Self Flagellation through cooking: Valentines Day Weekend

I went back to the Diocese of Sourozh this Saturday to help out with the meal after their Patronal Feast. I wrote about actual place a few months ago, if you go on the website in the link you'll see exactly one photo of me, sitting glumly in the background on the day after the night before. But this time it was different.
I arrived at 10 am on Saturday morning, was asked if I wanted breakfast, replied in the negative and was given a bowl of soup instead. Thank God, because it was the last food I saw for the rest of the day. Well, that's not quite correct, I saw plenty of food, for the next 12 hours I peeled and hand grated so many vegetables I thought my arm was going to fall off. By 9 pm I broke through the wall and got a second wind, and eventually went to bed after midnight when I could feel my legs anymore.
Sarcasm aside, it was a really amazing experience. For two days I was surrounded by the most inspiring women who in one way or another choose to give their lives to God. There was Maryanna (who I kept calling Annalisa for some reason) who's about my age and is a nun in training, she's living at the monastery and made the most incredible lentil carrot and potato soup.
There was Maria who brought along a few jars of her amazing pickles and gave us all the recipe (a lot of vinegar and a lot of sugar), more amazing though was her ability to stand around in the kitchen all day in high heels with no complaints. She came to Orthodoxy late in life, only about 6 years ago, I talked to her about the animosity I felt for the church after my mother died, and she had the same experience when her best friend died unexpectedly - but she got past it.
Katya, our fearless leader, gave me the recipe for the best fish croquettes I have ever had and some advise about going to Billingsgate market for the tuna - my idea of showing up at 4am armed with a cosh and the Haggler's Handbook is all wrong, you can come later in the morning (as late as 7am) and still get a great deal and no one will murder you in Canary Wharf.
Any here's the only photo I had time to snap
This is the kitchen I was working in, and the girl in the corner is Tatyana, total veg head. Maria and I had six or seven different jars of gherkins, some commercial and some home made, to test to select which were going to go in the salad. We would open a jar, taste a little slice of gherkin each, decide if they were too salty or sour or spoiled, the slide the jar over to Tatyana and ask if we should throw them away, she would eat the whole thing and say there was nothing wrong with them. Great system.

I came back to London on Sunday night, super exhausted. For Valentines day, the boyfriend, who had spent the last 5 years convincing me that it's a made up holiday and he doesn't believe in it, blindsided me with a blender. All my friend cringe when I tell them stuff like this, like when he got me a frying pan for my birthday, but I think it's romantic! It also meant that I felt compelled to make him a cake. This heart cake. It turned out so terrible I couldn't even bring myself to photograph it. But never mind, he still loves me.
Kisses xx