22 Foxhole East

Nutcase243

A lemon called Keith - fantastic!

f0xh0les

Keith has a friend now, Kevin,  and a new (annoying) acquaintance, Barry (a lime ). They will all be sliced and added to drinks this week. This very very hot week with night time lows of 16 degrees.

Today:  Volunteering done (fun!), food shop done (dull!), carpet for landing, short stairs, landing, long stairs, landing, and long stairs paid for and booked in for Friday (expensive! but did knock him down £40 and get free door bars).

Utterly bl00dy DS4 has loads of black ink on his new carpet. There is no way it was an accident.  I am not getting involved in dirty protests.  I will give him nice things, if he trashes them, then that is on him, and he will have to live with it. I am not replacing it. Really disappointed in him.

DH was still faintly positive this morning, so hoping he will be able to leave the house tomorrow, because he is now whining and annoying me because he is bo-oo-oo-oored.

Tomorrow will be sponsored by Marigolds, Washing up liquid, Henery Hoover Bags, and Scrubbing.

Tea will be taken outside and drunk in the sunshine.  Plants will be watered, and I might stick a blob of gloss on the lower set of bannisters ready for Friday carpets.

I am supposed to have an in-person meeting for work this week, but no invitation has appeared.  Oh well!

LadyWithAPlan

Happy belated bday! How annoying about the carpet. and DS2 ! You have a handful there 
I love a lime but feel if i named them i would not eat them

f0xh0les

Paint has been splodged on tiny boshed bits of walls, it looks much better for minimal effort.  It is just one of those jobs I have shunted from list to list to list... well today I did it.  Progress!

DS1 has no intention of arranging his room.  I have accepted that fact.    Well, as he is having one of his 3 hour long baths, I took the opportunity and put the bookshelf in position, it has sat in the middle of his room for about 3 weeks.  . Now you can not only see across the room, you can walk across the room! Progress!

Took all DS1s books out of boxes and put them on the bookshelf - the floor is now 85% visible! Visible progress!

I also now have 2 big plastic storage boxes to help with ordering the back doom-room.  Ordering progress!

Stole all his rubbish and recycling that was not in the bin.  The bin he can darn well empty himself.  

 It is all progress.

Got written confirmation of a week of work in  July - hooray! £800+ coming my way.  Guess who immediately got in touch?  Invisible Work Friend!

Sorted all the bits of wood and shims I am going to use to fill the holes in the landing floorboards before the carpet fitter comes on Friday.   That is my job for tomorrow.  That is the most important job for tomorrow. If it is this hot it may be the only job for tomorrow!

Blimey it is hot!!  24.5 degrees in the North Facing Fridge Room that never sees direct sunshine.

DH is upstairs where it is much hotter, he is in his office! He tested negative this morning.   He is loving his tidy new office on the top floor.  He has bought himself a new printer, because the old new printer  (reconditioned) never worked, so I have made him promise I can now take the 2 non-working printers to the tip for recycling.  Because printers are flippin massive, and I do not have the room to store any more non-working tat that 'might be handy'.  It will never come in useful, because he will always buy another one as soon as a spring sproings away and he can't find it.   So the small electricals recycling bin will get some new inhabitants.   The Amz0n man has been every day for the last 4 days.........

He just found out one of his ex-colleagues has died of cancer at 36.  He is a bit shaken because of it.  I got him to book himself a hair cut tomorrow.  It will do him good to get out for a while.

I won a £5 e-gift voucher on the Lottery linked to your Postcode! Would have preferred £200,000 to be honest. Second small win, maybe the next one will be more than teabags or a fiver?

DH came home from Swiss-land with 2 packs of a smoked salmon subsitute - is is made of carrot and only has 4 ingredients.  It is really very good.  I have had it on bagels with creamy cheese,  lush!  I am going to use the last half of the packet in a quiche tonight. A little goes a long way, good job as it is £7 for a small packet.

mark55man

£7 for carrots - it better be very good indeed

f0xh0les

It is very good indeed!  And it is not just any old carrots, it is wood smoked carrots!!  and one of your five a day!

I am on the case to try and find out how to make this deliciousness, because if I can figure out how to do it, it is going to become an absolute staple in our house. It would be worth going orange for.

KajiKita

Could you marinate very, very thinly sliced carrot in liquid smoke for a couple of days? Or would it need heat as well do you think? 🤔 

KK

f0xh0les

The only 4 ingredients listed are carrot, oil, salt, and acetic acid (so vinegar).  So it must be something like that, we do  have liquid smoke, and that is going to be our first port of call.  Then we thought we might try the 'tea smoked' route, and  see how that compares, then we found this recipe ..... well, cooking method, not really a recipe recipe        https://www.loveandlemons.com/carrot-lox/  , it must be better for you than processed burgers or other thinly sliced suspicious non-meat based alternatives. 

The swiss-bought stuff was chopped, not ribbons, and it worked really really well in the tofu quiche. I even made my own pastry and blind baked the crusts with my baking beans - see, not messing about now, am I?? but it was soo hot in the kitchen I nearly lost the will to live.

KajiKita

I wonder if the acetic acid is to tenderise the carrot before you add the smoke - to ‘open up’ the structure of very dense carrot? I’m very interested in these experiments 😊

KK

f0xh0les

Finally got the date and time for the local team training day for work.....  it is 27 miles away (not local)... and Invisible Work Friend bailed (not team training). It has taken them over 3 weeks to do it.  Honestly I despair! I am getting trained to do something 4 days before an event!   Oh well!

It is very warm here still 25.5 degrees in the coldest room at 8.45pm, I made a chilli for supper because I am a loon. Baked a big peach and raspberry sponge dessert as well, also because I am a loon  (and the raspberries and peaches were free) the oven was on anyway to cook DS4s packed lunch sausage roll.  The kitchen was red hot, but it was what I wanted, and now I have enough leftovers to do lunch tomorrow.  Cook once, eat twice,  melt  and repeat.

Half  of the landing  floorboards have been glued, shimmed, and filled.  All the missing screws have been replaced.  It is a much firmer base for the underlay and carpet to go on top of now.  I will finish it tomorrow, as the carpet fitters come on Friday, so I have no choice but to have it done.  It is exceptionally boring though, making all the bits of wood fit into the gaps.  Stupid old Victorian floorboards that have been hacked to gobbits by  gas fitters, plumbers and electricians over the last 135 years.   It will do until the next owners of this house decide to lift the carpets.  My poor Frankenstein's Monster of a landing!

I have all the kids at the dentist on 28th, and 2 kids at the opticians on 29th, I am trying to get all the routine appointments out of the way asap  - DH has a knee appointment on 1st / government changes on 4th / training on 9th/ schools break on 11th /  I go away for work on 14th.  It is all go! go! go! around here at the moment!

And I made DS4 do his food tech prep after supper.  There is not a hope in hell that we will see any of his flapjacks, but the ingredients have been weighed out and are ready to go.

11 school days left to go until I can turn off my alarm!