We do love a party! Ever since socialising has been allowed this year, we have been indulging in our passion and having friends and family round for meals. This has been quite a challenge with constantly changing rules, and the restriction on numbers indoors to start with meant that we had to spread the love and actually have more gatherings with fewer people.
Sometimes I have help with the catering or we have a bring and share event. For our Merry Wives of Windsor after show party on the last night, two very good friends involved in the production assisted me with the catering. Afterwards there was quite a lot of green salad left. Sometimes it does not look that exciting the next day, so I decided to work my magic on it and avoid food waste at the same time. The best dish to make with left-over salad (in my humble opinion) is Peas a la Francaise, which is basically fresh or frozen peas cooked gently with stock, onion, lettuce of any description and a few lardons or any kind of bacon snipped into small pieces. Actually I don’t always put the bacon in, but on this occasion I was roasting a chicken for dinner. So the bacon that had been covering the chicken then went into my pea dish. Sadly I did not take a photo of this, but you get the idea.
Last night some school library committee friends came round for a bring and share social supper. I invited them to the house, as for me it is easier than trying to get to a pub; I don’t drive. This time I found that the main item left-over that was not going to keep for long, was the remains of a pack of carrot batons that was brought along to go with the dips. They were looking a bit limp, but I resisted the temptation to just throw them into the food bin. I decided to roast them with spices – coriander, cardamom and harissa (powder not paste) along with freshly milled pepper, sea salt and olive oil. They took probably more than half an hour to cook to a beautiful tenderness. I then mixed some of them with some red and wild rice that I had just cooked, and some seared chorizo. You could use feta to ring the changes. The rest I blitzed with some ricotta to make a rather interesting dip or pate. I am thinking of having that in some sandwiches as a base for salad and ham or cheese.
We had the salad for lunch, still warm, along with the celeriac slaw that I had made for last night’s supper but forgot to take out of the fridge!
It is a good thing that we both love carrots! Having them both raw and cooked for lunch was a really lovely contrast of textures. I might even include both as part of a buffet selection for a future party – hopefully remembering to take them out of the fridge (although the roasted dish is best served freshly cooked).
I love foraging and I also like to avoid food waste. I am most comfortable foraging when I am completely confident that the berries, leaves, funghi or whatever I am taking home is edible. Last year we were given a top tip on a place to forage locally for wild garlic, so we have made return visits this year. I have since been told by many people that the leaves in the basket above are in fact three-cornered leek, not wild garlic. No matter, it can be used in exactly the same way so I am happy to pick it. I even call it wild garlic usually, as it is snappier off the tongue!
I have made pesto and garlic butter with the results of my foraging. I had the idea of freezing garlic butter for use later in the year for making garlic bread to go with barbecue food. The pesto is lovely mixed into risotto, made into a dip with Greek yoghurt or added to pasta dishes. I make mine without measuring anything at all. I use a food processor and blend the garlic/leeks with olive oil, toasted pine nuts, shaved parmesan, a splash of lemon juice and plenty of sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Sometimes I use a different variety of nut, and in fact on this occasion I used almonds. Of course you can leave the nuts out if you have allergies or just don’t like them.
Today I decided to make spicy carrot soup for lunch, using some beautiful local carrots with tops still on, from Henley-on-Thames weekly market. When we had pet rabbits, we used to save the carrot tops for them, which they loved. I started looking into cooking with carrot tops a while back, as they look so beautiful and it seems a shame to put them in the compost if you don’t have hungry rabbits to feed. I found that the most common use is to make pesto. The tops are quite tough, so I went along with the advice in one recipe to remove the toughest stalks and use mainly the leaves. There was also a recommendation to blanch the leaves for about 5 minutes, so I always do this too. I then blitzed the blanched carrot tops with some of my three-cornered leek pesto, adding some more olive oil, lemon juice and seasoning. I also mixed in some Greek yoghurt to a portion to use today for dolloping on our soup.
