Shopping

Not long after two in the afternoon, the phone goes.

"Are you coming out to play?" It's PD, wanting a lift to the Pub, followed by a little supporting company whilst there.

Normally we're prepared to put ourselves out, especially if he sounds in a bad way as a result of his depression. For once he doesn't sound too bad, so I can reply with an easy conscience, "We're out, but we're going shopping."

Of late I've been finding, by the time I've done the big shop, I'm so exhausted I'm hard-pushed to cope with eating, let alone cooking, a meal afterwards. I manage better if I have time for a sit-down to recover from the shop before turning my attention to the food. The time has come to accept that the big shop can not be done after a trip to the Pub. A top-up shop I will still consider doing after the Pub, but this is a big shop.

So off we go to the supermarket. We get back about 4.30. It takes half an hour or so to unpack & put things away. By then neither of us feels like cooking. The only thing I've prepared is peeling some potatoes, so we decide to go down to our village pub & eat there for once.

We both decide to have the gammon. Until recently they always did large gammon steaks. We're still recovering from some gammon steaks we had years ago at the Greyhound in Shap. There the steaks were over a pound in weight per person. We were just overwhelmed. It's left us nervous ever since. These steaks turned out a nice size, beautifully tender & not too salty. We were pleasantly surprised by the accompaniment. Apart from the fried egg, there was "pineapple chutney". I'm not sure it's what I'd call chutney. It was more a case of pineapple pieces in sweet chilli dipping sauce. Whatever you call it, the sweet spiciness was delicious with the gammon.

Today we're off to the Farmers' Market. No Pub again. The market is only on until 2pm. We usually go off to the local pub for some lunch - a tuna & mayo jacket potato more often than not - followed by an afternoon nap in time for dinner. And today the dinner will be pork pasties with the Fox's mustard mash. I'm using up those 50g of minced pork I mentioned the other day. The pasties are already made so will just need re-heating later. Nice & easy.