Thursday

Good morning, gentle readers.  After waking at stupid o'clock (before four!), I've been watching day break and it looks like it might be another lovely day, fingers crossed.  Yesterday was truly lovely - warm and sunny, not too hot, cool evening (I like cool evenings) and I had to water the garden!  This lovely warmth is great for the plants which are all growing like pigweed!

So - yesterday, when we were ready, Al and I drove down to Lathcoats where we got a very convenient parking slot.  After having our plastic tubs weighed, we set to and picked strawberries in a leisurely fashion.  We're spoilt at Lathcoats: the plants are above waist height on trestles so we don't have to bend over at all, thank goodness, and, as the berries are dangling in the air, there are very few bugs and slimy things nibbling away at them.

Despite what they said, there were loads of ripe berries.  We went along the side rather than up through the middle, as advised, and it didn't take too long to fill our tubs.  We then popped into the farm shop where I bought some Dove dried yeast, some apples, half a dozen eggs and a few scoops of frozen broad beans.  I love that - you grab a poly bag and scoop what you want.  They have frozen fruits, mixed fruits, frozen veg, a stir fry mix, etc.  Very handy indeed.
It's not a cheap shop but they do have some lovely food produce and I love that you can taste their apples before you buy.  At the moment the choice is all imported but come the autumn they will have apples from their own trees.

Then it was 'home, James', to deal with the berries and now I have four 300g bags of berries weighed out and in the freezer for use later on, a maslin pan full of berries and sugar for jam and we did rather do ourselves proud eating some huge berries yesterday afternoon while watching the tennis.

I made some scones and we pigged out on a cream tea, which was lovely.  The two left over scones are now in the freezer for couple of treats at other times.  I am getting better at scones now: I think it is a case of practise makes perfect but I now have to work out how to make the second rolling out scones look as even as the first!

This morning I will be taking Al to the station before coming back to finish off the jam.  This afternoon is Granny helping at school and then I have tuition.  This evening I shall be watching the tennis again.  A shame one cannot sort of burn calories in a deferred way while watching these athletes tear around in the heat for hours on end.  I don't know how they do it!
A busy day but a very pleasant one, I hope.

The menu today is:
B:  natural yogurt, granola and a mixture of strawberries and blueberries, melon
L:  fish finger salad wrap, pear
D:  courgetti bolognaise, fruit yogurt.  I think I will add a few frozen veg to the bol mixture - some peas, sweet corn and broad beans, just a bit of each.
Hopefully this will counterbalance the calorie damage and comparative lack of a variety of f&v yesterday!

But first - more coffee.