I made my carrot soup with half a dozen chopped carrots, which I did not peel, but it does depend on the carrots; some really do need peeling if they look very bruised and the dirt does not lift off easily when you wash them. I cut my carrots into dice, as I like to semi-blitz my soup, and for this method it is nicest to have neat pieces of carrot which are not blitzed, rather than being too random and chunky. I also added a stick of celery, a chopped onion and some left-over rocket, tomato and beetroot salad (but this is purely optional!) I fried everything in olive oil and added freshly ground coriander, cumin seeds, harissa powder and a couple of knobs of grated ginger. I then added enough water to cover the vegetables and have about 6 inches of water over the top of the mixture – very unscientific but I rarely measure anything when I am making soup. After bubbling away on the hob for about 20 minutes, the vegetables were tender and I half-blitzed the soup with my stick blender.
We had this for lunch with some of the yoghurt pesto drizzled on the top. We also had home-made sourdough bread and home-made chicken liver pate. The pate was a gift from my mother and I just wanted to try it right away!
I usually do a menu plan and make use of my many cookery books and food magazines. Last night I had planned to make an alternative cauliflower cheese, with a few modifications. The recipe included pickled onions, which neither I nor Paul like, and also home-pickled walnuts, which I was planning to prepare. However, as I started cooking last night, I realised that this was a very cheffy recipe and much better suited to entertaining. So I took the basic idea and some of the ingredients, such as walnuts, and shallots (instead of the pickled onions) to create something of my own. The writer of the recipe was promoting using the whole cauliflower, including leaves. Well I have for a long time now been using cauliflower leaves. Just be careful not to let them burn if you roast them rather than boiling them. They don’t need as long in the oven as the cauliflower florets.
So my recipe was to roast the caulflower and then cover it with a lovely cheese sauce. I made an all-in-one sauce with full cream milk on this occasion. Sometimes I just mix creme fraiche with ricotta and cheddar as a short-cut. I then roasted new potatoes to serve with it. To this roast mixture I added shallots. For about 10 minutes at the end of the roasting time I added walnuts and the cauliflower leaves. To my mind this was a good compromise and another nice variation on the ever popular cauliflower cheese.
Parsnip, Cheese and Apple Soda Bread with wheySpicy Roast Squash Soup with Parsnip and Apple
Yesterday I made cottage cheese with my old milk. Today I did the next stage of my sourdough loaf, adding whey instead of water. The bread will be ready tomorrow; pictures and taste review to follow!
I had a small amount of whey left; see the picture below:
So I made a soda bread loaf, using whey instead of milk or yoghurt. I have to say that it turned out really well and was so good with the spicy soup. Recipes for both dishes are below:
Parsnip, Cheese and Apple Soda Bread
Ingredients:
6oz (150g) plain flour
6oz (150g) rye flour
1.5 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp cream of tartar
(you can use 2 tsp of baking powder instead of the above two ingredients, or use self-raising flour if you like)
4oz (100g) butter
2oz (50g) cheddar or other cheese
1/2 large or 1 whole parsnip
1/2 apple of your choice
1/4 pint (150ml) whey, buttermilk or a mixture of milk and yoghurt, or even slightly off milk
Method
Preheat the oven to 200 C or 400 F Gas 6
Grease a baking tray
Weigh all the ingredients into your mixing bowl apart from the liquid, grating the peeled parsnip, the apple (no need to peel) and the cheese. You can also grate the butter into the bowl if it is very hard, or rub it in with your fingers.
Carefully mix in the liquid of your choice. You might not need it all but you do want a really soft dough, wetter than pastry.
Try not to over-work the dough, then form it into a round or oval shape. Lightly brush it with a little left-over milk or whey. I like to slash a few knife marks in my loaf. Alternatively you could make small scones if you prefer, using a round cutter. If you do this, don’t roll the dough out, but just pat it lightly so that you have thick scones (about 1/2 ” or 1.5 cms).
Bake in the hot oven for about 35 minutes for a loaf or about 12/15 minutes for small scones. Unlike yeasted or sourdough bread, it is fine to cut soda bread when it is quite warm; this does not squish and spoil it.
