How’s the patient?

This is the question that some people are asking! So …

Last Tuesday, 23 June, we noticed that one of Lily’s stitches had come out, and we were a little worried about the wound. I rang Kingston, who said to bring her down, so Pete did so. They checked her over,  and were perfectly happy with her, and didn’t charge us!

Two days later, she was back to have the rest of the stitches out; I bowed out of that one too and sent Pete. Apparently it took one vet, one blob *and* one veterinary nurse to accomplish it :) (They didn’t charge for that either – I’m impressed). She was supposed to have her jabs too, but she was (and still is) a bit sniffly, so they didn’t want to do it.

Other than that, she’s been living in the bedroom. We gave up with the cage on Tuesday (I think), and Lilith decided that where she wanted to be was on my pillow. Day or  night. So I have had to share it at night. Her side has a regal purple towel on it, but she is no respecter of boundaries. She’s eating well, and showing non signs of wanting to go through the cat flap, and I’m quite, quite happy for her to be an indoor cat, thanks.

Yesterday, she came down, and spent the afternoon on our laps (not at the same time, obviously, but back and forth). She then decamped to the kitchen and curled up on the worktop, where she stayed for the rest of the day. And the night. But I was good, and only got up three times to check she was OK.

Her pluth is returning, and she actually swiped me the other morning, which was lovely – our horrible Lily is returning!

Mirrored from the Tribe.

what we ate at the weekend

Friday night: 
South Indian cabbage with basmati. One of our very favourite meals – cheap, quick, nutritious.

Saturday:
Breakfast was taken at Fudge, which is at the top of our road. We had been heading over for a walk along the Humber estuary at the Hessle foreshore, but the car (bless it’s little alloy wheels) had other ideas, and died on the way. RAC got it going and followed us to Greg, the trusty Garage Man, who has replaced the alternator. So as a consolation, we had breakfast out – steak/philly sandwich for me. Nom.

That filled us up a bit, so we made a big potful of roast veg in the afternoon: a big butternut squash, three red peppers, a sweet potato lurking at the bag of the veg drawer, a big aubergine, a courgette, couple of red onions, garlic,chilli flakes, some chopped herbs from the garden. I do my roast veg in the Remoska, as it saves putting the big oven on, and they actually cook quicker. We ate it with rice, and it made another six portions – one is in the fridge to have with (probably) sausages tomorrow, and two went into the freezer.

You can do a lot with roast veg: have it with rice or pasta. Add chopped chicken or pork, or chorizo. Add some chickpeas or lentils. Cheap and delicious.

Sunday:
I’d made a visit to our wonderful local butcher, T L Norman of Princes Ave, Hull, on Friday afternoon, to get some eggs, and a piece of steak for Sunday night. We bought a set of serrated knives in Aldi a few weeks ago – nice and sharp, with red handles that almost (but not quite) match the red handled cutlery we already have. And they needed to be tested; what better than a nice piece of ribeye?

I made a return visit on Saturday, as we thought we would fancy bacon and scrambled eggs for breakfast on Sunday, but as it happened we didn’t. I’d made a Finnish rye loaf with caraway seeds on Saturday evening, and did the final knock back/prove/bake on Sunday morning, and we just had fresh-baked bread and marmalade for breakfast. Actually, Pete didn’t even bother with the marmalade.

We had the steak late afternoon, with a baked potato and frozen peas, and extremely nice it was too. Later in the evening, I had three oatcakes with Marmite and an apple.

There was also a blackberry cake, which I shall relate to you in another post.

So, not much using up, as such (although the rye flour heap is slightly diminished) but very nice food all the same :)

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.

Morrisons: a disappointment. And a blackberry cake

We try not to use big supermarkets much. My usual haunt is Aldi, but if I must go elsewhere, we generally do Morrisons. And there are some “treaty” things we get in Morrisons, so when Pete cycled off there on Saturday with trailer in tow (after the car debacle), he was going to get some.

I’m diabetic, so I have to watch what I eat, but I love the Lindt plain chocolate with sea salt, and their Intense Coconut too. And Kallo plain chocolate ricecakes are very low cal/carb, considering. So imagine mine and Pete’s disappointment when none of these three items were to be found on the shelves in the Anlaby Road store. He asked where they were, and the assistant said she assumed they’d been dropped, and was apparently surprised, because the Lindt bars were a good seller. I do wish supermarkets wouldn’t do this – three less reasons to visit Morrisons now.

I was miffed at this, so when he got back, I walked down to the big Great Satan Tesco Extra in Hull. It’s only 2km away. I really do try not to use Tesco, although we had bought diesel there that morning (always happy to knock them for a 5p/gallon discount – and before you ask, we got the voucher from a friend!). I found the chocolate easily enough, although they only had a single, solitary bar of Lindt Intense Coconut, so I wonder if that’s going to be dropped by the manufacturer …

In wandering about, I found some blackberries. *Blackberries*! Three quid a punnet, if you please, which makes me weep; we used to get pounds off the brambles on the drive at our old house [sob].

In the end, I did a sort of experiment – made a basic upside down batter, laid the blackberries on the bottom of the cake tin, and poured the batter over it. It was absolutely lovely, although I should probably have made some sort of coulis or something. We just had it with cream

Blackberry cake

batter:
300g caster sugar
200g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
200g marg or butter
about 2 tbsp milk

some blackberries

22cm springform cake tin, greased and the bottom lined with parchment.  Although you could use any tin that size.

Preheat the oven to 180C Gas 4.

Line the bottom of the tin with the blackberries.

Now, you can do this like I do – I just put all the batter ingredients in the Magimix other than the milk and whizz it up. Or you cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs and flour and baking powder bit by bit, stir in the vanilla essence, then the milk. Up to you entirely.

The milk I leave to the end because you want a sort of dropping consistency, and it’s better to add it bit by bit.

Pour the mix over the blackberries, bake for 45 minutes-ish. The blackberries all rise through the cake. It’s lovely.

Leave it to cool for about half an hour, then turn onto a plate. It made eight quite generous portions, and I don’t know how well it would keep. So we sent half of it over to some friends that Pete was visiting last night, and they seemed to like it too!

Mirrored from Reactive Cooking.