Monday 5 December 2011

Monday Update

Lots to tell today, a bit of cooking, decorating and a medical problem, where to start?



  

I gave blood last week, usually an unremarkable event, but this time a slight difference.

I was laying on the bed, waiting for the needle, and I could hear two nurses arguing behind my head. I couldn’t see them but it was becoming quite heated. Any how when the nurse appeared with the needle and spoke it was one of the two I had heard. In fact she was red faced and shaking as she approached. I asked her if she was OK and requested that she calm down before she shoved the needle in. It may have not been the best thing to say, but I felt apprehensive. It was slightly more painful than usual (You don’t normally notice) and a bit sore the next day.

A week later I had this, lots of tingling in my hand and could hardly move my elbow.




I phoned the blood service and they told me to go to hospital immediately. I have a haematoma, well there’s a first time for everything and it should go in a week but till then its “rest it but keep it moving”.



Anyhow on to the bathroom, to make it easier I took all the woodwork up to the garage to paint, however I reckoned without the gap at the bottom of the door and a windy day, so my half dried panels were covered with leaves and dust, requiring a clean before carrying on. It gives them a textured finish!



Food wise, on Sunday we had a sort of faux paella if you know what I mean. It’s based on an idea I had after a meal at an Italian restaurant in Nottingham just before Amy’s wedding.



Place a layer of Potato Gnocchi in a dish and just cover with vegetable stock.



Fry chopped onions and peppers with garlic, adding sliced Chorizo and shredded cooked chicken as the onions reduce.



 Heat the oven to 180 degrees and top the gnocchi with the veg/sausage mixture.



Cook for about 30 minutes at which point the liquid will be nearly all absorbed.



Its porridge time here in England, unfortunately I brought the oats that cant be microwaved without industrial cleaning afterwards, so I made some flapjacks, using brown sugar, golden syrup, peanut butter and chopped apricots and prunes. The recipe is pretty generic, but they still tasted good.






As it’s nearly Yule, I was going to make mince pies and shortbread as presents for the neighbours, hunting around for ingredients I found some Chocolate Orange buttons, which sounded interesting, I also brought Double cream for Ice-Cream making.

I have a problem with home made ice cream, it always sets so hard that its difficult to get out of the container, I suppose that I could freeze it in portions but that would require lots of containers and how big is a portion anyway? In my experience it’s always slightly more than you have, or less than you want. Anyhow I have found the answer and I a fit of generosity I will share it with you. ALCOHOL.



I made the ice cream using brown sugar instead of caster, and added a generous amount of Baileys Irish Cream, and the Chocolate Buttons. It set to a semi-hard consistency and is really easy to scoop. Problem solved!



All my Ice Cream in future will have added alcohol to make it easier to serve.



AND I made some bread, soft sandwich loaf and Onion Focaccia.



Today (Monday) my list of jobs is



Paint Bathroom Woodwork in the  garage.

Paint Door frame and door in bathroom.

Heres the job so far, you can see the two purple shades, and the old flooring.



Also the sightthat greeted me when I took the bath panel off!

The hidden area


Make Cottage Pie. No pictures we ate it before I had a chance, anyway I'm sure you can picture it.

Make Mince Pies. I had some shortcrust left over and thought that I ought to practice before Yule



All done, and we managed to get out for the afternoon, brought a couple of ornaments for the Zen bathroom, as soon as the floor is down I can put everything back and it’s finished. The cottage pie and the mince pies came out well and tasted good, I had a bit of pastry left over and made some cheese straws.



No comments:

Post a Comment