Lockdown diaries, day twenty-six a new challenge

Another day, another batch of soup

Day twenty-six, Tuesday 24^th November 2020

 

Tuesday rolls around once more bringing with it my favourite yoga class of the week; Rise and Shine Yoga for Conditioning. Not being one to enjoy rushing my morning routine, the alarm goes off before the sun has risen, to ensure I’m relaxed and happy on my mat by 9 o’clock. There is just something about this class and its extra focus on the breathing and the body, that leaves me feeling strong and energised to face the day. 

 

We are now three and a half weeks into lockdown and President Macron will speak tonight about what to expect next. Adrian was working online all day and then set off on the turbo trainer to virtually cycle up Mont Ventoux (again) on Zwift. Ed (who conveniently has no lectures on Tuesdays) took himself off to Ruffec to do the weekly shop for us and returned home delighted he had done most of his Christmas shopping too. I think a DNA test might be necessary as I am never that organised or in control when it comes to Christmas. A good skill he is picking up from me during lockdown though, is learning to compare the prices per kilo when doing the shopping. 

 

I might not have had the most exciting of days, but I was happy in the kitchen. A batch of soup, another cake and a lasagne for dinner this evening, plus all the clearing up that goes with it, certainly kept me out of trouble. The soup might not look much, but I can assure you my frugal cauliflower soup, made from the leaves and stalk of a cauliflower, with lots of garlic, a green chilli and some crème fraiche, is delicious and creamy, with just a hint of heat.

 

With December getting closer, I need something to look forward to, and I’m not talking about Christmas. I realise I am becoming quite comfortable with life in lockdown, enjoying us all being at home together and things slipping into an easy routine. Since moving to France 16 years ago, I've often found myself out of my comfort zone and knowing how good this is for me, I always try to say yes to things, no matter how scary they may at first seem. Running an English language club at the local secondary school was one big gulp moment, as was agreeing to stand for election on the village council and accepting a part time job at a local library. This year, there have been very few opportunities to push myself or try something different, although I did set myself some cycling challenges and even climbed a mountain or two. 

 

A small selection of my recipe books

Inspired by author Sophie Claire and her new Christmas book A Winter’s Dream (see my review here), I have decided I need a December challenge. Something to focus on, that gives me the opportunity try new things and break from routine. We are a little restricted with lockdown, but I think I’ve come up with a great idea; the December recipe challenge. It’s time to dig out a cookery book, or two, and do more than just flick through looking at the pictures. I am notoriously bad at following a recipe, always tweaking it to add or substitute something, so my weekly challenge will be to choose a dish I’ve never cooked before and stick to it, ingredient for ingredient. I might even let Adrian and Ed do the choosing. If nothing else, it should make mealtimes a little less routine. 

Lockdown diaries day eighteen, guilty pleasures

Paris portraits, 1998, aged and wrinkled, like us

Day eighteen, Monday 16^th November 2020

 

Guilty pleasures

Monday morning, the sun is doing its best to shine, the kitchen smells of freshly baked cake and in a brief nod to life before Covid-19, I appear have the house to myself. There is just the reassuring hum of muted voices coming from behind closed doors to remind me that I’m not really home alone, just that the men are busy with their online worlds, in their respective dens. I am free to flit from task to task, and roam from room to room as I choose. 

 

I play that annoying game of putting the washing out, then notice the sun has been replaced with a hovering dark cloud, so bring it back in, then when the dust motes in the bedroom dance in the sunlight, I put it back out once more. I get back to rearranging my books in the bedroom, then realise the portraits we had done in Paris in 1998, (you know, the touristy sketches from the street artists in Montmartre) hidden away for too long in a dark corridor, actually look pretty good dusted off and placed on the chest of drawers. Aged and wrinkled like us, they offer a glance back to our youth and a time when France was a holiday destination not a home. 

 

There are still too many books to sort through and decisions to make on who stays and who goes. After a shelf or two, where I’d lovingly picked up so many and made promises I couldn’t keep about reading them next, I turned to my kindle and the book that was becoming increasingly difficult to put down. The characters all doing their best to hide their pasts and their real reasons for being where they are just now. Their different stories weaving through the book, emotionally charged situations and decisions made in the past that have repercussions on the future had me hooked. In one day, lives were changed forever, but who really knows the truth and who is out for revenge? Oh, I whiled away a good bit of my afternoon snowed in at a luxury chalet in the French Alps waiting for the plot to fall into place, doing my best to second guess who was who. Of course, this did mean that I wasn’t doing what I should have been doing, but there is always tomorrow to get back on track.

