Tuesday - and the holiday is over . . .

. . . in practicality, that is.  On the school web site it shows as going on until Friday and it also shows that the children come back on Tuesday.  But, practically speaking, this is it.  It's into school this morning, to try to make sense of the considerable mess I left at the end of last term.  No, that's really not fair, I didn't leave a mess, of course, I didn't, but there were things there was little point in doing because it would be better to wait until after the cleaners had, as usual, been wonderful!  By then I was well into the holiday and then it was Streele Farm and now - now - it's all caught up.

As always, I will walk into my bay, sigh, open the windows to get in some fresh air, raining or not, and then start a list.  For half an hour I will walk round, noting everything that's going to need doing, organising and prioritising. 
And then I start!

A considerable part of today will be getting the stickiness off their trays.  Last year's labels - no, the labels from the year before - didn't come off all that well and, because I was short on time, I made and laminated new labels and just blu-tacked them over.  Today it's the pay-back and I've bought a bottle of Sticky Stuff Remover (yes, that's what it is called) from Lakeland.  Wonderful stuff!

To report on the skinny pie:  yes, it was pretty good.  It wasn't *real* pastry, of course, it couldn't be, but it held its shape, came out of the foil dish easily (I was worried about that without any oil around the dish), it looked right and the filling was really scrummy.  Deeply savoury and spicy but with a hint of sweetness from the ketchup and brown sauce and very satisfying.  Definitely one to do again - well, I have to as I have five little pots of pie filling to freeze!  With it I had a carrot pulled from the garden (is there ever anything that tastes quite as good as a garden carrot?) and some broccoli.  I have this lovely steamer pot, acquired molto cheapo from Matalan.  It's not huge as many steamer pans are but it's not tiny either and I often use it to gook all my vegetables using just the one ring.  Today it was carrots in the water and broccoli on one of  the steamer sections.  After some serious efforts I have become accustomed to eating my veg without any salt, either in the cooking or the eating, and I think I prefer them that way now, so steaming is ideal.
Anyway, it was a delicious meal.  And I need to start taking photos!

Today it has to be something that won't take long when I get home so I'm having a go at the Korma-lite (that's what the Hairy Bikers called it!) because I can make the sauce this morning, set the chicken to marinade and then basically just heat it up this evening and simmer to cook the chicken bits, which won't take long at all.  I'm intrigued - korma without almonds or coconut milk or cream?  Well, actually, I lie - you do put a tiny bit of cream in right at the end.  I like korma, but I like the deeply savoury ones, not the ones you buy in the supermarket or even from takeaways which are becoming increasingly sweet and sickly.  So - there's half a teaspoon of caster sugar per portion in this recipe and we will see . . .
Here is the recipe.

I wanted a photo to lighten things up a bit so here's an old one from Streele Farm, as this year's efforts are still on the laptop.