Making do

Although my head was much improved this morning, I was still feeling sub-optimal. I was grateful for the fact that last night Mr L suggested cancelling my trip to Kirkwall. The weather is still pretty horrible and less than ideal for fighting against the wind with a shopping trolley. I took the car out and went to see what I could buy from the local shops. It was a dismal trip overall.

My biggest disappointment today was in not finding any good white chocolate – no G&B, no Lindt, nor even Lidl’s white choccie. I bought some Lindt dark in case we can come up with an alternative dessert idea. I did also find some white cooking chocolate, for which I have little optimism.

Interesting veg were off the menu too but I did stock up on nice fresh roots for tomorrow’s Beef Olives, which I am preparing in a  pot-roast style. I also bought some cheese for the cheese board – pedestrian stuff: Stilton, Wensleydale and Port Salut plus a Camembert to bake for the starter.

One big success of the morning was in the purchase of two packs of very attractive breadsticks, for dunking into the Camembert. Shop #1 failed to provide cream for the dessert but shop #2 had some in stock. Phew. A second big success was in finding my arrival at the shop coinciding with the arrival of a supply of free-range eggs from my friend Jean. Our hens being off-lay, I tend to go eggless when I can’t find good free-range eggs. Jean’s, I know that I can trust. I’ve seen her Happy Hens.

However, when I got home I found that our own Ladies have decided to go into production early and have presented us with an egg of their own – they do not normally lay until Christmas Day.

Tomorrow’s menu now looks like this:

• Sherry (Oloroso) and olives to aid the cooking process, no salted almonds due to not going to town.
• Baked Camembert with breadsticks for the starter, continuance of sherry
• Beef & Haggis Olives casseroled with red wine and root veg, Roast Potatoes, Mashed Parsnips, Broccoli, washed down with red wine of some as yet undetermined variety
• Frozen berries with white chocolate cream and Sloe Gin (subbing for Angostura Bitters), with Brandy Snaps for dunking. There may be dessert wine. Or not. It depends on how sloshed I am, I must leave room for Port.
• Cheeseboard with grapes if we can manage it, just Port if we can’t.
• Gaviscon

Yes, no sign of any diets around here tomorrow but it will be Fast Day on Thursday to compensate and plenty of treadmill to go with that. Mr L finishes work this evening and then has nice long holiday until the second week in January – if the weather ever picks up we’ll do some long dog walks.

As I had planned to be in town today there was no lunch organised. This was a great opportunity to use up some leftovers and so I reheated the remains of the Cabbage and Chestnut Bake from Sunday – serving it simply with potato croquettes and the tomato sauce. Before that we had a bowl of the soup that I had made from Saturday’s leftover Ultimate Couscous vegetable tagine. The soup was marvellous! So good in fact that I would in future use the recipe intentionally for soup-making. That or make double quantity and turn half into soup for the freezer. I swirled some yoghurt through it and topped with chopped coriander and it was just perfectly delicious. Well worth remembering.

500 Calorie Catchup:

Both meals were delicious.

As promised, I got myself onto the mill last evening – in my new trainers and my new sports shorts (!!) It was very hard work but I stuck at it until I had done 2 kilometres.  Wearing my new shoes, I appear to be using  my muscles differently. Bits of me were going “ooch!” and “ouch!” and I woke in the night with knees a-throbbing. Clearly I need to break in not just the shoes but my body as well. More practise needed!