Menu Planning Monday (I have to start back somehow!)

Ok so it has been too long without blogging. I guess I have to start back at sometime and as i have no mental energy just now to be overly creative I thought I'd start with what I did today.

Menu Planning.

Infact I did this in bed last night in an attempt to get ahead of myself today. This week I am on holiday. Much needed rest for my brain! It is also the crunch week for our current renovations. The Fireplace came this morning, the decorator comes on wednesday and Nigel is looking forward to this weekend as I go to a women conference and he gets to do uninterrupted DIY :-)

So i made a list of all the things I want to accomplish this week. Perhaps the list is a bit enthusiastic but in fairness some of it includes what I normally do so I have an extra 3 days (in theory) to get through the rest of it. Perhaps I'll fill you in on my progress as the week goes on.

So as it is a week of holiday I though I should do some things that I will enjoy. So the menu plan this week has  lots of new untested meals on it. Consequently there was a bit of a gulp at the checkout in the supermarket today. However many of the meals are for atleast 4 people and so there will be left overs for next week :-) I hope to try out a couple of Crockpot dishes for my new Slow cooker ( the fruit of some Christmas money) and make a few things we haven't had in a while.

Menu Plan:

Breakfast: Fend for yourself, Toast and Cereal

Lunch: Soup and Rolls most likely.

Dinner:

Mon: Sheperd Pie (this is now ready and smells good) with roast parsnips and frozen green beans

Tue: Griddled Tuna Steaks with Courgette and Pepper, served with Couscous (al a Ainslie Harriot)

Wed: Crockpot meal 1, Lamb Pilaf

Thurs: Spagetti Carbonara, cooked the proper way from scratch with eggs!(hmmm, have to see how this works out) served with salad and bread

Fri: Crockpot Meal 2: Honeypork served with RIce

Sat: Frozen Pizza (Nigel in on his own, and he wanted something quick and easy)

Sun: Fish Cakes, (I'll try to make these before we go to Church) salad and bread

Extras: Banana Loaf/Muffins (to use up the bananas that are trying to run out of the kitchen) and a batch of Cookies for Nigel to take to work.

So there we go. Now I have a new fireplace to polish, some routine chores to do and then a delightful evening of painting wood work. Enjoy your monday, do check back with me later in the week.

My New Hoover!

Today was exciting, it started out as a quick trip to the local B&Q (DIY store) and ended up being a mammoth trip around the city culminating in the purchase of a new vacuum cleaner. For months now I have been hoovering the house in spurts. Our hoover has been sick for some time but lately it would only let me hoover for a certain amount of time. How much carpet I could cover in that time depended on how dirty the floor was and how speedily I moved around the house. Even then I could ususally only get the hallway, lounge and part of the dinning room done in one go. The hoover was then done for the rest of the day. This meant that hoovering the house could take all week! I tried not to complain but my husband knew the frustration I felt and so today we got a new one. And what a bargain it was. Not the Dyson we originally intended on getting but an LG. Even so my first attempt at using it was very exciting and I can't wait for monday (cleaning day!) to really give it a proper try.

Can you see my delight! :-)



The full view!

Handsoap and Plumbers!

I have 2 whole weeks of holiday stories I could write about but this morning something happened that made me think. So I had been awake early to say goodbye to my lovely blog supplying husband as he headed off to the fast east on business. But as it was a non-paid work day today ( I don't call it a day off as a morning of cleaning and then a lunchtime schools club is hardly what I would call relaxing!) I thought i'd allow myself a few more minutes of sleep. The plumber had other ideas. And in fairness had I been expecting him I would not have greeted him at the door in a sleepy, blind (hadn't picked my glasses up as I flew down the stairs!) daze and just about respectable dressing gown. In our post holiday blurr I had totally forgotten that the plumber was coming today.

So here he was on the doorstep and I didn't have a clue why he was there! Slowly the cogs in my brain started turning and then I remembered the tap. The one that has been stiff for months. The reason for getting the plumber in was because we paid the company a lot of money to redo the bathroom and it was still under guarantee so we thought we should take the service they offered. Otherwise a stiff tap would not generally warrant a plumber. Anyway somehow in my very drowsy and clumsy mind I managed to explain the problem. Having pulled the tap off to display the presumed problem and not been able to see any problem and also having not realised it was the same man as last time I dashed through to find my glasses, relieved that my dressing gown had been tied correctly and lack of vision had only really made me appear stupid and not look it too! I left him to it and after just 5 minutes the problem was apparently solved. So somehow I managed to let him persuade me that fancy my new American handsoap was all that was required to lubricate the threads and with use all would be well again with the tap. And then he was gone!

Now I am a doctor and whilst urgent calls are not part of my daily life anymore there was a time when a bleeper would wake from sleep, yelling "cardiac arrest, cardiac arrest, ward 15" and I would leap from my bed, dress in nano-seconds and then dash to said ward and begin life and death decision making. Granted I would shake and tremble and then drop exhausted back into bed at the end of it all but still, decision making in an sudden instant was my job.

Back to today, woken from sleep by loud doorbell, dashed down stairs with badly tied dressing gown and no glasses and then to let a plumber tell me that my american handsoap is all I need to fix a stiff tap and let him leave is hardly a tribute to my life and death decision making skills.

One day (hopefully :-) ) the bleeper and doorbell is going to a baby crying or screaming. Lets just hope that all those times are as easily solved with american handsoap or I'm going to be trouble :-)

PS: This is the amazing handsoap.