Cottage pies

Being retired, alone and free of commitments is really quite luxurious. It is one of the good things about growing old.

To wake up in a morning is always a great thing to happen, and to have a clean slate for the day, with no plans – can lead to all sorts of variants.

Maybe a drive to a town or village, visit friends, shops, do housework, gardening, read, compute. Every day is new.

So this morning, I planned to visit a friend to take the dogs walking, then we would have coffee somewhere.

First I went to town at 8.30 when Marks and Spencer opened just to buy some milk and tomatoes and the Yorkshire Post newspaper.

I didn’t need food because I cook in bulk and freeze single portions. The freezer is stocked with meals for the next couple of weeks. Lamb casseroles, vegetable bakes, and quiches.

Nevertheless as I passed the ready meals, I wondered about getting a couple of single sized cottage pies. I quickly decided not to – because last time I had one I wasn’t all that keen, and I left half of it.

However the thought of cottage pies was a trigger…. There was an offer of 3 packets of minced beef for £10.00, Righty-ho – into the trolley they go, packet of organic carrots, red onions, box of mushrooms, bunch of celery, 5 pounds of potatos, small pot of cream… and head for home by 9am.

I use massive pans for cooking. I put all 3 packs of meat into a very large wok, and proceeded to let it brown.

Meanwhile I cut up all the onions and put them in a large pan to braise, whilst I chopped all the pack of carrots and all the celery in the food processor to a small chunk size, then added them to the onions. I processed the mushrooms into smaller pieces and added them to the browning meat.

By 9.45 the meat was browned, and the vegetables softened.

I mixed the whole lot into a large stew pan, added herbs, toss of balsamic vinegar, mixed spice, salt and pepper, spoonful of Bovril and then put it into a very slow oven.

Forgot to mention that I put half the potatoes to bake in their jackets and peeled the other half to boil.

Turned the potatoes off, then went out for the walk with friend and we had a coffee.

Nice smell to come home to an hour later, and all cooked fine and tasting good.

Now to mash the potatoes. I have a great gadget for this

I should have taken a photo – but this is a retrospective account, I had no intentions this morning when I got up that I would even be cooking, never mind blogging about it!

Anyway I mashed both the boiled and baked potatos, added a bit of Shrophire blue cheese, knob of butter, salt and the small tub of cream. Delicious!!

I have a stock of small ovenware dishes for individual meals which I have had for years. I got about 30 maybe 15 years ago.

I made 16 cottage pies- well not true cottage pies, as they have lots of vegetables as well as meat. They are individually wrapped in freezer bags, and I put them in the freezer a couple of hours ago. I put a brief label with them and stapled the receipt from Marks and Spencers to remind me what I bought.

I kept one out of the freezer to eat tomorrow, and that is the potato masher in the picture too.

Bit sad I suppose that I have nothing more interesting to write about today. Ah well – I have no idea what tomorrow will bring.

Letter from Zambia

The day of Sunday 4th December, 1966

Arrived on duty at 8am. One other Nursing sister and me are here today - along with nursing assistants on each ward.
8.05 Sent the ambulance to airport for a woman with snakebite (She was working at the airport). Meanwhile a woman in labour arrived. Also a man with cellulitis needs to be admitted.
Snakebitten lady arrives - she will have to lie on the floor (no spare beds)

8.30 Collect list of patients from each ward and work out how much food is required for the day.
254 patients, each to have 10 ounces mealie meal, 4 ounces beans, 2 ounces peanuts, half ounce sugar, one and half ounces dried fish, half pint milk (dried).

doing the maths in notebook 1966

from my notebook 1966 !

Go to kitchen and supervise the weighing of the food.

9.00 Help other Sister to make extra milk drinks (made from powdered milk) for special sick patients.  Distribute milk, and check on patients.

Me pausing at Hospital laundry. Irons are heated on the embers.

Another two snakebites arrived - very inflamed legs. Woman with severe infection of abdomen arrived, and a 2 month old child with convulsions.

10.00 Should be coffee time, but the woman in labour had her baby. Quick cup of coffee at 10.40, broken off by admission of a woman in a rigor (probably malaria), and a 1 year old child who swallowed a fish. Another child arrived on his mothers' back (as they all are) with scabies. She had carried him 40 miles, slept in the bush last night. One of the patients with snakebite then had an epileptic fit, and three more minor cases arrived on Female Ward.
By now there are more than 20 female patients on the floor.

Female Ward actually has 36 beds, so has become very overcrowded. There is at least one relative with each patient helping them with eating and toileting, and giving them water. Women with babies have the baby in bed with them if they are not too desperately ill, as they need to breast feed. Patients and relatives all have tied cloths full of luggage with them, and all are invaded by flies.!

On Isolation ward another 2 children are extremely ill with measles (they'll probably die). There are 12 more with measles and 4 with whooping cough. 46 with TB and 14 leprosy patients.

lunch time on Children's ward.

Busy day - busy place -different life !!

Intrigued with the camera - in the local village.

Trust my dog – and a lesson about smoke alarms.

Sally is my devoted hearing dog. She totally trusts me to care for her, feed her and take her walks. In return she has been highly trained to be my Hearing dog.

Her main line of “work” is alerting me when the doorbell rings, or the smoke alarm rings. She also tells me when the kitchen timer rings, and if we were around when a fire alarm went off – she would let me know.

