One of those days

Yesterday was a bit odd. In many ways it was a very productive day but it was at the same time, quite a shambles. It certainly kept me on my feet, which is no bad thing, though I found no time to mount the treadmill.

The arrival of the Red Cross Parcel (aka, Approved Food delivery) prompted me finally to get to grips with sorting out the utility room. As a by-product it provided me with a stack of cardboard boxes, so I also began packing the Sanday Spinners stock, in readiness for moving it out and up to Hillside.

In-between-whiles I started some bread rolls for tea and cooked up one of the packets from the Approved Food parcel for our lunch. During the day, four laundry loads made their way from the bedroom to the washer/drier and back onto the bed and into the wardrobe.

I even managed to deploy the Dyson for a while!

The bread rolls did not get very far – I weighed out the flour and added salt, honey and butter. Then I turned to the yeast, emptied about a gram and a half from the jar and went to get the new packet from my baking cupboard and could not find it. I was 100% confident that I had bought some the last time that I went to town but where on earth was it. Mr L joined in the hunt before we admitted defeat.

(I should point out at this juncture that bread-making has taken a back seat since we we embarked on the 5:2 regime. There is little time-space into which to fit a bread-based meal and thus, after 12 weeks, we have only just now cleared the freezer of existing baking.)

As the empty boxes emerged gradually from the utility room and shelves slowly came to some order, the boxes migrated to my studio and began to fill with knitting needles and suchlike. It’s a long walk from one end of the house to the other so I am not sure that missing out the treadmill on the way made a whole lot of difference!

Fast forward to Lunch. One of the items in Monday’s food parcel was several packets of a branded grain  mix: CHILLI & LIME FLAVOURED QUINOA AND BASMATI RICE. One of the Ainsley Harriott range from Symington’s. Past experience has showed these products to be both above average tasty for a prepared food and also pretty useful when inspiration, time or stocks are short in any proportion. Very useful when we are out in Brunhilde and short of an oven – but that is by-the-by.

I was very busy, time was extremely short and rustling up a packet with some extra goodies thrown in seemed like the way to go, with a healthy salad on the side. I had bought some Little Gem at the weekend and with some chopped fresh coriander, peppers and other bits, I thought we would eat quite well.

I tossed the contents of the two sachets into a pan, adding the requisite water and turned the pan on to boil. Then I set about gathering my salad ingredients together, having 16 minutes (according to the packet)  in which to prepare the salad, lay the table and so on.

I gathered together red pepper, green pepper, red onion… The cucumber was over a week old and had to be discarded. There were no tomatoes as I had found none fit to buy when I went shopping. The salad was looking niggardly… and even more so when I could not find the lettuce.

Once again, Mr L joined in. Once again, we failed to find what we needed. I swore that I certainly remembered picking it up in the shop because I recalled saying that if we didn’t have salad I could braise the pair of lettuce and serve as a vegetable. He swore that he recalled putting the lettuce away. It was at this stage that I realised that I had neglected to stir the grains. Nor had I turned the heat down when it came to the boil.

I scrapped the pan of slightly-charred mush that I had inadvertently created and opened another packet and emptied it into a clean pan – thankfully these purchases come cheap (40p a packet, since you ask.)

Mr L arrived for his lunch and I banged about the kitchen, muttering about Gremlins and Borrowers and how on earth things can disappear like that and where  could the yeast and the lettuce have got to. I went into a drawer to get a measuring spoon and for some strange reason actually opened the left-hand drawer, where I keep my Kenwood mixer attachments, instead of the right-hand drawer where I keep the measuring spoons and…

…right in front of me was a new packet of Dove’s Farm Yeast.

How it got there, I do not know. Why it got in there, I cannot imagine but at least I was able to crack on and make my bread in the pm.

Of course, I set the rolls to rise and then forgot about them for two hours… and then tried to bake them in a cold oven.

Knitting went well. There’s a positive. I am still on ball one, still unable to believe that seven balls will be sufficient but amazed at how far the first ball is stretching. I am into the fourth repeat of five of the border pattern/pocket section.

Now, where do you suppose that packet Little Gem is? I mean, I doubt that Nell ate it – I  ruled out the Tumble Dryer by default, having done the laundry and Mr L checked in the freezer…

 

 

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