Thursday 13th June

 I'm fortunate in that I don't have 'a Summer wardrobe' and a separate 'Winter wardrobe'. I know many of my friends do a great changeover and fetch things down from the loft and swap their clothes over. I admire their skills! My chest of drawers and wardrobe contain ALL my clothes, more or less, so when June starts feeling like January I go back to wearing winter clothes again!

Having designated today as more like midwinter than midsummer, I started a jigsaw. Best Bel9ved had adapted the tray top of an IKEA folding side table so that the jigsaw will just fit, by removing one edge (top of the tray), skimming a piece off at the bottom, and fixing it back. That's because the tray was just .25cm short to fit the finished jigsaw! You might just spot some of the pieces at the top are under th8s lip.

This a 500 piece Wentworth jigsaw with whimsy pieces. There's a dog, butterfly, pumpkin, trowel, wheelbarrow,  leaf, potted plant and a watering can, all to fit into the sky which is where I'mstarting. The brownish blob beneath the dog is an acorn. I'm also trying not to use the picture on the lid; it's not a great help anyway as it is a much smaller scale.

Here's where I got to when I stopped for mid morning coffee;

You might be able to see the dog on the left (standing on it's hind legs) and the pot plant on the right. These jigsaws are notorious for tricksy shaped pieces. That break in the middle of the horizon is to confuse the unwary puzzler trying to find the edges of the puzzle! I reckon there must be a few more horizon pieces left in the box as well.

......

Yesterday and today I was a 'talking cookbook'. In other words I sat on the IKEA step stool and issued the recipe instructions while Best Beloved did the actual chopping and cooking. Last night we had chicken noodle soup, made almost from scratch - the chicken was precooked barbecue chicken pieces from M&S. Memo to self; use less stock cube next time

For lunch today we had stir fry. Normally BB adds a packet of preprepared stir fry veg to the grocery delivery but this time it was unavailable. A rummage in the fridge produced 3 stems of broccoli, a couple of spring onions, some red peppers, carrots and a big handful of frozen sweetcorn.  Roughly the same as went in last night's soup, but a bit more.

Fresh veg made such a difference, both to the soup and to the stir fry. (But ready-prepped is soooo tempting!)