Monday 8th November - Round the weeks we go again

I managed to go for a very short walk - up the road and back again - before lunch. Not much to say. Peering into the gardens, looking at the last of the summer flowers, and a few autumn flowers. It was fresh air. That's all I can find to say about it.

That sounds a bit grey - and that's what the day is. I call them 'eating days', when no biscuits, cakes, crisps or anything are safe from consumption. The only thing to do is NOT TO TAKE THE FIRST BITE but it is tool late for that advice now.

The  chilli sour dough croutons were delicious - the end of a load, cubed, tossed in chilli oil and zapped in the air-fryer for maybe 5 minutes at about 170. The load was pretty old and dry so they didn't take long to go crisp and golden.

However, it was a few days ago that I made them. (Oh, chilli oil? That is simplicity itself. Shove a couple of whole dried chillis into a small bottle of olive oil and let it fester, sorry, infuse for some weeks. How many? I dunno - it gets stronger as the weeks go by and the oil is used. Just tip more oil in as necessary).

Last night - Ooo-er - the air-fryer suddenly switched itself on, no, off, no, onoffonoffonoffon. With loud and anxious beeps. We fixed the firstpart ofthe problem by pulling out the plug from the wall. A bit of research informs us that they last around 4-5 years, depending on useage, and that this was a fault in the earlier digitally controlled versions of this brand. Phillips, if you need to know.

We bought ours in 2017 and use it most days... so, we now had a different problem. Himself has spent the morning researching, and come to the conclusion that the problem in the early models appears to have gone away, and a new near-identical one will be arriving on Thursday because we are very much in favour of Air-Fryers. Might might not leave it permanently switched on...

I've been knitting; the green snakey scarf continues to grow. Every so often I do a stitch count and find there are no longer 40 stitches on the needles. It doesn't matter - I just create one in an inconspicuous place and carry on. The edges are a bit uneven in places but who is going to see?

(The pattern - cast on however many stitches - do some counting and measuring to find out what you would like. I'm using double knitting yarn on 5mm needles, I think. I read somewhere you go up a needles size if you are knitting something in garter stitch if you want a looser fabric. Then, for odd numbered rows, Knit 2 together, knit to last stitch, knit through back and front of stitch to make one so you keep the same number of stitches. For even umber rows, knit all the stitches. It is useful to put a marker on the side where you do the twiddly stuff. It must be that I keep forgetting the 'make an extra stitch' at the end of the odd rows when the action on television gets too intense. If you need to 'fix' by adding an extra stitch, just add a loop with a twist to stop it being an ordinary yarn over part way along a row.)

The blue tea cosy has been a bit backwards and forwards, but having unpicked a whole round, stitch by stitch, I have it bristling with stitch markers signalling the pattern repeats and it is back on track.

Those vertical lines between the tea pots mark where I shall CUT through the knitting to make the place where the handle, or the spout, goes through - there is another set of lines on the other side! 

Talking of tea...

        

Saturday 20th March - Equinox. Vegetables. Books. Strawberry Pots

I think one of the best things about these weird Covid times is ordering stuff on-line, and getting deliveries.

I ordered the 'Persephone Books' bi-annual newsletter, and it arrived today so I have been enjoying reading the articles. The bookshop is in Lambs Conduit Street in Bloomsbury, London - a favourite haunt. An hour or so in the shop, followed by refreshments in the nearby Foundling Hospital is my idea of a good time.

 I discovered a cache of Persephone newsletters from 2013-2014 which has been my main reading recently, and decided to order the current one. On the strength of this, I also ordered a couple of Persephone books - second-hand - which arrived today. They are sitting in 'quarantine corner, in the hall, until a few days have passed and I can open the parcel.

My 'graze box' was released from 'quarantine corner' today;

this must be one of the most extravagant ways of buying snacks, but more than half the pleasure is in getting the box through the post and discovering what is inside. Chocolate dip, cinnamon biscuits with afternoon tea, and a couple of savoury nut and crispy thingy selections. 

My Lakeland cutlery organiser box also came today and is in quarantine, especially as I suspect the order was only packed yesterday. There's another happiness moment in waiting...

Spring! Time to think about sowing seeds and so on! It is the Equinox tonight - I'm sure that means something important. Equal day and night. I've had good reason to order a strawberry planter for the plants that have recovered from being delivered as nearly-dead stalks last week and need to go into something more substantial than some pots in the spare bedroom. Also a plastic trowel that can live outside the back door for the unlovely task of clearing up after the foxes (they 'dump' on the grass) and our ancient cats (they 'dump' on top of the soil in the flowerbeds). And another load of seeds for more exotic veg than the ones I have two packets of already.

This year I am determined to have a more serious attempt at following this planting scheme;

 The plan is to have a number of large tubs, each of which will have a spring crop followed by a summer crop of vegetables. Judging by the illustrations and the instructions in 'All You Can Eat in Three Square Feet' it should be simple. I've made notes, and bought seeds, and acquired soil and tubs. I wonder how close my efforts will get to these photographs. Watch this space.

Sunday 11th November

Here's the music for today... called 'Brittany' by Ernest Farrer from this album;

I took this morning in bed. I decided not to go to the Centenary Armistice Day Memorial Service at church, as I'm not sure standing around would improve my cold. I did get up at about eleven, and we watched the apparently endless rows and columns of troops and groups and cohorts marching past the Cenotaph. 

I had bought a little enamel poppy this year, instead of a paper one. It turned out to be an old one that somehow was included in the tray of poppies, and is dated 2014. Still an appropriate date though.

