Sunny Sunday

Wonderful, wonderful weather this weekend - this Indian summer just keeps on going.   As a consequence, most of today was spent sitting either in the conservatory with both doors open, or pottering round the back garden - sometimes with laundry (wonderful drying weather), sometimes with sneaky chicken for next door's cat (and I wonder why I can't get rid of him), sometimes with a book.  I've finished the Wartime Housewife book now, and moved on to Dodger. 

In the meantime, though, there were a few things that needed to be done indoors, too.  Pasta for OH's lunches for the week, for instance.  We ran out of tuna, and in the spirit of Stoptober, I did not replace it, but looked around for a substitute - and a packet of minced beef seemed just the thing.  I made a kind of tomato-free ragu - onions, garlic, the last sad wrinkly stick of celery from the salad draw, a  carrot and the handful of runner beans that hadn't made it to the freezer yet. 

 

 

I also made mayo:

 

 

 

And then I boiled up a pot of pasta and threw it all together.  OH's lunches done and dusted. 

 

Another thing we ran out of is breakfast cereal.  This is not something we tend to depend on - far more likely to go for eggs, sourdough bread, fruit, kefir, or all of the above - but it's a nice-to-have, and something that OH is likely to reach for at the weekend when I am having a lie-in and no inclination to be preparing anything more elaborate.  I know, I know - most normal people tend to go for rushed cereal in the mornings and then have lazy protracted breakfasts at the weekends.... But we are not normal people ;)

 

Anyway, the way it went was - no cereal, but plenty of oats, and as the WTH book had a recipe for granola, granola it was.  I mixed up a batch, stuck it in the oven, and with the sunshine streaming into the kitchen through rather filmy windows (they're on my list, OK ?), I noticed that the cutlery draw really needed a clean.

 

 

 

I pulled everything out, gave the draw itself a good scrub, then looked through everything that was in there and identified an item that was best stored elsewhere (the honey dipper - it went into the cupboard next to the honey pot, because storing it at the back of the draw meant it was never used) and four items that were to be disposed of - a fork that was an ancient remnant of some defunct cutlery set and thus surplus to requirements;  two potato peelers that do not peel and are therefore never used; and an apple corer that was very useful until the amount of apples I had to core ended up pretty much snapping it in half.  I was sure I had disposed of it at the time - clearly, I was wrong !

 

I washed and dried all the cutlery, sharpened my knives, and back it all went. 

 

 

The gadgets that remained are all used regularly - a zester, a peeler that actually works;  a cherry pitter (or olive stoner, as you prefer - it will get rid of stones in all small fruits, from Mirabelle plums to damsons); garlic crusher, a Homer Simpson bottle opener (essential), a corkscrew, tin opener, and a couple of bottle stoppers - for keeping the homebrew fresh once the cork is out.

 

 

And back in it all went.

                                                      Meanwhile, the granola was ready:

 

 

And there were still sweetpeas to be picked in the garden.

 

October ?  Are you quite sure ?

 

And I have not spent a penny.  OH, though, had a day with his son, and some spending was done on that front, but that fortnightly expenditure is counted as part of his essentials. 

 

And another week starts tomorrow.... And here's hoping that the no-spend run happily continues :)