MIA - again

 It has been such a long time since my last post. I didn't even manage a post at Christmas. Oh dear.

It was a very different Christmas to the one we had planned. We normally spend the day, after church, with one of our children and the grandchildren. This year  our son was having in-law to stays, our younger daughter was also having in-laws, so that left us with out elder daughter and her family. however on Christmas Eve she rang us to say that she had Covid. so we gatecrashed our younger daughter and her in-laws. It was a very nice day even if we were all a bit squashed.

Our littlest grandson was very upset (he is 4) at having his Christmas ruined by Mummy being ill as well as missing out on lots of presents. We planned to have Christmas 2 (as small grandson called it) on New Years Day. This time time it was us that spoilt the day for him as we were both down with a bug. So we had Christmas 3 on the last Saturday in January. My husband was well by then but I was not. I just can't get my energy levels back up and am still struggling now after two months although I am much improved in the last month. We had a bug, not Covid like our daughter, as the tests proved negative. My daughter is still struggling and in under two weeks will be officially classed as having long Covid, poor soul. She is hoping to start back to work part time before the end of March - but we will have to see how she is. At this point, she can manage to sit up for an hour and a half at a time and is wearing a neck brace to be able to do that. On Christmas 3, she and I sat on the sofa and let everybody else do the work and that was quite enough for both of us. Small grandson was happy though : )

I am still managing to go and bake and cook for the church coffeeshop once a week as there is currently no one else to help out. My husband comes and does all the washing up and clearing up and I do the baking. I do a bit and sit a bit and have been producing the minimum amount possible. I am really thankful that I managed to do some extra and put it in the freezer before Christmas. However the stocks in the freezer are getting really low so I could really do with some energy back. All energy producing suggestions will be gratefully received!

Cooking

 Coffeeshop at church is getting more and more customers these days, which is great but I need to bake more to keep up with demand. There are two ladies who come in regularly to help. One cooks one recipe each week and the other cooks two recipes. That leaves me doing everything else. I don't mind really but just occasionally I would like a week off. We have not been away at all since lockdown began in March 2020 and we are beginning to feel that we would like a few days away. It is daunting when you have to cook in bulk and pretty well guarantee that everything you make will both look and taste great. So few people seem to bake these days and the quantity required does put people off volunteering.

On Monday I baked the bare minimum of cakes etc so that I could spend the rest of the day making lasagne. We serve homemade soup, baked potatoes and a hot "special" at lunchtime. the specials rotate between cottage pie, lasagne, cheese and tomato pasta. cheesy veg pasta and pizza. We were low on lasagne in the freezer so I made more. I made 74 portions in the end but the killer is that it is all packaged into two portion foil trays to put into the freezer. The foil trays all have rounded corners but lasagne sheets all have nice sharp, square corners which all need snapped off so that the lasagne sheets fit in the trays. For the topping, I use my friend's yoghurt and egg mixture which tastes lovely and freezes well. It took me nine hours to make everything on Monday and would have taken longer if my nice husband had not done all the washing up for me and also chopped the veg that I put into the lasagne sauce.  I didn't need any rocking when I finally got to bed : )

Happy New Year!

 Wishing you all a happy and definitely healthier new year : )

We have had a peaceful week since Christmas. We had a lovely day at our daughter's on Christmas day with her family and other "older" relatives. (Our other daughter and our son got together so that the children were with each other.) My daughter's family are vegetarian and she had cooked a fabulous nut roast with brazil nuts and cranberries and various sorts of vegetables which were very posh and very very tasty. After we came home in the evening, my husband said that it was so good that he had not actually missed having meat. That is incredibly high praise!!

We went to our son's on Boxing Day and had a fun afternoon with our grandchildren. I do enjoy seeing them : ). We were supposed to go to our older daughter's yesterday for New Year's Day but smallest grandson went down with chicken pox on Friday so obviously the visit didn't happen. Apparently his nursery school has been quite literally decimated by chicken pox so this was a problem waiting to happen. Daughter is supposed to be going back to work this week so we are waiting to see what happens.