 

Days like today are my guilty pleasure, as I’m sure any bookworm will agree and it’s nice to break from routine every now and then. I sometimes wonder if certain things have become too routine at the moment, especially mealtimes. Without realising it Saturday night has become homemade pizza night, Sunday night, risotto, Monday, a spicy vegetable couscous, Tuesday, lasagne and Thursday, moules frites. That only leaves two nights of variety or surprise. Then again, as no two meals I serve up are exactly the same, even if I’m following a recipe, I guess it’s not too bad and I know they are all healthy and homecooked. 

 

Frugal meatballs

I think as a treat this week, to spice things up a bit, we’ll have homemade meatballs in a homemade spicy tomato sauce, served with spaghetti. Not tonight, as my late yoga class means I need a lighter meal on a Monday, but as our diet is now mainly vegetarian, contains hardly any processed foods, and is low in salt and fat, meatballs (like lazy days spent in books) are a rare treat. 

 

I tend to make them in large batches and freeze in portions, so I always keep an eye out for the short-dated burgers and sausages in the supermarket anti-waste fridges. The last batch I made were great value. Six pork and veal sausages, reduced to 1.50€ and eight pure beef burgers, reduced to 5€. Four of the burgers went straight in the freezer and four into the meatball mix with the skinned sausages, crushed garlic, homemade pumpkin and chestnut purée, a grated apple from the orchard, black pepper and piment d’espelette. 4€ of minced meat made twenty-five meatballs, which will be enough for five individual portions which works out at 0,80€ a portion. The best thing about them is that every batch I make is a different mix of meats, flavours and spices. Do you have a naughty but nice family favourite, served up for special occasions?

Lockdown diaries, day seventeen, we did it

The finished landing

Day seventeen, Sunday 15^th November 2020

 

Today could have been a dark and gloomy day. The wind and the rain did their best to clear the leaves from the Gingko tree and as the weather was coming from the south west, to prevent any leaks, we had to close most of the shutters, creating cave-like conditions indoors. It is the sort of day that would normally have registered pretty low on the happiness scale. Thankfully we had plenty to do to keep us distracted.

 

Attention to detail

I used to run a guest post feature on the blog called Lazy Sunday in France where Francophile friends and authors shared their perfect idea of a lazy day, on a French theme. For us, today was anything but a lazy Sunday in France. I was up with the lark to ensure the boulangerie wouldn’t have run out of croissants and pains au chocolat and once the first coffee had worked its way around our blood streams, it was all systems go on the decorating. The first bit was the fiddly bit, around the window, radiator and pipe work, then straight into a tight corner with two internal angles and an external one as well. Adrian might not like the repetitiveness of decorating, but he does love a problem to solve so he was very much in charge of figuring out the fiddly bits. Actually, he was pretty much in charge of it all. My role is to assist and ensure the required tool is always to hand, any off cuts are straight into the bin and any other mess is kept to a minimum. We certainly work well as a team, even after two periods of lockdown and are both really pleased with the new look room. Even the recycled curtains (from our first bedroom set twenty-three years ago) have been given a new lease of life against the new wallpaper.

 

All the junk that had been dumped on the landing for nearly two decades was cleared out and relocated before we began. The cot bed (not used since Ed was a toddler), the desk (that was stacked with my fabric stash), the broken grandfather clock (rescued about twenty years ago as its previous owners were going to drop it at the tip) and a bookcase full of untouched, dusty books). We now have a lovely fresh and bright space that as landings go is pretty big, but what else can we do with it apart from walk through it and use it to dry the washing in front of the radiator over winter? Any ideas would be gratefully received, unless it involves a dog bed for Mini as I don’t think she’d accept that as a good idea.

I know the weather in many parts of the UK and France hasn’t been great, but I hope you are all staying safe and were able to enjoy some relaxing time this weekend. We are off to enjoy an apero, well-deserved, even if we do say so ourselves.