Spicy Roast Squash Soup with Parsnip and Apple
This recipe is very flexible and I am not giving very precise quantities. This is roughly what I did today.
Ingredients
1 butternut squash
1/2 Parsnip
1/2 Apple
(you see that I have used the other half of these two ingredients in my soda bread)
Spices – about a tsp each of whatever you fancy eg cumin. ras el hanout, coriander, turmeric, fresh ginger
I onion
Stock or water as needed
Method Roast your squash in a hot oven (200 C or 400 F Gas 6). I cut mine into big pieces without peeling and drizzled with olive oil and spices. I saved about a third of the squash to use in a salad on another day, but you could just make more soup! The timing will vary depending on how big you cut up the squash. I just cut mine into 4 pieces. I removed the seeds and stringy bits from the bulbous end. So mine took about 40 minutes to cook. You could of course cut the squash into smaller pieces and even peel it if you want to. When mine was cooked and cool enough to handle, I scraped the flesh away from the skin.
Whilst the squash is cooking, cook the onion, parsnip and apple in some olive oil in a big saucepan. Add the squash and let it all cook together for a while until all is soft. You then just need to add water or stock (chicken or vegetable would work, but I used enough flavours to manage without stock) to generously cover the veg in the pan. Season well with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and cook for about another 15 minutes. Go easy on the liquid, as you can always add more later if it is too thick.
Blitz your soup as you like it. With squash I tend to make it quite smooth with just a few chunks left in for texture. Check the seasoning and enjoy with your soda bread. I also tried some of my cottage cheese from yesterday and it all went together really well!
This made enough soup for roughly 4 people. Using the whole squash would probably make enough for 6.
Jess left home recently and I failed to cancel some of the milk in time. She is a big consumer of full cream milk. I buy the unhomogenised type with the cream on the top. We do also buy semi-skimmed milk, but research a few months back convinced me that full cream milk is healthy and full of goodness, more so than milk with the fat stripped out! She was enjoying it on her porridge and we always had a bit of fun with breaking the cream so that you could actually pour the milk! I discovered a while back that with traditional milk, you can turn the bottle upside down without losing your milk. However, the bottle in the photo above was past its best. I do use the full cream for cooking, and in particular when I am making cheese or white sauce. Today I decided that I really had to do something with the 2 and a bit pints of milk that were about four days past their sell-by date.
I had a funny conversation with Paul. I told him that I was trying to use up some milk, so he suggested rice pudding. I said ‘no that would taste disgusting!’ He was surprised and commented that my cooking is not that bad! I then realised that I had left out the vital information about the milk being out of date! Scones are great made with out of date milk, but I had far too much milk for scones, so I decided to have a go at cheese-making. You can make ricotta or cottage cheese with sour milk (health warning! you don’t want it to be completely rancid! I’d say no more than a week out of date probably).
Colander lined with a jelly bag for straining my cheese
I looked at a couple of recipes and found that the method is really very simple. You just boil the milk, add some lemon juice or vinegar and take it off the heat. You then stir it and it clumps into curds.
Cheesy curds draining
As I had really very little cheese, I decided to add some salt and cream to it to make it into cottage cheese, as this also gave me a bit more bulk to my cheese.
My finished cheese is in the picture below. I had so much whey left afterwards that I have decided to use it in my sourdough bread that I am mixing up at the moment. It won’t be ready until Sunday morning though, ie the day after tomorrow. I found all sorts of other ideas for using whey, including making smoothies, putting into cocktails, as a marinade for meat and even for adding to the dog’s breakfast! As we don’t have a dog, I shall not be trying that out. I am really looking forward to eating my home-made cheese on home-made whey sourdough bread on Sunday!
Jess and I are in very much of a set routine doing the shopping for multiple households now. Although Jess sometimes says that she would rather spend her time doing something more interesting, she really enters into the spirit of the day and we have a lot of fun and laughter on shopping day. To get us in the mood, she tries to select music to play in the car to jolly us along. We listen to many ABBA tracks and songs from the musical soundtracks.
