Operation Kitchen

Monday

A bit of a journey as it has taken me a few weeks to get back to the kitchen as other things took priority.  Been niggling at me a bit  and is one of the reasons I have not been able to progress as well as I should have been able.

I managed to get the freezer part sorted out in readiness for Christmas.  Still more to do though.  The fridge has been completely gutted and cleaned out.   The fridge  will now  only need a thorough wipe out in readiness for Christmas. I have slowly started to re-stock the fridge with base ingredients that I keep in the fridge at all times.  Baking margarine, butter, lard, tubes of different flavourings and sauces, cold water, fresh meat, fresh veg and fresh fruit and lots of other items which are needed to make the fridge fully operational again moving forward. 

I have already mentioned that we are going to a new to us Farm shop at the end of the week in order to stock up on these items, as well as a sack of potatoes, a couple of trays of eggs.  There is a butcher and a baker there as well.  So we shall see what we shall see.  

I had a pile of washing up to deal with, which I dealt with and then since I have been cooking every day since it got colder to make sure that we have a good hot meal of some kind or another, I had no sooner got the washing up and drying done and there was another pile.  Yesterday I managed to get quite a bit achieved.  However, I need to really get stuck in and get this kitchen finished off.

Tuesday

First off I have to double bag all the rubbish to take down to the Tip which will hopefully happen on Wednesday.  That will be a good job done.

Rang my cousin; call deferred as he had a bit of a problem with leaky pipes in the bathroom and so will speak soon.

I am then planning on going to do some food shopping at Waitrose to stock up on pears, dried fruit, Figs, Dates, Prunes de Agen, Cranberries, Cooking apples, cherries, chestnuts.  There are some preserves that need to be made still.  However I will see what there is available which will dictate what I will bring home with me in the first instance.  I can always nip back if I need to as the shop is about half an hour away from where I live, walking distance that is.  I did come back with loads of pears, the dried fruit I was after, cooking apples, cherries and a few other things I was after including Lemons.  Will go back and get Cranberries at the end of the month as well as Chestnuts.  I want to have a go at making what is known as a Chestnut jam, as well as having some for roasting over Christmas itself.  I love hot Chestnuts.

I then came home and after packing the shopping away, I carried on with some more work in the kitchen. The emphasis today was to get the wall cupboards sorted and more items back into them.  That will help a lot on all counts once all items are back into their allotted storage.  Managed to get this done.

Tea for tonight is already sorted.  A repeat of Cottage Pie the same as what we had for Monday night's tea.

Wednesday

A trip to the Tip first thing was planned but has been deferred until Thursday to get rid of all the rubbish accumulated thus far.  Will be good to get this out of the way with.  Then it will be time to start another tranche of clearing out.

Carry on with the kitchen and progress it further.  It will be a job well done at the end of the day as I will then be able to find everything.

We had a lovely tea tonight, a Barnsley chop cooked in the oven each, plenty of gravy and then just simple veg with mashed potato, carrot and broccoli.  Went down very nicely and was very warming.  Although temperatures are due to go down to -1 tonight.  Been a very bright but very cold day again.  

I also have the urge to start my Family Tree work again as I want to know more about my Great Grandmother's side of the family. I am going to rejoin Ancestry I think in an effort to get a few more details which are sadly missing.  My cousin and I are the older members of the family now and have no one above us to really ask about family members.  My cousin is seven years older than me and he cannot remember Great Grandmother (which I thought it might).  However on further research I have found out that she passed in 1935 a good 18 years before my cousin was born.   I have also discovered that a lot of family stories would appear to be her birth family's stories rather than my family's surname.  No wonder I could not find anything.  A natural hiccup I think as many of the men in my family are born story tellers.  A lot of stories have been passed on in this fashion generation to generation.  Most of my stories came from my Dad or my Granddad who referred to them as my birth family's stories.  There is a slight differentiation though as to whether that is Great Granddad's surname or Great Grandmother's maiden name.  Hopefully now I can get to the bottom of things.  

Thursday

Yet again a visit to the Tip was planned to get the rubbish out of the way - well at least this lot and hopefully will be able to get out into the back garden and slowly get that cleared during the coming week as well.  Unfortunately yet again that did not happen.  I have therefore deferred this again until next week.  I am hoping for Monday but it could be later in the week.  It will not be Tuesday as G is I think fishing.

Then it was back into the kitchen to carry on working there and getting some more work done.

Something simpler for tea tonight, fried egg and homemade chips me thinks.  I have found a variety called Soraya which I bought from Morrisons as I had run out of potatoes.  They make the most perfect of chips, which go a lovely bronze brown colour and which remain tender rather than crispy.  I went today to get more of these but they had been replaced with other varieties.  I did not therefore buy any, as we are going to the new to us Farm shop tomorrow morning where I intend to buy a sack of potatoes in any event amongst other fresh food items and eggs.  More on my visit will follow.

Friday

We are going to the new to us Farm Shop to have a look at the veggies and get stocked up again.  There will be a separate post about this, which may well be live before this post.  

Well that is it, we have now been.  I Must say very impressed.  We shall be going back for the quality of the veg a lot of which is sourced direct from the Farmers in Lincolnshire.  Cannot get fresher, plus there is no plastic wrap or unnecessary packaging and few road miles.  At long last the same quality of veg that my long lost Veg shop used to provide.  Now to work out what we are going to do with it.  A lot of good eating to be had here.  My plan is to go back every couple of weeks and do a fresh shop and to ensure that I have a variety of fresh food to use in my cooking. That should bring us nicely to just up before Christmas.  All of the veg is now residing in the fridge apart from the potatoes , onions and the Brussel Sprout stalk.  As I go along I will regularly check and if some of the veg needs to be frozen that will happen as a matter of course as I always try and get the best out of any ingredients that I do acquire and then even when sometimes things are not as good there are still things you can do with them.

Saturday

The weather has been atrocious, cold wet, wet, damp and grey and wet.  So glad we chose to go to the Veg shop yesterday. I still have loads to do in the kitchen.  I had planned some things for tomorrow, at the moment though I am not sure that will be able to get to these.  They may have to wait until a day during the week when I am a bit more sorted and things will be able to run more cohesively together.  Part of a bigger plan and I do not want to be messing around here and there with what I need to do.

And the Kitchen Operation.  I will be back on form for this tomorrow.  I had planned to do some serious cooking. However, I also need to be able to find things and I will be in a better humour once everything is organised again.

Plans for Sunday

G is supposedly fishing tomorrow if he goes then I will be able to get on with what I had planned.  Going to be a bit of a concerted effort.  I have been doing lots of things behind the scenes as usual which all add up.  Will see how I get on tomorrow.

Have a lovely evening everyone, just keep warm and safe wherever you are.

Catch you soon.

Pattypan

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