I can take her anywhere I go, into shops, cafes, and hotels. Hearing dogs and other assistance dogs have that privilege to accompany their owners wherever they go.

She is a Lowchen – a breed I had never heard of until I met her, a lovely nature, good loyal worker, and she loves to have somewhere to run off the lead when we go for walks.

Sally the lovely Lowchen

Trust my dog

Without my hearing aids I cannot hear anything at all – being profoundly deaf. Even when I wear the aids I never hear the smoke alarm, but Sally does, and it goes off quite frequently. Just a slight burn of the toast, or too high a flame under the omelet pan can set it off.  So I am usually around the kitchen when the smoke alarm happens, and Sally taps me with her paws, and when I ask, “what is it” – she lies down flat.

I then check the alarm and can see that the green light has turned red. After making sure that all is safe in the kitchen, I poke the alarm with a walking stick until it turns green again.

It took far longer to write that, than it does to do it!

Sally is usually in the same room, as she keeps a close watch on me, but if necessary she would very soon find me if there was need of an alert. If I were in bed, she would jump on the bed to wake me.

Sally in uniform

Yesterday there were several bonfires and firework displays around the area, being the Saturday before Guy Fawkes bonfire night on November 5^th.  Sally is trained to not be frightened by fireworks and such like.

However, at 2am this morning Sally jumped onto my bed to wake me. “What is it” I asked her- sleepily. She lay down on the floor, so I jumped to attention and checked both the smoke alarms. They were both green, so couldn’t be ringing! I did a quick check of the house, and out the back door.  I sent her out into the garden in case she was telling me she needed to toilet (she never has done that during the night – but always a first time I thought).

All seemed normal so back to bed we went. Her bed is beside mine on the floor.

Well Sally could not settle, she jumped on and off my bed every few minutes – and I finally concluded that maybe there were some fireworks worrying her. I dozed off, but was aware that she was on alert for the rest of the night. I eventually woke up to find her watching me from the end of the bed – never happened before.

We got up and went for a walk, where she seemed fine and then had her normal breakfast. Then she started again, putting her paws gently onto me to tell me something. Time and time again she did this. I got worried that she was having some sort of nerve problem. She actually seemed quite worried.

About 3.30pm we went for a walk on the beach, the sun would set early at 4.30 so need to get a walk in daylight. It was nice, the tide was out and we had a good walk towards the edge of the waves. Sally enjoyed sniffing clumps of seaweed, and a variety of shells brought in by the tide, and managed to chase a few birds .

On our way home from walk..

As we walked back to the drive of the house, Marjorie my neighbour beckoned, so we called to see her and had a chat. I am choosing some new carpet for the house, so asked Marjorie to come and see what she thought of my choice.

She loved the carpet, but as we stood talking in the hall, she said a bell was ringing – thought it was a spare door bell that I keep for practise. I took the batteries out – but Marjorie said there was still an intermittent ringing. I thought maybe it was my hearing aids so we moved to another room. No it stopped then!

Back to the hall and the ringing was heard again. She asked where my smoke alarm was – it is in the hall, and another one upstairs. We finally realized they were the culprits. I found the instructions to the smoke alarms, and discovered that when the batteries are becoming exhausted, the alarm bleeps every 20 to 30 seconds. I wasn’t even aware they had batteries in because they are wired into the electric.

I got out the ladder, but we were unable to do the awkward manipulation of turning and pressing routine to take off the outer part and check the batteries! As luck would have it, Marjories’ son was due to visit soon, and sure enough he came and took the outer parts off so we could identify which batteries were needed. I raced off to the local petrol station and bought 2 of the 9volt batteries, and now they are all back in good working order.

During this process up the ladder and changing the batteries, Sally was forever alerting me again, but now of course, I realized how amazing she had been. She never gave up trying to tell me something was amiss.

My lesson is to always trust her – and in future if I don’t understand what she means, I will get a hearing person to come and listen for untoward sounds.

Thank you Sally – my trust in you is complete. I am so fortunate to have her.

Sally with garden friends.

eleven years ago

 I actually wrote this on Sunday 28^th October 2012.

Needing inspiration on what to write about – I fished out a random diary of Kens from the back of a cupboard– incredibly 2001, when October 28^th was also Sunday. Oh dear NOT what I had hoped for.

Would you believe it – a most terrible week of Ken being in London to have his hernia repaired (for the third time) at London hernia clinic. The hernia surgeon took a biopsy – and we discovered Ken had secondary cancer, not sure of primary source but, told it was probably prostate cancer.

devastating news...

To try and overcome his despair, Ken set to work on a Homage to Munnings that he was painting. Thank goodness he could lose himself into painting, at least for a while.

Oh yes cancer happens to so many, but are we ever ready to watch the decline and ending of a loved one?  Good job we don’t know what is coming. All the radiotherapy, chemotherapy, false hopes, real pain..

Ken waiting for radiotherapy -and posing for my photo

ENOUGH – this was 11 years ago. It passed, and so did Ken – 20 months later. And so did the two dachshunds, and millions more people and pets around the world.

Ken and his beloved Sophie

Mind you – Ken did still have his humor, so he left us with memories of fun and laughter.

Always willing to pose for photos..

Well, I wanted inspiration on what to write about. Looks like I have found it. Write what you know – I know the past. 

He painted as long as he was able... in dressing gown and cravat.