Thursday morning

An old photo because my camera is out of commission at the moment - very frustrating!

I am very pleased to announce that I actually did make it into school yesterday.  Not early, I admit, but I got there before the person I was meeting up with.  As I think I have said, the other Y1 teacher last year, J, will be retiring at Christmas so she doesn't have a class this year.  My new colleague, Andrea, has covered my class for SEN day over the past two years so I know her well and we get on well.  I first met her when we both played in the church band.  She is a brilliant musician and a very lovely lady.  We agreed that I would rough out planning for the first week (OK, the first four days) and when we have our PPA on Wednesday we go over all sorts of stuff together, including ongoing planning.
I got the boards backed, some display starters up, the lettering printed off and laminated, the afternoon playground rota written (and fingers crossed no-one throws a spanner in the works) and, of course, the List Of Things To Do written.
Today will be just as busy, but I will get there . . .

Food wise, I did the sweet and sour and oh, my goodness, it was good.  It was more filling because I decided to cut the rice completely and added broccoli and mushroom to the mix (because I like them).  It was totally scrummy but I will change just one thing - I will add the cornflour mixture right at the end rather than when the sauce is added.  Apart from that - well, it was better than any sweet and sour I have had from our local take aways, that's for sure.
So what with korma and sweet and sour maybe this once a month takeaway won't happen so often.  Why pay loadsa money when you can make better yourself?

Today I have to make a choice.  I could make another skinny pie, I could go off-Biker and do baked salmon or I could have cassoulet (yes, another bikers adapted recipe.  I have to make the cassoulet today because of the meat being used (oh, the hardship!!!) and it seems silly to cook something else when there will be a hot dish waiting and ready when I come home, so I guess cassoulet it is!

Here's the recipe.  The only thing I haven't got is the red wine because if I bought it earlier I might have drunk it all!!  And before you gasp in shock, 'all' means one of those little single glass bottles, so there!!  I don't need it until later in the recipe, so I can start off, whizz down to Morrisons when it opens, then get the rest done.  And I am hoping that it will fit into my slow cooker so I can just leave it to simmer away gently all day, filling the house with scrummy smells!   Mmmmmm.

After the korma success I decided that I would like to make some more spicy recipes on a more regular basis so I dug out an old Slimming World book, Curry Feast.  It has some jolly good recipes in it but I have one niggle.  A lot of the recipes call for 1/4 teaspoonful of 'artificial sweetener'.  Why?  Not why the sweetness, why the 'artificial'.  That is taking shaving off the calories to a ridiculous degree.  1/4 of a tsp of sugar is negligable when divided among 4 people.  Even if you need to add more (and I must check to see if it tells you what kind of sweetener, the equivalent volume or the much sweeter kind) the effects will be negligable.  I don't get on with artificial sweetners - they leave a nasty taste in my mouth.  Fortunately, it is something easily remedied.

Right - better stop waffling about food and get on with the Golden Time frogs!  And the tray labels and the peg labels and the name badges and . . .