?" I'm really specific about this. Can't stand floppy bread. Butter (marg if you must), good ham and maybe a little ground pepper. Not doorstops, but not too dainty either.

A cucumber salad. I forgot this before. Just slices of cucumber, marinated in vinegar (I actually like cheap old malt vinegar here), salt and pepper. Or do as the Georgian husband does: big bowl on a hot day: lots of sliced cucumber, left to steep for a hour or two with a sprinkle of salt and just a little water. Gotta be cold. If, like a fifities housewife, I were to have this for him on his hot and sweaty return from work, his eyes would go all misty.

A green salad? A proper floppy lettuce -- a butterhead, perhaps a cos lettuce? Come near me with a lollo rosso and you're banned. Ditto iceberg (although the other day.....). Just pull it apart, rinse it, dry it carefully and dress it (two parts oil to one part vinegar) at the last minute. Season to taste. Big slices of tomato on the table. Season yourself. Undressed. The tomato, not you: this is a kind of high tea, after all.

Big pot of tea. There you go.