Sunday

I've just peeked out and it has obviously been a very chilly night but the air smells fresh and clean and exciting.  It was a beautiful early spring day yesterday and I hope today will be the same.  I just love throwing open the windows and freshening the house (especially after making leek and potato soup!!!).  It won't be long before we are sitting out in the garden, I think.

Yesterday was good.  I got some of those reports written and should finish the rest today.  Beth and I went off to Apples and Pears, a small local farm shop.  It was a bit of a blast from the past for both of us as we used to use it when Beth and Dave were little - brilliant value, it was.  You could get 'trugs' full of local produce, veg and fruit.  Then it closed and it was only this last week or so that I realised it was open as I don't drive out that way very much at all nowadays.
It was a bit of a trial run really but we were pleased with what we got for the price we got it at so I guess we'll be doing it again.  Most of what we got we split between us, always a good way to go, and I think it will continue.

I realised that the purple sprouting broccoli in the garden needed cutting so I got a piece of chicken out of the freezer and had a sort of chicken and mushroom stir fry with the broccoli and some mash and it was really very tasty indeed.  It's nothing unusual but what I did was fry some bacon, then add the chicken sliced up, some yellow pepper and a sliced mushroom, then poured in a glug of white wine and reduced it down, then finally a splot (good word, that) of philly and the tiny bit of cream left from two weeks ago (so it shouldn't have been good but it was, both taste and smell, so I wasn't going to waste it) and some white pepper - the bacon added enough salt.  When the philly had melted into the sauce I added some chopped parsley from the garden.  Dead easy.  With it I had the purple sprouting broccoli which I had steamed and which was absolutely delicious and some nice creamed (the rest of the cream) mash.
It was scrummy so I think I will bung it into TsRs.

Today it's just me so I pulled a leek and made leek and potato soup with home made chicken stock.  Usually I have to use vegetable stock because of Beth but, I have to admit, chicken stock does impart a delicious flavour.  I couldn't decide between the leek soup and a tomato soup made with passata from last year's tomato crop but the leeks won in the end.  The passata won't go away.

Thinking of frugality (sort of), on Friday evening I had an Indian takeaway and ordered more than usual because it was 25% off if you ordered more than £20s worth.  I ate rather too much Friday night, another goodly portion yesterday and froze down three good portions for another time.  It satisfied my craving too.  Not cheap really but not bad for a take away treat.

I have beside me at the moment the latest copy of Delicious.  I think I would buy it from principle anyway because its March issue really IS for March, not for April, something that annoys me immensely with most other monthly magazines.  Delicious has had a 'makeover' and I'm not sure about that.  Some of it seems to be 'dumbed down' but it does have some good recipes, one of which is a smoked haddock and leek pithivier.  Ignoramus that I am, I looked up 'pithivier' thinking that it was affectation to call what looks like a pie a pithivier and I have to confess that they are right - a tinless pie is called a pithivier.  Anyway, it looks nice and I might make it when a friend comes round for lunch next Saturday.  What I also like is that in the ingredient section it says 'three medium leeks, green part discarded or kept for stock . . .'  A shame it mentions discarding, but it's on the right track.

Better get going, I suppose.  There's breakfast to make, hair to wash and dry and a mound of washing, not to mention those reports.  Not exactly a day of rest but I will get plenty done, that's for sure.