Update on Day Two - Things achieved

 Wednesday 18 October 2023

An amendment to yesterday's tea.  We were supposed to be having Italian sausages with Roasted veggies.  G could not fancy as he just wanted something light to eat.  In the end I offered Egg and Chips  - he was quite happy with that.  I wasn't and in the end just opted for a bowl of the Broccoli and Stilton soup.  It was delicious.  I had programmed and scheduled the post for yesterday. He then changed his mind!

• Breakfast today Bacon sarnies;
• Make a bread loaf;  we seem to be getting through the bread again at the moment, possibly because we are having it as part of our breakfast of a morning. Not everyday but certainly for the past couple of days. We have now run out of bread, so bread machine to the rescue.
• Broccoli and Blue Cheese soup.  This was left overnight on Monday to cool down and allow the flavours to develop.  Has now been whizzed up and the cheese melted.  It is now in the fridge ready for eating.  Leaving it overnight to go cold really helps to accentuate those flavours.  I had a big bowlful for tea yesterday and it was delicious. I had been cold for the best part of the day despite wrapping up well, and the soup warmed me up from the inside out.  Simple food is the best.
• I made 3 pints of light sugar syrup for making Pears in Syrup later in the day; I put this in the fridge once the syrup had cooled a bit in readiness for prepping and processing the pears in syrup.  I also prepped the jars by washing and sterilising.  I still tend to sterilise the jars in any event although strictly speaking if food is going to be processed over 10 minutes there is no need to do this.  Old habits die hard.
• Subsequently I have gone on to process and make five jars of Pears in Syrup for the Pantry shelf.  These are just in a plain syrup but I do have plans to put some other versions up as well as some mulled Pears as well.
• The mixture of tomatoes were roasted for Tomato pasta sauce; they were then passed through the Mouli to prepare a small quantity of pasta sauce for the Pantry shelf.  I will try and do more as I go along taking advantage of reductions at the veg shop and from the supermarkets.  Preserving for me happens all year, as I make the most of what comes my way at anytime of the year.  I appreciate that historically and practically preserving was done as a response to a glut and for preserving food for the winter months.  At the moment I have to rely on what deals come my way even though I am not buying as much from the supermarkets apart from ingredients and then I turn what I can into those items we actually use. Eventually I would like to have a garden where I can grow as much as I can. I appreciate that you cannot grow everything, but you can grow a lot.
• We had some of the Soup for lunch (I had more and G had his first lot).  Went down very nicely.
• I then carried on working on the kitchen;
• Cook tea : Tonight we are having Peking Duck with pancakes, shredded spring onions and cucumber, served with Hoisin sauce.  A bought pack which we have had before but totally delicious.  There is also soup if we fancy something else later on.

Photos will have to follow in due course.

Not as much as I had hoped today, but it will play catch up on itself at the end of the day.  Today very stiff, have had Paracetamol as a result trying to make it easier to do stuff.  Rain has stopped play as it were.  These things are sent to try us.

Have a lovely evening everyone.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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