Yesterday we started shopping for a new client, referred by the Rotary Club volunteer scheme. So for me it was 3 people in one trolley to shop for, and just 2 for Jess. The first thing that went wrong was that, when we arrived at Waitrose, I realised that I had left all of the special bags behind – those nice trolley bags with cardboard sides and more of a structure for loading in the trolley. Disorganised or what?! Well, you have to bear in mind that we have spent the last few months transferring shopping bags and excess bags of recycling from one car to the other. There has been very little access to the community tip. This week for the first time in ages, we braved the tip on our appointed day and got rid of quite a few bags. However, to make space in the car, Jess had moved the Waitrose bags into Paul’s car and not put them back into hers! It really was not her fault; I should have checked!
Luckily my mother and one of our friends provide their own jute bags, and I had picked up one large shopping bag other than the designated Waitrose ones. I decided that I definitely needed to hand over shopping in a proper bag, so I found one bag for our new client and hung the big Sainsburys bag onto the trolley for our other friend. My shopping I just had to load up loose in the trolley. With five lots of shopping to do, it was quite a task keeping it all segregated and organised.
I also had the usual round of queries and wondering if to go for substitutes or not. My mother had asked for some items from ‘The Saucy Fish Company’ which we just could not find, so that meant a ‘phone call checking what she would like instead. Then I spent ages trying to find crisps with no added salt! After about 10 minutes of searching I established that they do not exist!
Once I had paid for the 3 loads of shopping and taken it all to the car, I had to find a sensible way to load the car so that it would not get muddled up again. Our new client was very happy with her first experience of us doing her shopping and would like us to continue. She gave us a gift of some Welsh cakes and some beautiful red roses from her garden. I had to unload her bag so that I could retrieve it and give it back to the friend it belongs to.
When we finally arrived home, over 3 hours after setting off in the morning, we had the task of fishing all of our own shopping out of the boot of the car and getting it into the house. We were all starving hungry by this time, so I usually quickly put the food into the fridge which really cannot wait, whilst Paul and Jess lay the table for lunch. We usually have home-made bread, cheese and ham on shopping days. Just as we were about to eat, my mother rang needing some help with sending and receiving e-mails in the car; she wanted to drop some books off to a friend locally. Explaining the complexities of turning data on and off whilst on the move was a bit difficult, so Jess had to run outside and give her a quick lesson…
Later on I realised that I had missed an e-mail from one of our friends asking for an extra item to be added to her shopping list! Oh well, there is always Saturday, when we have a little trip out to buy the Saturday Telegraph for my mother. How would they all manage without us?!
I have baked my own bread for a long time. I started doing this long before it became fashionable and so talked about. I like home made bread, in fact all home made food. I like to know what is in my food; the number of additives that go into the average loaf that you buy is alarming. For many years I was happy with using dried yeast. It is easy to purchase, works well and we don’t have any allergies in our family. I had experimented with sourdough bread a few years ago, as I like a challenge and the idea of a purer product. However, the results were not good enough to convince me. My loaves were heavy and too stodgy to want to eat on a regular basis.
In the intervening years, I have seen photos of others’ successful sourdough bread and been a little envious. How difficult could it really be? In addition, my brother Matthew visits on a fairly regular basis and we share lunches and dinners. He much prefers sourdough, as it seems to be better for his digestion and well-being. Many people say that sourdough is more easily digested. If I make bread as part of a menu, it would be great to be able to produce sourdough for Matthew.
The situation all came to a head recently when I, like many, found that my yeast supplies were running low.
