Wednesday morning

You do get some beautifully misty early morning views here. I'm hoping the sun will burn off the morning mist soon and give us a warm, bright day.

Yesterday was a bit dull and dismal with a few spells of sunshine as the clouds parted to let the sun smile for a short time. None of us felt like swimming, so we didn't. Instead, we all strolled down to the Forbidden Forest (formerly known as Crocodile Wood, but DG has re-named it), us to read, chat and pick blackberries and him to look for a special kind of mud. Well, he found it, and couldn't you tell! A shower was in order as soon as we got home!

The afternoon was spent very lazily reading, snoozing and chatting after which we went out to the Marks Cross Inn for dinner. This has become something of a tradition for us now. DD hopes that one day they will stop proclaiming, as a vegetarian option, a dish that has parmesan cheese. Every year she has told them - every year, there it is! OK, so yes, it has a very static menu, but it's jolly well cooked and very tasty and we always enjoy our meals there, even if it is short on vegetarian options for DD.

We've planned out our meals for the last two days now, in order to have minimal food left over at the end of the week. In previous years I have been staying another week so any leftovers just carry on, but this year it's the week and then all over (sad), so we've been a lot more careful with our shopping.
So this is what we've planned:

Breakfasts will be toast and/or cereal.
Today:
Lunch: A selection of cheeses bought at the deli at Tesco so we can have bit of this and a bit of that! Crackers and crusty bread. Fresh fruit and yogurt.
Dinner: Bangers and mash and DG is choosing some veg when we get there. The mash will be 'real' and DD will add the fennel that she bought from her allotment but which we haven't got round to making yet. Maybe we can make some onion gravy too - that's always scrummy.
Tomorrow:
Lunch: Boiled eggs and toasty soldiers, fresh fruit and yogurt.
Dinner: Ratatouille on fresh pasta (bought, not made) with grated cheese of some kind. Fruit if there's any left over.

If we stick to that and only buy what's needed we should have very little food to take home with us apart from the frozen blackberries, which is just as well as far as DD is concerned because she will go home to an allotment full of food! M (one of my house minders) says that one of my tomatoes might possibly be starting to think about turning a gentle orange so I think the chances of me coming back to any is minimal!

And at this point I need to say a huge thank you to S and M who have been looking after my home this week for me, watering the garden and generally relieving me of any worry regarding an empty house for a week. Much appreciated, many, many thanks. You are wonderful!