Welcome Relief

Earlier on today;

After the past few days where temperatures have been ridiculous we are now in the middle of massive storm with torrential rain coming down, thunder, wind the whole shabang and oh it is so refreshing.  So very welcome. I just do not function when it is as hot as it has been.  As a result no preserving for a couple of days. Have pottered doing bits but nothing like I would normally do. The only advantage of the past few days extreme heat has been getting the washing out, dried and aired on the line.  The garden will be grateful as will the wildlife.

We then had another couple of rounds of storms.  Not as severe as the first one, but it has cooled everything down very nicely.  Had a lot of rain which was very much needed.  I am head-achey again and feel we perhaps have another round to come.  It has turned darker here earlier tonight. Despite being a lot cooler it is still very warm.

I just have not been up to stuff today because of the level of heat, and am hoping will be able to get on well tomorrow; i.e. a lot cooler.  

We did have a lovely simple tea this evening, a beef and ham salad with fried onions, mushrooms, home cured beetroot and mixed salad.  Followed by strawberries and cream for sweet.  Very simple but very tasty.  Sorry no photos, I remembered after we were half way through.

I have the physio again tomorrow at the local hospital.  Appointment is for 1:30pm and I am normally there for about half an hour all told going through the routine prepared for me and adjusting it if required.  So will see how we get on with that.  I keep plugging away at it am determined to get more movement than I had back into the shoulder.

Tomorrow I have a lot to do in the kitchen which include sorting it out for further projects during the week.    The fridge is also due a big strip down sometime during the week, preferably before I go off foraging.

I have some more Ham stock to bottle up for the Pantry shelf which I intend to do first thing. I also have a couple of other projects on the go.  There will be quite a bit of preserving here and there for at least the next few weeks whilst I stock the shelves up with various useful things. Hopefully will get started on some of the long term preservation projects this week in the hope of building up a useful stash of ingredients to provide some good eating. Many of them simple things but they all play their part. 

Kitchen needs to be sorted as I intend to make some syrups this week which I will need the kitchen counter for and curiously not the cooker!  There is a reason for this and all will be revealed in due course later in the week.

I also have a bit of a job to do in sorting out what jars I do have available to use and what I need to stock up on. Quite a lot of the jars have been cleaned up and crated in readiness to go under the stairs so that I can retrieve them fairly easily when preserving.  There are of course my proper preserving jars as well which are in different sizes so I need to match like with like if I can. I do recycle all the jars that come my way but I might well need some help with this going forward.

I am also starting to try and get things sorted out for Christmas.  I want to get as much as I can sorted out and out of the way with as quickly as I can. Time is of the essence on this otherwise things tend to drift and not be done when they need to be done. That also involves Christmas cakes, and Christmas puddings.  

I do need to get foraging this week though as well to see what I can locate.  Will have to see how tomorrow pans out.

Hope you have a lovely evening.

Keep safe

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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