I started to look up recipes online as well as study my books with sourdough recipes. I also of course consulted my helpful friends in my Archers Chit-Chat group on facebook! I came to the conclusion that I was just not being patient enough and that maybe the first time round I did not get the starter going properly. I have read many times that making a starter should take up to a week, but that it can take longer. One suggestion from Chit-Chat was really helpful, that maybe I could make life easier for myself and try making a starter with a lump of yeasted dough which I could then feed and develop. So in the end I tried two starters, one completely from scratch with just flour and water and the other with a lump of dough that I have added more flour and water to. Okay, you could call this cheating, but actually Doreen Dough has been growing so well that she cannot possibly have any commercial yeast left in her! Dotty Dough, made from scratch, was not as successful; I could have tried again, but decided that life was too short and I had made a working starter, albeit not one for the purists!
I decided to use my trusty friend, BBC Good Food. I am lucky enough to have a gift subscription to this magazine. I also make use of the online recipes if I cannot find quite what I want in my hard copies (I keep them for about 2 years and then throw them away apart from a few treasured ones which have particular recipes in!) After all the advice and links suggested to me, I went for the recipe from Barney Desmazery, with the slight variation that I put a small lump of yeasted dough in with the first measures of flour and water. After that I followed Barney’s instructions to the letter. As I have become more confident, I have known where I can miss out a step or not knead the dough and rest it for exactly the number of times suggested. Here is the link to his recipe: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sourdough-starter The full instructions for turning this starter into a loaf are here: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/white-sourdough
Here are some progress pictures of my starter and dough waiting to be turned into delicious bread:
Making the starter into a loaf… Dough ready to be baked
It is testament to the popularity of sourdough right now that Barney’s recipe consequently turned up in the May issue of the BBC Good Food Magazine. The recipes had been in the magazine last summer and earlier this year.
I had a few disappointing moments with my first few loaves. In fact my first completed loaf was pretty good! I did as suggested in all of the recipes I had seen and baked my loaf in a cast iron casserole dish. The dough is pretty wet and baking it in the dish seemed to help. However, it did take a long time to cook. The second time I baked a loaf, it was a complete disaster and I ended up turning it into breadcrumbs. It was heavy and quite unpalatable. I am convinced that the dish was to blame! See the picture of my unsuccessful loaf below:
Stodgy, inedible sourdough loaf!
Despite having had success with the casserole dish method, I was not prepared to risk another disaster, particularly as I was now having trouble getting regular supplies of flour. I then had the great idea of trying to source flour from a traditional mill, and I have bought quite a few bags from this place on the Isle of Wight: https://www.calbournewatermill.co.uk/product-category/isle-of-wight-flours/ Anyway, to go back to my baking disaster, I took the plunge and just baked the next loaves on a baking sheet, free-form as I usually do with my yeasted loaves. Although the dough was really wet, it rose to the challenge and my bread was a success. The picture at the top of this blog piece was one of the loaves I made by this method.
I did consider buying a proving/kneading gadget from Lakeland, my favourite kitchen shop, but decided in the end to save the expense. The idea of this silicone bread maker is that you can bake an oval or round loaf in it. I was advised though that it only makes a very small loaf. I have also in the past given up on proving baskets. I bought one of these a few years ago as I liked the idea of making loaves with those very professional looking spirals on the top. However, despite using plenty of flour, my basket just kept sticking! So my equipment is really very basic. I use a very big mixing bowl, as I generally make two loaves at the same time; we do seem to be eating more bread in lockdown! If the situation changes, I can reduce the quantities or put a loaf in the freezer. I also knead the dough on my granite board. This board is not designed for the purpose at all, and in fact was purchased for chocolate making, which Jess and I both do on occasions. The reason I use the board is that sourdough making involves kneading and folding for a few minutes, then leaving the dough to rest. I do follow the advice and do this 3 times before putting the dough back into the bowl and proving it in the fridge for 18 hours. I just find it more convenient to not have my complete worktop sticky with bread dough. With the board, it is nice and portable should I need to move the resting dough and get on with some other cooking.
I had a few e-mail discussions with my brother Matthew to see how he was getting on with his sourdough experiments. He found that using a proving basket worked for him, and I believe he also bakes the loaf in a casserole dish as suggested.
