Yay! Well done! However, your namesake hasn't layed an egg yet.

I'll admit I'm chuffed to bits. What's more, I may just be able to flog my tent (sleeps four, dark green tunnel tent, used once) to my soon-to-be-ex colleague who has snatched not only a hot-air balloon ride in the Northampton Balloon Festival on Friday, but also a last-minute ticket to the Stafford V Festival this weekend. Jammy sandwiches, virtual beers, Pimms and shandies all round. Unfortunately, unless BobTD starts squeezing chickens' heads, there's no egg-nog.

[pen] Congrats!

Yes, what Penelope said. I can't believe she actually ate the thing though. [BtD] Nettles are great. They're terribly healthy. The Victorians would sell them at market as a vegetable. I used to pick and eat them frequently, partly for my obsessive healthy eating drive and partly because I was incredibly poor. You have to pick them as they are growing, not when they're old and raggedy late in the season, and you pick just the top four leaves. This means that you have to pick an awful lot to get a decent quantity. Then the best thing to do with them is steam them. They cook extremely quickly. You might think you would have to cook them for ages to kill the sting, but in fact the sting goes almost instantly, so you can treat them essentially as spinach. They taste similar but with a pleasant velvety sort of texture.

Superb skills penelope. Sounds as though the promotion is well deserved. Hope the new responsibilities won't gobble up your 'online chief crescentess' time, though.