A Few More Days Have Gone By...

So a few days have passed by and the country really has had continued bad weather(in parts)here it has virtually passed my town by and as I write some areas are on flood alert, without electric or gas and so on.

I would be unhappy to lose power as that would mean a loss of heating, being able to cook hot meals or make hot drinks but much as I may get annoyed when power is lost if it is due something like the weather I appreciate how difficult it is for the engineers who have to go out and solve the problem and reconnect the wires. In fact even when power is lost for other reasons I have seen documentaries of how difficult and dangerous their work is to repair the faults and how they risk their lives.

I am afraid things are quite dull around here still...I am shopping(and thinking what meals I can come up with)In addition to meals mentioned previously I hope to make my first cottage pie with mince, gravy and vegetables covered in mashed potato.

You can buy fresh(but that takes little if any preperation)or frozen veg all prepared, all you do is stick something in a saucepan or in an oven and let the cooker do the business.

I have a fridge full of fruit, a freezer full of meat and fish and my pantry and cupboards are full of anything I can think of regarding tinned or packet goods or sauces etc...

In some cases many items are new to me and I am trying to see what new flavours I can enjoy...I purchased some Plums, Nectarines and Passion fruit today(I have never purchased them in my life)Plums are being hailed as the new super healthy food so watch the price of them go up in the shops.

And another hit in the vegetable line(and something never eaten before by myself or Mum)is Butternut squash, a root vegetable from Kenya(and other places)which you oven bake drizzled in olive oil...the nearest I can describe it, is like turnip or swede with a buttery taste. I mash it up.

I don't eat much in the way of crisps(I try to watch my diet due to my condition) but Walker's crisps launched a competition asking the public to come up with a new variety and they managed to get it down to six flavours(some are genuine)some are tongue in cheek, the idea is that the public will text the company and say which flavour they like and it will remain on sale whereas the other five will be history.

I have yet to taste them but I have in the cupboard the following Fish and chips, Onion bhaji and Cajun squirrel(I kid you not)and I know that amongst the remaining three, there is one that claims to taste like Builders breakfast(bacon, egg, beans, tomato etc...)so I'll have to give that a go...but when I was a child there was a brand of crisps manufacutured in the North East of England called Tudor Crisps and they had all kinds of flavours including Kipper flavoured crisps, as long ago as that!

I had to go out today for a blood test...it went ok(and that will depend on the result more than anything else)usually there are no marks left afterwards but today I have been left with a number of marks on my arms where blood was taken(also because the nurse)did not pay full attention to the form and had to take a second sample and decided to take it from my other arm whereas normally it all gets taken from one arm whilst the vein is open. And then to stem the blood cotton wool was placed over the wounds and held in place with surgical tape.

And ripping off surgical tape from skin with hairs attached is pretty painful even if done quickly but in doing so that has managed to cause additional bruising. What a wuss I must sound...

And I have it all to look forward to again on Monday and a hospital appointment on the Thursday, however, it does mean that I can pop into a different supermarket and hopefully bring home some items not available on my town.