We have had a lovely break from coffeeshop duties but they are starting tomorrow again. I shall have to spend three days this week on coffeeshop instead of the usual two so I will be tired by the end of this coming week. However, I shall look back with pleasure on this week just ended as we have had a lovely rest and done practically nothing : )

Nose back to the grindstone again

 Oops. I seemed to have blinked and missed a month. I blame it on the church coffee shop which has opened for business once again. We only serve outside, of course, for now at least. But after being closed for 13 months, the storeroom shelves were empty and the freezers were empty too. So I have literally been starting from scratch to supply everything needed. The only problem was how much to supply for immediate use as some days have been really cold. And who wants to sit outside to have something to eat on a really cold day?

I am also finding that I don't have as much energy as I did pre-covid and can't stand for a whole day baking as I used to. I am doing about three hours at a time which is quite enough for now and I hope that some energy does trickle back into my system. At least a few three hour sessions means that there is a little store of cake in the freezer now - just in case we get an influx of customers. We are serving a much reduced menu for now until we can have customers indoors again so I don't have to cook any lunchtime "specials" like cottage pie or pasta bake or lasagne yet. I did buy some carrots just before Easter weekend when they were down at 20p for a kilo and have put over 50 portions of carrot and coriander soup in the freezer ready for September. And of course I have been shopping and got a few things on the storeroom shelves again.

I have made a note of a few new recipes for cakes and bakes as I came across them this last year. I want to try them out and see how well the cake or bake keeps for a couple of days before I let them be served to customers. Ah well, busy busy again.

Christmas cake

I made a Christmas cake for church a couple of weeks ago and have marzipanned and iced it. I used Delia Smith's rich fruit cake recipe. She gives the quantities for various sizes of cake, both round and square, which is very useful. I put a couple of tablespoons of juice in the bowl with the fruit and left it to soak. for me at home, I would have used alcohol but we have a No Alcohol policy at church. I wanted the fruit to have a little soak but I was obviously too impatient and used the fruit too soon,  because the cake took four hours longer to cook than the recipe said. Four hours! My nice husband had come down to help me wash up and clear up and get some baking in the freezer (not the Christmas cake!) and he was not amused at waiting there for an extra four hours. Nor was I, come to that. In the end, the cake turned out very well and I am very pleased with it. So are the customers because they keep buying slices of it.

And no, I am not making a Christmas cake for us. I do very little, if any, baking for us. For one thing, we eat it if I make it and we both could do with a smaller waistline and secondly, I am all baked out at church : )

Delia's rich fruit cake recipe can be found at:

http://www.deliaonline.com/how-to-cook/baking/scaling-up-cake-recipes.html                                                                     

Scary happenings and more besides

What a lot has happened since I last posted. The first memorable thing, which I won't forget in a hurry, was trouble with the church cooker. I was working at making extra cakes to put in the freezer, as well as keeping the coffee shop supplied. We had a coule of short stays away planned so I needed to build up supplies of cake. I had a cake in the oven and was leaning over the cooker to stir the soup in the 12 pint saucepan (a pan that size requires me to stand over it to stir right into the edges of the pan to keep the soup from sticking) when there was a big bang in the oven and the oven door blew open into my middle - which made me jump back quickly, I can tell you. There were big flames which hid the 12 pint saucepan from sight and the baking paper lining the cake tins all burned up. The flames all singed my hair and eyebrows and I lost lots of hair at the front of my head. Thankfully I had my glasses on so my eyes were protected. Had I not jumped back so promptly, it would probably have been worse. My skin was sore for the next day but my face was not burnt. After being made to sit down with a drink for a bit, I went back and finished the soup and cooled it and froze it. There were over 50 portions of soup in three pans and I wasn't losing that much work! The oven was electric but the hob was gas and had not reacted to the oven problems at all so I felt safe to continue with the soup.

When I took the cake tins out of the oven, I found a part (possibly the thermocouple??) in one of the cake tins. I have no idea what caused the problem. However I refused to use the cooker again and we have now bought a new one. this meant a lot of hours spent on the internet trying to whittle down the choices. A commercial cooker is not suitable for our situation but we need as large a domestic cooker as possible and preferably with two fan ovens. So now I have a new electric cooker with an induction hob so I need all new pans too. The old pans were a mix of aluminium and older stainless steel which does not work on induction hobs.

