How on earth did it get to be Sunday evening already? I'm sure I only just finished doing this for last week. Anyway, here we are again, this week M is off having a well earned rest (I say that but his to-do list is getting longer by the hour) and I'm nose to the grindstone. That said we've had a lovely weekend in the sunshine, spending yesterday with a picnic on the heath and today going for a long walk and doing some blackberrying. We've also belatedly celebrated M's birthday with a Mars bar cake - which received the accolade "why haven't you made this for me before now?"
If you follow me on Instagram - I'm penjy on there - you'll have seen the preserving that's been going on in the Pantry - on Friday I took advantage of some bargain soft fruits to start a Currant rum, using the recipe I previously blogged about here. It's maturing in the pantry at the moment, but I should be adding the sugar and bottling it around the 1st September. I also strained and bottled my blackberry vodka, which looks beautiful. The 2lb or so of blackberries we picked today are destined to be split between another batch of blackberry liquor (maybe brandy or gin this time - I'm not sure, what do you think?) and some jam. I'm going to freeze the jam half as I'm waiting on M's Mum's recipe as hers are altogether failsafe and also the return of some of my jam jars. I'm getting ahead on my preserving so that the booze will be bottled and maturing nicely in time for Christmas. Yes, I said it. But if I prepare for it now then I should manage to avoid last year's last minute panic. And I prefer homemade gifts, there's just something so much more personal about giving people something you've spent time and love on, not just money.
So seeing as man (or woman) cannot survive on blackberry vodka alone I had better get my head around some meal planning:
Breakfasts: fruit for me with my usual mugs of tea
Lunches: salad all the way, tomorrow I've got leftover tuna pasta salad (which is all free food on Slimming World), then ham salad probably for Tuesday. After that I'll need to locate some protein to go with the veg as I didn't roast a chicken today. It was just too hot.
Dinners:
Monday - M is visiting his parents so I'm thinking of picking up some mackerel on my way home and having that with horseradish and a salad.
Tuesday - M is home and there's a portion of leftover courgetti spaghetti to eat. I'm in Kent all day so may well just collapse in a little heap on arriving home.
Wednesday - we've eaten a lot of pasta lately so I'm going to make a sweet and sour chicken/ turkey. We'll have that with brown basmati rice
Thursday - is it terrible to say I'm banking on having leftovers? Well I don't care, I'm banking on having leftover sweet and sour chicken.
Friday - Meatballs with a tomato sauce and pasta
Meanwhile in my Simple Summer essentials I've got another patriotic pavlova to make (we ate the first one), in all it's red, white and blue glory for the Paralympic opening ceremony.
And the last installment of that series will be some peaches that I'm going to try grilling and having with 0% fat yoghurt as a pudding. That post will also have a competition to find your Simple Summer Essentials with a prize from Asda for one winner of a £50 voucher to help you create your choice.
So that's where we are this week - what about you?
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