This is a terrific one! The reader writes:

This was the starter of a surprise 3-course meal my sister made for my wife & I today; the day after she got back from hospital with our new baby daughter. This is inside our cottage, our young son’s stuff, and ours, around.

Our daughter was born the day before our 10th anniversary, so we were in hospital that day, very happy with our gift.

Embarrassed now that I was so grouchy & skeptical at my family for disturbing us, getting both me & son out of there so my sister could do her thing. Knew she was doing something food-related for us as surprise, but had no idea she’d bring table, cloth, fancy tableware etc as well as fantastic meal – and then left so my wife & I could actually talk! Our little lad spent all day with his cousins – all part of a big conspiracy. (Extra bonus: our littlest slept soundly whole time) My grandmother’s candlesticks even got roped into it, thanks to my mother.

Food: Irish smoked salmon, garlic, crème fraiche & dill with rocket leaves cherry tomatoes & balsamic drizzle, sourdough bread (pictured); followed by medium rare fillet steak, reduction of juice with dash of chipotle tabasco & red wine, asparagus & baby potatoes; Ben & Jerrys frozen greek yoghurt, with homemade hot sauce of berries.

What a day. Thank God for my family!

All the best from Wexford, Ireland (from a couple of long-distance Horned Frogs who met in Texas Christian University…)

Congratulations to the family! May God grant you and your baby girl, and her brother, many years! I don’t know that a VFYT has made me as happy since the reader sent in the photo of the picnic lunch at which he asked his girlfriend to marry him. (She said yes, and I met her last year, when I came through Washington, DC, on my book tour.)