And as for pans - how do you choose pans from just a picture online? Not many shops stock the large size ones we need. We need something a bit substantial so that the food will not burn too readily. And the easiest way is to actually handle the pans. Not easy online! And the range of pans available is huge as is the range of prices. Still, we'll get there.

We used up all the cake in the freezer in the cooker free weeks. I also found lots of recipes for things that I could make with just the help of a microwave to eke out what was in the freezer. So now I've been trying to restock the freezer as well as keeping the coffee shop stocked. So I am spending my time either shopping for coffee shop or baking for coffee shop. Housework? Well, I remember that I used to do a bit of that from time to time when I had to, but that has totally gone by the board now : )

The rest of the stuff that has been happening has not been quite so dramatic and has not resulted in any more hair loss, thank goodness.

Two happier events were family picnics. The whole family got together at the end of August in the park at Bidford on Avon along with a few friends and we had a lovely day. There were swans on the Avon just a few feet from where we were sitting and a family of fluffy new moorhen chicks living in the bank beside us.. Lovely!

We enjoyed the first picnic so much that we all opted to have another one to celebrate three family birthdays in the same week in mid September. This time we went to a free concert in a park in Bromsgrove. The music was lovely and the weather stayed nice for us. There were also lots of stalls run by various local charities. There was also one run by the Love Food Hate Waste people. I did a game/quiz thing about recycling and got most of it right and came away with a nice hessian shopping bag which was an unexpected bonus.

I've also seen my new little grandson on four occasions since I last posted. He is five months old now and growing more capable every time I see him. I've had some good cuddles and I enjoy that lots.

We did have to call out the RAC when we had something partly come away from the underneath of the front of the car when we were travelling at 60mph along a dual carriageway. Turned out that it was not a crucial part but it still frightened us when it happened. You can imagine the noise of this thing suddenly coming partly adrift and banging along the road surface when we were travelling at speed. Not fun!

So I've baked and baked and baked some more and we are ready for our first trip away. It is back to Cambridge again for my husband to go to more meetings, but for me it is time off to wander along the river, or look at the old buildings, or look at the shops, or knit or do a crossword or read or whatever takes my fancy. And I am looking forward to it!!!

Celebration week

Last week at church we ran a holiday club for 3-10 year olds. We had over 80 kids signed up. I was working in the under 6 group and we had between 34 and 37 each day. That is a lot of small kids! They did great and we all had a good time. We were taking them through the story of Joseph with stories, crafts, drama,  action songs and lots of other little activities too. We also put on a bbq for the kids and their families on the Friday which was well attended. The last day of the holiday club was actually the Sunday which included the usual service. I'm not sure the normal congregation knew what had hit them! suffice to say that the adult leaders slept well last week...!

This week is celebration week in our family. My son's three children all have birthdays in August, exactly one week apart, so they are having a grand joint celebration on Saturday with all the family and all the children's friends invited to a bbq. That will be a busy day and I hope it remains dry because that number of excited kids are not going to fit inside the house... Also, it is our wedding anniversary tomorrow. Not a special one this year, but my husband is actually planning to take me out so that will make it special : )

At church, we have had a girl from Slovakia staying for the last month. She has been helping a lot in the coffee shop and has been making Marlenka - an Armenian honey cake. It is absolutely beautiful! She has written out the recipe for me so I shall have a go at making it.

Hot Summer!

Well, the heatwave has continued and I've only had a few nights when I could sleep without the fan on all night. What a hot summer we are having! I'm not very good with hot weather and think lovely thoughts about all those typical British summers we have had in the past when I needed to wear some sort of woolly every day. I must admit that I've been getting up early on the days when I've had to cook and bake for the church coffeeshop. I discovered that having the ovens and the hob on during this hot summer was not to my liking, to put it mildly.  Fortunately there are only a few soup diehards among our customers, so I've not had to have the hob on for soup very often. I've been packaging the soup in two portion containers and put lots of those in the freezer, in order to stretch the shelf life of a batch of soup. Seems to be working : )

The allotment has been suffering for the lack of water although we did have a deluge in the early hours of the morning a couple of days ago. Everybody's courgettes and cucumbers are coming on in droves after that bit of rain but we could do with a bit more.

