-Sunday roundup

We had a bit of a lay in this morning and I watched the programme "Top of the Shop" presented by Tom Kerridge.  Basically it is a competition for home produced artisan produce to take them on to increasing their outcome if they can and thus far it has been a very interesting competition.  It was part seven today and the final round is next Sunday when the winner will be crowned.  There has been lots of interesting produce as well.

It was then all systems go.  I have been pottering, tidying, chucking rubbish, all afternoon.  Still a way to go but am slowly getting there.  Mind you not a room sorted yet.  So it will be early starts this week and late evenings.  Have predominantly been working in the computer room and I intend to scrub that out tomorrow.  It is long overdue for a full strip out so it will be a job well done.  I am hoping that the weather is good tomorrow as I want to get some bedding out on the line to reap the benefits of the fresh air so fingers crossed.

The weather here compared to the rest of the week has been lovely and warm and the sun has been out for the best part of the day.   However autumn has slipped in and it is a lot chillier at night compared to what it was.  

We have had pork chops for tea.  I normally cook them in a tray in the oven with some onion or shallot and a little water and then cover with foil.  Today I cooked the veg first, fried some leeks in a little oil and butter until they were caramelised and then set them to one side leaving a little of the cooked leek in the pan until the chops were cooked.  I then added some stock vegetable and beef, and then some more of the leek, some peas and some carrot a little cider vinegar and some redcurrant jelly and some Herbes de Provence and lashings of white pepper and some of my Marigold powdered stock and cooked the chops in the gravy for a little while.  I then dished them up with fried leeks, boiled potatoes, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower and peas and cabbage and it went down a treat.  I had scored three packs of reduced leeks the other day at the shop at 33p per pack and the rest are to be dehydrated for use in stews and gravies etc during the winter months.  I want to pack as much flavour into gravies and stews as I can.  My mum always used to reckon that the best part of any meal was the gravy as that was where the flavour was.  Indeed, if I have any gravy left from a meal I use it as the basis for the next batch or to add to stock for soup making etc.  I try not to waste anything.  

Last night after posting I did a recce of some of the embroidery sites I have joined for freebie software and also bought software and I was quite surprised with what I have thus far. There is a lot more than I thought I had. I also started to watch some of the tutorials on You Tube and hopefully it will not be long before I am experimenting with the embroidery machine.

I want to get my sewing machine stuff and my embroidery machine stuff under the desk in the craft room/computer room so that I can get to things easily.  This is the other reason for doing this room out so that I can hopefully start to play shortly.  It is long overdue I know.  However I am one of these people who have to get their head around things first before actually using them.

I also have to prepare a CV to apply for another job so I shall leave you here as I tailor my CVs as to the position I am applying for.  Fingers crossed this time round.

Hopefully everything will come together soon and I will see progress in all areas of my life.

Catch you all soon.

Pattypan

x