Sunday

One advantage of having hearing aids (among many) is that once they are out at night nothing disturbs me.  So, while I gather that it has been a wild and woolly night round here judging by Facebook comments, I heard not a sausage and slept like a log all through!  No flooding - an advantage of living in a 'dry' part of the country - either.  But my heart goes out to those who are been affected by this latest bout of terrible weather.

I was expecting to have Beth and Alex round for lunch but Beth is very busy with this and that so I am going over to help her sort a few things out.  That means I won't be at home for most of the afternoon.  At there is a bit of a tradition that the Infant coordinator provides drinks and nibbles for the Christmas Show meeting, I set to early this morning and made some mini mince pies with a star on the top.  They were dead easy.  Mince pies are easy anyway but these are easier than most.  For a start, I used shop bought shortcrust pastry and mincemeat.  I always buy pastry, it's not something I have a light hand with at all.  I ought to make mincemeat - it's easy and frugal and very tasty, but I simply haven't had the time.  One of the things I will do after retirement - and I will probably make lots, tie it all up with festive tops and ribbons and give them as Christmas presents.

I digress, sorry.  OK, so I bought pastry and used a mini muffin tin with a little doofah thingy that I got ages ago at a Pampered Chef party.  All you do is roll a bit of pastry into a ball, drop it into one of the muffin holes and then push the doofah thing (wish I could remember what it is called) into the pastry which magically rises up the side to make a neat little case.  Dead easy and trouble free.

Ah, found it by Googling - it's called a 'mini tart shaper'.  Such an original name!!!  Here it is:
http://www.pamperedchef.co.uk/ordering/prod_details.tpc?prodId=1746&catId=122&parentCatId=122&outletSubCat=
Well worth getting if you do much of that sort of thing.

So now I have twenty four mini mince pies cooling on the rack awaiting a shower of icing sugar and packing into a tin..  It sounds a lot but there will be at least seven of us there, so that's only three each and they are tiny.  And a few might go missing on the way too!
Now I'd better go and sort out the kitchen.

Afterthought:  I always find it odd that a blogging site run by Google doesn't have 'Googling' as a word in its spell checker!

Sunday

There was I, yesterday late afternoon, windows open, enjoying the fresh air (it was none too warm but that was OK, what are cardigans for?) when the wind started to blow ferociously and the vertical blinds started to rattle.  Suddenly it was feeling very cold and I got all shivery.  The windows were closed and I went to check the heating to find that it had clicked on.  In the middle of June!!!  Crazy weather!  It was so chilly I went up to get a quilt and snuggled under that until the house warmed up a bit.  Brrrr . . .

On other news, I saw, in Morrison's, a likely looking portion of pork ribs, not too expensive and with at least some meat on them.  So on Friday evening I concocted a sticky mix of honey, lemon, garlic, mustard, chili, tomato puree, smoked paprika, a pinch of five spice, salt, pepper, soy sauce and Worcester sauce.  Oh, and a spoonful of mango chutney.  In other words, whatever I could lay my hands on!  I gently roasted the ribs under foil until they were done, then removed the foil,  turned the heat right up, poured over the sauce and cooked them until the sauce was all gooey and sticky.  And very tasty it was too!

Bank Holiday Monday morning

I don't think it has stopped raining all night!  The ground is absolutely soaked, the wind is almost howling and it does feel unseasonably cold, but let's be grateful for the large amounts of rain, given the official drought and hosepipe ban that still exists almost everywhere (but not here, surprisingly enough).

Yesterday was grand.  I haven't processed the photos yet but will post a few when I have.  We had a lot of fun and there was a feeling of 'triumph over adversity' which fitted well with the reason for the celebration.  OK, so rain - hardly a danger, but even so . . .  :0)))  I flaked out early (typical) and came in so I am extremely grateful to DD who went out and did my share of the clearing up at the end before she and DG went home.  Looking out now, there's just a few tables, the gazebos and the bunting, flags and balloons to clear away.  Even the ground has been swept and cleared of residual rubbish.  Well done, fellow witches!

(edited an hour and a half later:  in the cold light of day the ground wasn't so spick and span as I thought, but it is now.  I feel I've done my bit towards the clearing up now rather than being a slacker!)

Well, I have a few portions of coronation chicken left over.  I shall have some on lettuce in a salad, as convention states, and the rest could be zizzed into a dip.  I think it would be nice with hot toast and quite warming too.  As the evening barbecue was a bit of a washout, I have rather a lot of sausages and burgers that need either cooking and eating or freezing (they were not frozen previously, thank goodness,  Given that I bought some mince to make lasagne, I think that's me set up for meat for the next week or so.  I quite fancy a sausage meatball casserole!  Must make sure my stocks of chopped tomatoes are high enough!

Apart from sorting out the aftermath of yesterday and a bit of tidying, I intend to do not a lot else today.  Resting, relaxing, sleeping, knitting, watching rubbish TV . . . sounds good right now.

This is actually a photo of a paper plate.  I, always the teacher, looked at it and thought 'useful background picture for a display or display lettering here' and promptly snapped it!  It hasn't been edited so what you see . . . etc.