Doing Nothing
This weekend was a blissful weekend of doing nothing. Well I say nothing, but I suppose I should qualify it as not doing anything that involved us having to go anywhere other than to the shops. I do like having things to do at the weekend, but I was getting a bit of a backlog of tiredness building up, due to all the things I've been doing that I am yet to write up. So for once I'm not tired, though whether that is due to the lack of going out, or the 3 coffees I've had today, I'm not sure...
Saturday we were actually out earlier than usual to do shopping thanks to Bacchus having an appointment at 11.30am to pick up his new glasses. He can now see a lot more than he has done for some time :-) Shopping done, we had an early lunch and then while Bacchus read, I put a huge panful of burger relish (for Summerfest) on to cook (4 times the normal recipe) and then went out to cut the grass, which was in desperate need of trimming. Then Bacchus joined me, to hold the steps while I cut the top of the hedge. Next we planted out various things:
1) A plant Bacchus was given by his sister Mystic. We have no idea what it is, we've been told we can eat the berries off it, but I am dubious about this, it doesn't look like a plant that would give edible fruit...
2) 1 of my comfrey plants, that survived the stupidness that is Royal Mail (it would now appear that my 2 horse radish roots that I planted out a few weeks ago both survived too, despite looking very dead. I like plants that are able to survive Royal Mail, it means I'm less likely to kill them :-)
3) One of my lavender plants
4) My Greek Basil
5) My 4 surviving fuchsias
6) My mint, which went into a pot rather than into the soil.
I also fertilised and topped up with soil my 3 apple trees. We also moved them to a new sunnier location. They look rather sick at the moment, not diseased, just a bit unloved :-( I hope I don't kill them off, it would seem a shame to loose them after they've survived for 14 years now, since I grafted them at University.
After doing all that I finished up with some weeding & Bacchus got to do the only bit of gardening that he enjoys, which is picking the fruits of our labour. we got another pudding basin of strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and 8 morello cherries, which Bacchus promptly ate after I told him I didn't want to eat any. Apparently I should have mentioned at that point that they were cooking cherries, but he thought they tasted nice anyway, just not overly sweet and as he pointed out, what was I going to do with 8 cherries anyway....
In between the gardening there had been brief intermissions to get washing out of the machine & put more in, and to make sure the relish wasn't sticking. The relish took 6 hours longer to cook than the recipe said, but I seem to remember it took far longer to cook the last time I did it. Also how is something supposed to evaporate all the liquid if you leave the lid on? Anyway, by 11pm I had 2 and 3/4 jars of relish sitting on my counter and a house that smelt of vinegar - the main downside to home-made chutneys :-(
Sunday saw the usual fix of Hollyoaks, but instead of lounging around watching it I ironed all my tea towels, which had been washed the night before. Then we popped into town to stock up on cheap kitchen equipment for Summerfest. I still have loads of equipment left over from my catering days, which I knew would come in useful one day. However there are certain things that while I have a lot of them, I'm not prepared to take the ones I like somewhere where I might never get them back - for example small sharp vegetable knives. I like my Kitchen Devil ones, but unfortunately for me Kitchen Devil saw fit (for no reason at all as far as I can see) to change the design to one I don't like, about 10 years ago. Therefore they do not leave my house, but since a lack of properly sharp knives is a particular problem in communal kitchens I wanted to make sure I had some with me for Summerfest. Fortunately this is where Wilkinson's comes in, cheap knives, spare can openers, cheap, crappy, but still do the job, tea towels for 29p... Oh and the dinkiest set of kitchen scales for £1.99. So I think as far as equipment goes I'm now just about sorted.