I am now so happy and confident with my bread making. I usually add some spelt, rye or granary flour to my dough and I sometimes make sourdough pizza. I can also offer a loaf to my mother, as she enjoys my home-made bread. I am happy to say that Jess is now more prepared to eat home-made bread. It is probably partly to do with being kind and considerate during lockdown, and making limited visits to the shops, but she did used to insist on having a loaf from the supermarket for her sandwiches – she now happily eats the bread I make and I like to think that this is because it tastes so good!
Here is a picture, hot off the press, of today’s loaves. I shall be making some sandwiches for lunch. Oh, one further word of advice. Do try to resist the temptation to cut your loaf too soon. Hot bread squishes and goes rather doughy if you cut it too soon. It is best to wait at least a couple of hours before eating it! After a couple of days, sourdough bread is perfect for toast.
Jess and I have been in a routine of shopping for up to five households a week for quite a number of weeks now. Her role is to drive the car and take one trolley round the shop. I don’t drive (well, I do a bit but it’s complicated!) so I organise the lists, take another trolley and do all the talking. We now have the task down to a fine art and have compiled the following bullet point list, which may or may not help others!
Request the shopping lists from friends and family at least a day in advance. Most people will change their minds about what they want a few times, or write down items which are not clear – ice-cream (any particular flavour?), grainy mustard (French or English?), organic chicken (will free-range do?)
Insist on lists being e-mailed to you, as you can then copy and paste onto sheets and print them out. Our system is that I do our own shopping, plus one friend. Jess does her grandmother and one or two friends. You need to be able to attach your list in a single sheet to your trolley. We used to get given hand-written lists (saves paper apparently! Oh no it doesn’t and it is just a faff! One week Jess had three hand-written lists attached to her trolley!)
Make sure the car you are using is not full of bags of recycling that you need to take to the tip when it reopens! If it is, just dump the bags into another car or a shed!
To go back to lists, your clients need to specify if they are not happy with substitutes for particular products. If they don’t specify, just buy them something similar! This is so much more flexible than shopping online, when I think you have to either say substitutes or none – not specific to each item! The first week we went shopping after lockdown, we bought quite a few alternative vegetables , as there was not much available! So people had to put up with sweet potatoes when they had asked for ordinary maincrop! Cabbage will be fine instead of broccoli of course?! Coconut flour was all that was available that week! Today one friend asked for either self raising flour or sultana scones. Neither were available, so I used my initiative and bought her plain flour, bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar.
Only two forms of payment should be acceptable. Either they pay you online afterwards, or you take their credit/debit card. Am I really going to be dishonest with someone else’s card?! Cheques are an absolute no no. I don’t have time to go and cash them and I want the money now!
Use quick check with a scanner taken round the shop. In fact, gather together all the My Waitrose cards you can, and get lots of scanners – one for each client! (other supermarkets are available!)
One new trick we tried today was putting a named sticker on each scanner; it saves getting the scanners muddled up! It is a good idea to remove the stickers afterwards.
Using quick check means that you can pack the bags as you go. You can allocate different bags in your trolley for each person. With my own trolley, I start off very organised and then have so much shopping for our own household that I end up with a complete mess that I have to reorganise in the car afterwards.
You must go to the shop not being stressed about having to queue up. Treat it as a fun outing. Sometimes we chat or shout across to other people in the queue. Jess usually brings a book. You can always catch up on facebook and bring a cup of coffee in an insulated cup.
If you are shopping for several households, by all means queue up with the other member of your family who is helping you. If staff ask why there are two of you, it is simple enough to explain. We then tend to split up and take our trollies when we get towards the front of the queue.
Make sure that you are not going to end up starving hungry, so pick your time for shopping. We usually go mid-morning and end up having a late lunch at about 2:30 when we get back, but that suits us fine.
Another trick with the list is to take a clip or clothes peg to attach it to your trolley.
If you are going to forget items on a list, make sure that it is your own list. I hate failing to buy someone’s complete list of groceries.
Always talk to the staff and greet them with a smile. I always chat to the staff on the fish and meat counter and comment on how good the supplies of meat and fish have been during this crisis. It is also tremendously helpful to let it be known that you are shopping for several households; otherwise our trollies can make us look very greedy!