I've been given three cucumbers and I've been looking to see where I put the bit of paper with my lovely cucumber relish recipe that was given by Tania at Frugal in Essex last summer on her blog. I made it and gave my family a jar each in their Christmas stockings and it went down really well. I thought it had a lovely flavour. My husband is not keen on any pickles other than onions or Branston Pickle although he will eat Lidl's version of Branston. So this batch of sweet cucumber relish will be mine, all mine : )

Sweet cucumber relish
http://frugalinessex.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/preserving-all-ways.html

Ingredients
• 2 lbs cucumbers, peeled, centre row of seeds removed, and finely diced
• 1 medium onion finely diced ( I used red for extra colour)
• 1 large red bell pepper, finely diced (I used half red, half yellow for colour)
• 1 stalk of finely diced celery (or heaped teaspoon of celery salt)
• 1oz salt
• 6oz white granulated sugar
• 400ml cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon brown mustard seed
• 1 bay leaf (optional)

Instructions
Place the diced cucumbers, onion, and red bell pepper in a large mixing bowl. Combine with the salt and pour water over the mixture until just covered. Let sit for at least 6 hours or overnight.
• Drain the cucumber mixture in a colander, rinse thoroughly with water, and drain well.
• In a large stock pot, add the sugar, vinegar, and mustard seed and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer for 5 minutes. Add the drained cucumber mixture and return to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer, uncovered, for 10 minutes.
• Ladle the hot relish into sterile jars, leaving ¼ inch of headspace. Wipe the rims of the jars clean and seal tightly with the lids.
• Process the jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes. (The 3 jars I made fitted  into my deep pressure cooker pan. Boiling water was added to the start of the neck of the jar)
• Sealed jars will store in a cool, dark place for a year. If the seal is broken, the relish will keep in the fridge for a month.

Note from Tania: This is a basic recipe found all over the internet, I did notice that some people add a teaspoon of cornflour near the end of the cooking process to produce a syrupy sauce.

Note from me: I left out the water bath bit as that is more for Americans and it kept just fine.

Bank holiday weekend

We had a family picnic in a local park last Sunday. Happily, I was in the shade of a large tree because it was really hot. Being in the shade also meant I could have a really good cuddle with my new little grandson. It had been three weeks since I last saw him and he had changed so much in that time. I really enjoyed that ! : )

Then we went round the park for a walk around the "wildlife" section. Most of it was on a boardwalk to keep us out of the marsh - except for one stretch... And I was wearing my best sandals because I didn't have time to go home and change after church. Well, they will never be the same again : (      

They are slingbacks with a suede type insole which didn't like me having to walk through muddy water nearly up to my ankles. I gave them a good was in clean water when I got home but I don't think that the suede type insole appreciated my ministrations. Ah well...

My connections with the church coffee shop is ramping up by several notches. We are starting on next Tuesday, after the bank holiday, with a new regime. Our previous manager has left and we need to at least break even on costs. so I now get to do all the shopping as well as making the soup and doing most of the baking.  The newly revamped church kitchen is now six weeks behind schedule and baking is Extremely Difficult as is making soup.  It might be summer but we still have some customers who are soup diehards. I've bought some much smaller tubs so that the soup is frozen in smaller quantities in the hope of there being less waste. I am also doing all the baking at the moment because I can't ask others to work in the conditions under which I am producing goods. I have access to ingredients but I need to bring all equipment from home until the kitchen is finished. One of my helpful ladies is over 80 and bakes wonderful cakes but I can't ask her to carry all the equipment from home. There is also the problem that the kitchen need to be kept locked for health and safety and there are not many keys around.

On the subject of kitchen, don't get yours from Magnet! They will agree to anything to get your money out of your pocket. And nothing is their fault - they always have somebody else to blame.  It is not what I want from a company who now has so much of our money. You have to pay everything before they will deliver the units...

And so we come to bank holiday weekend. My bank holiday will be spent cooking in the coffeeshop. At least I will be able to use the coffeeshop and just trolley the things through to the cooker in the kitchen. I'm looking forward to not having to clean the kitchen before I can use it : )