When I got back I washed out one of my big plastic boxes and sorted out all my new & old equipment into it (apart from the stuff in the attic), ready to take with me - well there is only just over a month left to go.... *gulp*
I had then intended to do some sewing of my Summerfest costume, but only got as far as moving some of my sewing equipment upstairs and getting my material out - a phone call from my Mum taking up rather more of the afternoon than I'd planned. Before I knew it, it was time to get our dinner of roasted lemon chicken in. The remainder of the evening was spent watching Dawson's Creek and doing yet more ironing. I quite like ironing provided I don't have to do it very often :-)
EDIT: Oh and I forgot to put insect repellent on while gardening and some little f**ker managed to bite me before I noticed and could squash it. I now have a 3" diameter itchy red lump on my arm :-( And I've got a nasty allergic reaction to some plant or other that scratched me on the other arm. I wish there was some kind of anti-allergy barrier people like me could spray onto their skin stop this kind of thing happening :-( I still have psoriasis on my foot at the moment too and now I've thought about it, it's itching like mad too :-(
Saturday we were actually out earlier than usual to do shopping thanks to Bacchus having an appointment at 11.30am to pick up his new glasses. He can now see a lot more than he has done for some time :-) Shopping done, we had an early lunch and then while Bacchus read, I put a huge panful of burger relish (for Summerfest) on to cook (4 times the normal recipe) and then went out to cut the grass, which was in desperate need of trimming. Then Bacchus joined me, to hold the steps while I cut the top of the hedge. Next we planted out various things:
1) A plant Bacchus was given by his sister Mystic. We have no idea what it is, we've been told we can eat the berries off it, but I am dubious about this, it doesn't look like a plant that would give edible fruit...
2) 1 of my comfrey plants, that survived the stupidness that is Royal Mail (it would now appear that my 2 horse radish roots that I planted out a few weeks ago both survived too, despite looking very dead. I like plants that are able to survive Royal Mail, it means I'm less likely to kill them :-)
3) One of my lavender plants
4) My Greek Basil
5) My 4 surviving fuchsias
6) My mint, which went into a pot rather than into the soil.
I also fertilised and topped up with soil my 3 apple trees. We also moved them to a new sunnier location. They look rather sick at the moment, not diseased, just a bit unloved :-( I hope I don't kill them off, it would seem a shame to loose them after they've survived for 14 years now, since I grafted them at University.
After doing all that I finished up with some weeding & Bacchus got to do the only bit of gardening that he enjoys, which is picking the fruits of our labour. we got another pudding basin of strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants and 8 morello cherries, which Bacchus promptly ate after I told him I didn't want to eat any. Apparently I should have mentioned at that point that they were cooking cherries, but he thought they tasted nice anyway, just not overly sweet and as he pointed out, what was I going to do with 8 cherries anyway....
In between the gardening there had been brief intermissions to get washing out of the machine & put more in, and to make sure the relish wasn't sticking. The relish took 6 hours longer to cook than the recipe said, but I seem to remember it took far longer to cook the last time I did it. Also how is something supposed to evaporate all the liquid if you leave the lid on? Anyway, by 11pm I had 2 and 3/4 jars of relish sitting on my counter and a house that smelt of vinegar - the main downside to home-made chutneys :-(
Sunday saw the usual fix of Hollyoaks, but instead of lounging around watching it I ironed all my tea towels, which had been washed the night before. Then we popped into town to stock up on cheap kitchen equipment for Summerfest. I still have loads of equipment left over from my catering days, which I knew would come in useful one day. However there are certain things that while I have a lot of them, I'm not prepared to take the ones I like somewhere where I might never get them back - for example small sharp vegetable knives. I like my Kitchen Devil ones, but unfortunately for me Kitchen Devil saw fit (for no reason at all as far as I can see) to change the design to one I don't like, about 10 years ago. Therefore they do not leave my house, but since a lack of properly sharp knives is a particular problem in communal kitchens I wanted to make sure I had some with me for Summerfest. Fortunately this is where Wilkinson's comes in, cheap knives, spare can openers, cheap, crappy, but still do the job, tea towels for 29p... Oh and the dinkiest set of kitchen scales for £1.99. So I think as far as equipment goes I'm now just about sorted.
When I got back I washed out one of my big plastic boxes and sorted out all my new & old equipment into it (apart from the stuff in the attic), ready to take with me - well there is only just over a month left to go.... *gulp*
I had then intended to do some sewing of my Summerfest costume, but only got as far as moving some of my sewing equipment upstairs and getting my material out - a phone call from my Mum taking up rather more of the afternoon than I'd planned. Before I knew it, it was time to get our dinner of roasted lemon chicken in. The remainder of the evening was spent watching Dawson's Creek and doing yet more ironing. I quite like ironing provided I don't have to do it very often :-)
EDIT: Oh and I forgot to put insect repellent on while gardening and some little f**ker managed to bite me before I noticed and could squash it. I now have a 3" diameter itchy red lump on my arm :-( And I've got a nasty allergic reaction to some plant or other that scratched me on the other arm. I wish there was some kind of anti-allergy barrier people like me could spray onto their skin stop this kind of thing happening :-( I still have psoriasis on my foot at the moment too and now I've thought about it, it's itching like mad too :-(