The weather is alternately 'Let's go a for a walk' sunny and mild, and 'Let's get something done in the garden' quiet and still, and then, just as you make up your mind to go out, 'as you were' cold grey skies and rain. So we are sitting inside and enjoying the look of outside, rather than experiencing it for real. 

There are flowers on the rosemary bush, which is supposed to be a spring and summer flowering shrub. I'm not complaining. The more flowers the merrier. A rose bush was looking like 'June' last week, but the cold snap and rain changed its mind, and it is now a sad sight. 

I've had to chuck the seeds I was growing on the kitchen windowsill to eat as shoots. They have to be misted several times a day, especially in the earlier stages, and I think that the time I picked up the wrong bottle and sprayed them with dettol surface cleaner is probably one of the reasons they seemed disinclined to grow.

I finished the book club book a day or so ago, and thoroughly enjoyed it. ('The Keeper of Lost Things' by Ruth Hogan). It is definitely a 'read it again' novel. I wonder what the other book club members will think of it. It usually takes me a couple of days to reassemble sufficient brain cells after the week's teaching to think about reading, or any activity where concentration is required (eg complicated knitting, precise sewing etc). So my brain sort of 'times out' until around Saturday evening, or maybe even Sunday morning.  However this moring I was ready to read again, and downloaded 'A Presumption of Death' by Jill Paton Walsh, continuing the sequence of Lord Peter Wimsey stories. 



I know I have read  it before, but can't find the book - did I borrow it? Or have I got it as a talking book? It seemed right for the season, as it is set in the time WW2. Anyway, it is about the correct 'level of difficulty' for how I am feeling today - that is, head and nose bunged, and with a dreadful craving to 'feed a cold' - with cake, cereal, porridge, biscuits, toast, cheese straws, whatever. I am trying to fight off the cravings with cups of tea, but I am not sure how long I will be able to hold out. There is some truth (but not much) in the old adage 'feed a cold, starve a fever'; here's the Scientific American on the subject, but I'm trying to heed the warning 

'There's no need to overeat, however. The body is quick to turn recently digested food into energy, and it's also efficient at converting stored energy into fat.'

More tea? Why not.

Monday 16th May - Garlic Alert

Quick and Easy Garlic "Bread"

Make fairly thick toast
Cut a garlic clove in half across the middle
Rub the surface of the toast all over with the cut side of the garlic; be generous
Spread the toast with butter
Eat

You can make this into a tapas snack as follows;

before you start toasting the bread, skin, de-seed amd chop some very ripe tomatoes and put into a sieve to drain.

Make the "garlic bread" and spread it with the drained tomato, sprinkled with a litte salt and papper and torn fresh basil leaves.

Garlic Croutons

Pre-heat oven to about 165C (fan)
Cut thick slices of bread - it doesn't have to be too fresh.
Remove crusts and cut the slices into cubes.
Put the cubes into a bowl, sprinkle with salt, pepper, herbs, crushed garlic and virgin olive oil - about a desert spoon of oil per slice of bread.
Toss everything around so that all the cubes are coated.
Line a baking sheet or roasting tray with baking paper, spread the cubes out in a single layer, and bake for around 10 minutes. Set a timer - it is easy to let them burn.

Friday 21st February - Foraging

I have been told that it is not the steroids that make you gain weight, it's the way that they act on your appetite that creates the problem.

Friday was what I call an "eating day". Every so often I have one of those days when I graze and nibble and finish off and tidy up and clear away everything - the biscuits in the tin, the last piece of cake, a couple of cherry tomatoes, something left in my weekly "graze box", a couple of handful's of breakfast cereal, another helping of cereal because that last bowlful tasted so good, ah, who left that chocolate sitting there?

It won't do.

Those crusts of bread look so untidy cluttering up the breadboard. Now, with a little bit of butter and honey...

Oddly enough, I was feeling a bit peculiar by the time I went to bed. A bit rumbly-in-the-tummy.

Tomorrow's another day.

Monday 18th November - Move away from that cake!

Every so often I find that I am having an "eating" day.

I weighed myself this morning; I do so most days, the reason being that although I am on low-dose steroids, I am well aware that they can make you put on weight. I've seen the truly awesomely awful consequences of this in the hospital clinics. I gather that it's not the steroids themselves that make you get fat, it's the effect they have on your appetite.

So, today, I eyed up the scales and thought uh-oh, no cake today. Stop the slide before it starts.

Which went very well - no cake, biscuits or croissant when I had coffee with my father. No extra nibbles at lunchtime.

But then it got to tea time - and in short order I munched both a packet of mixed nuts and a portion of little oat-cakes with onion marmalade from last week's grazebox. It was only the arrival of a series of piano pupils that stopped me from making porridge and toast... that was a near thing indeed.

When a plate of cake arrived in front of my nose later this evening, I ate it all up without a second thought. Deeelicious.

I can only hope that all the activity this morning (ironing, cleaning the bathroom and loo, two loads through the washing machine, shopping, putting petrol in the car, collecting forms from the doctor, picking up a prescription, going to the bank), and then teaching a determined and vigorous djembe lesson to forty - let's call them "lively" - children this afternoon will have gone some way to using up these calories.

There's still some cake left in the tin, and this week's grazebox  dropped through the letterbox this morning with all these lovely goodies inside - oh dear...

Tuesday 7th August - Nibble, munch, chomp

Today is an eating sort of day. Every so often there is a day when no packet of biscuits is safe, no bar of chocolate can hide, and toast, cereal, sweets, even fruit is all at risk.

I find myself snacking on bits and pieces of food all day.

Oh well. If I eat it all today, then it won't be there to tempt me tomorrow.

(If it happened too often then that would soon become serious! Luckily I know from experience that this mood will won't last long)