Tuesday morning

Yes, it's stupid o'clock!  I went to bed pretty early and am now wide awake, downstairs, I've got today and tomorrow's dinners out of the freezer to thaw slowly and I'm wondering if I will crash out again in time for a bit more sleep.  Looking at the time I would say it's unlikely!  Ho hum!

There's a heavy frost out there again, but today I'm not concerned about a cold school.  Yesterday the heating was up the spout and it was jolly cold.  The parents had been warned and the children came in sensible, warm layers or clothing, rather than their usual uniform.  Little fan heaters kept the bays reasonable until the heating came back on.  I do love our semi-open-plan layout, but it does mean that someone opens a door four bays further down and the cold spreads rapidly!  However, once the heating was back on, it also spread round quickly and warmth reigned supreme again

Well, Diane, I was most impressed with the pork yesterday after it had been vacupack cooked in the slow oven all day.  It makes me realise quite how much flavour can be lost in ordinary cooking.  Some stock did come out so I added it to the baked beans (yes, I had pork and beans, very cowboy) and boiled them away until the sauce was thick again and it was all very tasty with melt in the mouth meat that I just quickly browned off in a saucepan.  If I had been having it with a sauce I wouldn't have bothered to do that, it was only for the look of the thing really.  I'm not a great fan of chewy meat, I much prefer it very tender, so it's definitely one to do again.  Today is a salmon steak to boil in the bag so that will just do on the hob.
My slow oven is virtually an antique.  I bought it at some point in the 1970s so it's got to be over 30 years old.  It's been used on and off all that time so it's given great service.  Sadly, the pot is beginning to show some wear and tear and I'm beginning to wonder how long it can keep going.  Perhaps it is time to look around for a new one.  I'll have a little think about that.

You maybe haven't noticed but I have a blog counter because it's nice to know that people are reading what I write, waffle or not!  The counter I used to go by was run by someone who sold it on last year and since then, unfortunately, it has been rather unreliable - it's often not working and when I email about it, never once have I received a reply.  I had another counter that was tucked away at the bottom of the blog page so I shoved the unreliable one down to the bottom and moved the other up, the one you can now see at the top.  I have to say I do like this one: I'm not sure how they organise the counts but it shows a lot more visitors that the old one and it's moving up encouragingly fast.  It's not long until I hit the 20,000 mark which is great.  I know it's small beer really, this blog, it's in no way a commercial concern but I'm happy with it just the way it is.  So thank you to all my 'gentle readers' and please do feel free to leave comments if you want.  It would be lovely to hear from you.