Father's food

As Younger Son was away all weekend, and the other two live far away, it fell to me to look after Husband on father's Day. For dinner he had smoked salmon and cream cheese roll-type things, followed by crown roast of lamb with apricot stuffing, new potatoes roasted in olive oil and sprinkled with salt, broccoli and carrots. And very nice it was even if I say so myself.

There was red fruit salad for pudding but he was too full (especially as he'd eaten half a box of Lindt truffles). (But I enjoyed some with strawberry cheesecake ice cream.)

Diet begins again today. Definitely.

Past my best-by date

For those who wonder how I can have written so many posts this one should give you a clue: it is typical waffle.

Yesterday afternoon, having spent the entire afternoon writing previously-mentioned short story, when tea time came, it was a case of 'what's in the freezer, I wonder?'

The answer was 'not a lot.' Apart from ice cream, peas and chillis, the best I could come up with was a packet of chicken pieces. A rummage in the pantry led me to some jars I'd bought for just such an emergency. I dusted the top of the first one and discovered its sell-by date was April 2004. The other two weren't so bad: they were January 2005.

Scrapping the chicken idea, I moved on to the pantry itself. A tin of corned beef and baked potatoes. That would do. Except the corned beef was 18 months out of date and only one of the potatoes wasn't mouldy.

I really must sort out the pantry.

Welsh cream tea

So I have some cream left over. My options are: throw it away or ... make scones. Hard decision.

Tea tonight

Penclawdd cockles, smoked bacon and a very light grating of cheddar cheese. Mmm.

Usually I'd have a heavy coating of cheese and some crusty French bread. But I'm on a diet ...

I am such a martyr.

Lashings of custard

I am no longer a little fat badger!

I went to the hairdressers this afternoon and now I'm more like a little fat red squirrel.

Then I stopped in the market on the way back to get kebabs from the butchers and some veg for stir fry, providing us with a healthy and reasonably diety meal. If it hadn't been for the syrup sponge pudding we had for afters.

Well, I had to call into Tesco's and they had these little dinky pairs of puddings for about 69p - so you can see how small they must have been. Hardly more than a mouthful really. And surely not more than a few calories.

It would probably have been fine if I hadn't had 1/2 pint of custard with mine. (Younger Son didn't want custard so I had to eat it all.) But if you're having custard you've got to have lots. I can't stand it in restaurants when they serve custard with a pudding and it comes and there's hardly enough custard to cover a sixpence. It's got to drown the pudding. Mm-mmm.

So, back on the diet now. It's not going awfully well. According to the scales last Saturday, I had put on 4 lbs, for goodness sake. But I don't believe it. I suspect it of waging psychological war against me.

A weekend in Devon

Just returned from a visit to Silverton, Devon. We took Holly and Charlie back home to Daughter and Son-in-law (who'd enjoyed their visit to Venice).


As a one-day belated birthday treat, we all - well, all the humans - ate out at Jack in the Green last night. It's our fourth visit there since Daughter has lived in Devon and it's probably about our favourite place to eat. We've never been disappointed.


Last night for starters I had Seared Sesame Tuna with Chive Crushed Potato, Black Olive and Cabernet Sauvignon Vinaigrette . Now I've never had fresh tuna before so I didn't know what to expect. What arrived was three small triangular slices of - well, Husband and Son-in-law who've both eaten tuna before assured me was - tuna. I was convinced they'd brought me the wrong thing. It tasted like ... no, not chicken ... duck or lamb maybe. Certainly it bore nor resemblance to tinned tuna, which I always consider to be a dry fish, which is why I've never chosen to have it before. Anyway it was delicious. Whatever it was.











Killerton House is a National trust property, close to Silverton.

The 'new' Severn Bridge is a very beautiful structure.

It's a braw bricht moonlit nicht the nicht

Happy Burns' Night to Dr Stu and any other Scots reading. Hope you're piping in the haggis and drinking its health with wee dram of malt, or two.

Did you know you can get vegetarian haggis? (Haggises? Haggii?)

You can hurl the haggis here.