If you take a young person with you and they have alcohol on their list, make sure that they have age ID with them! You can read my other blog piece all about what happened when Jess forgot to take her ID – not fun!
Lastly, if you are buying items for the food bank, make sure you drop them in the crate at the end of your trip. Twice now we have forgotten to do this, so have to store them in the car for the following week.
So there you are, my slightly tongue-in-cheek guide to shopping during lockdown! I think I am going to miss these trips in a funny kind of way when this is all over….
You are never too old to enjoy the fun of a large box!
I cannot understand the concept of being bored at home. I just love my home and my family and am in danger of getting too used to not having to go to work. I am very fortunate in having a job as a school librarian. This means that I am able to work from home, albeit in a limited way. I am also on the rota to go into school and support our vulnerable students; this happens once a fortnight. I was able to help with our school holiday club too.
Sarah in a box!
I am very lucky in being so close to my immediate family. For Paul and me this is our second marriage and I was very careful not to make a mistake the second time round. We have always spent a lot of time together during the week. Paul works from home; he has not done anything but work from home in all the time I have known him. With my driving phobia, he has often had to take me to work or to the railway station. Then there have been times when I have worked from home or taken time off, for instance on both of the occasions on which I was made redundant. So being together for much of the time during lockdown has not been a big change for us. My work in recent years has been part-time, albeit nearly full time in my current post. Jess and I have always been close, partly because, well that is just the way we are; we are lucky in having some similar interests. In addition, I think an only child naturally spends more time with parents than children in bigger families. I was close to my parents, but grew up as one of three, so spent much time playing games with my brothers. Add to that the fact that Jess’ father is not with us as part of the family and it all adds up to many hours and indeed years of doing craft activities and playing board games together. I am by nature, I like to think, a fairly creative person and did not need much excuse when Jess was younger, to buy craft kits, science experiment sets and fun toys such as a rocket operated with a bicycle pump! In this time of lockdown, it has been very therapeutic to do more of these activities together. Before lockdown, Jess and I used to enjoy shopping together; she came to love Henley, the beautiful town where I work, and we often went to the shops after she had collected me from work. We also made many trips to the cinema and theatre as a a family. Another interest we all have in common is a love of walking and the countryside; it was inevitable that Jess would come to love walking, as although over the years she has lived in quite a large number of houses, for the past 15 years (so since she was 7) we have lived in our little rented cottage in the woods.
So now we spend time together playing games, painting furniture, clearing cupboards and walking along our many local footpaths. Cooking is another interest that Jess and I share; she works as a chef in normal times, so that is something else that we can enjoy together. These activities have to some extent replaced the shopping and visits to the cinema and theatre, as well as our trips to the leisure centre in Henley. We also just enjoy eating meals together and sometimes just having a laugh. Witness the climbing into boxes episode in the above pictures. Today Jess received a parcel; she had ordered an Oodie online! An oodie is a bit like a hoodie and, to my mind, much nicer than a onesie. You can see us both modelling this in the following pictures:
Jess showing off her new oodie
Does the sloth oodie suit me?
I think that really I just manage to fill the time that is available with activities, and that I don’t always want excitement in my life. I love looking out of the window whilst I am writing; the trees change their colours with the seasons and I can see the results of all that hard labour in the garden, mainly Paul’s hard labour. I have never watched daytime television, although I can quite happily put off a task which requires complete concentration and no background noise by saying to myself: ‘I’ll just listen to 2 hours on the radio and then I’l make that phone call or write that article that I need to do.’ I also love doing domestic tasks such as hanging out the washing and watering the pots in the garden. At the moment I also have to do a certain amount of cleaning in the house, as we have paid our cleaners not to come for the forseeable future.
We do have a new weekly event in the household, which is Friday film night. Each week one of us will select a film and we all settle down to watch it at about 7:30pm, accompanied by whatever dinner I have decided to cook. Friday is usually fish night, but there are endless variations on that theme. The first week, I did make a selection of tasty snacks and canapes, but it was hard work clearing it all up and having everything safely back in the fridge afterwards (I always cook too much when it comes to snacks!) so now I just make a regular meal such as fish pie or fish cakes.
Although I always do a lot of cooking, I can happily do more when I have more time. This inevitably means more washing up of course. Jess says I bake too much. I like making cups of tea for everyone in the afternoon and asking what kind of cake or biscuits they would like with their cuppa. I have always made our own bread, but somehow we are eating more at the moment with us all being at home. I have finally perfected the art of sourdough bread, having run out of yeast recently. I shall tell you more about that in my next blog piece! For the moment, I am a little apprehensive about the announcements to be made on Sunday. There is bound to be some news about schools and what will be happening for the rest of the term. Much as I love my job, I also love being a domestic goddess and am wondering how I shall readjust to this next phase….
The above picture is not part of our shopping trip; it is just meant to illustrate how youthful my daughter is. She finds it frustrating being asked for age ID, but I tell her she needs to enjoy it whilst she can and take it as a compliment!
We have fallen into a regular routine of shopping every Thursday at Waitrose, leaving home at about 11:00am and sometimes not getting home until 2:30pm. The other week our trip took even longer; I’ll explain why! The routine starts earlier in the week, when I e-mail two of our friends to check what provisions they need. One friend e-mails her list and the other leaves her list and shopping bags for us to collect from her doorstep. My mother does a hand-written list that we collect from her; she also takes a phone call from another friend so writes down her list too.
The queue to get into Waitrose is variable in length; it has taken us up to 45 minutes to get to the shop, although on occasions it can take just 15 minutes. When we get towards the front of the queue, we split up, take two large trollies and then proceed. It takes a very long time to shop for 5 households, with each list covering roughly the same areas of the shop. Sometimes we have to go and hunt for items that we are not familiar with; staff are always most helpful. I usually have to give Jess a helping hand and advise her on vegetable varieties if complex, and cuts of meat. She deals with 3 shorter lists and I do our own shopping plus one other list.
We buy most of our own wine and beer in the cash and carry, so don’t have bottles to get in Waitrose, although I sometimes buy a bottle of whiskey. On this particular occasion my list for our friend included gin. I am not that familiar with gin, so took some advice from one of the Partners on what to get. I also helped Jess to select two bottles of wine for her grandmother; it was coming up to the Easter weekend, so we wanted to make sure that she had something good quality. Because Jess is 22, I never think to ask her if she has age ID with her. Unfortunately she behaves a bit like the Queen and prefers to travel without the incumbrance of a purse! Paul does this too; they are lucky that I never go anywhere without my handbag and purse! So of course, the bell rang at the Quick Check till for Jess to be age checked. The Waitrose Partner naturally thought that she looked under-age and refused to authorise the wine purchase. I realised that I had been a bit silly in not just putting it in my trolley to put through with my purchases. “Oh never mind,” I said naively, “pass it over and I’ll pay for it!” He was not happy with that at all! “I cannot let you buy alcohol for your daughter!” Jess protested that she does not like wine and that if she were going to buy alcohol she would not choose “fancy, expensive wine!” What really annoyed me in addition was that my purchase of gin was approved with no questions! However, the damage was done. By this time we had been shopping for about an hour and a half and were tired and hungry. My last ditch attempt to buy the wine was to suggest that I went round the shop again. The Partner said, yes you can do that if you want to. However, when I put the wine through the till a second time, he came over and refused to sell me the wine! I have to say that I have not had this experience in my favourite supermarket before, and I think that the stress of the current situation is getting to everyone. I was a bit upset by this time, explaining that we just trying to make sure that my mother had a jolly, happy Easter Sunday dinner on her own! But all to no avail. So we had to give up and go to Tesco to buy wine afterwards. Luckily there is a small branch on our route, and the queue was not too long….
On our return home, Jess put her driving licence in her phone pouch ready for the next week (when of course wine was not on the list – what a shame!)
