Steaming

It was a cold night last night. I looked at the thermometer attached to the shed just before 8am. -10˚C. One look at the white lawns told you it was cold. However the sky is brilliant icy blue.

As I prepared today’s dinner – Hampton Pie – my attention kept being distracted by the steaming that has begun. There’s clearly some warmth in that sun, gently melting all that frost. It always seems strange to me to see the privet lollipops steaming.

Hampton Pie is something of a surprise too. Yesterday we moved on to another month of my freezer list. So I decided to sort through the bundles in the freezer & move up the next on my list for use to the top of the pile. In the course of doing that, I had to just about empty out the meat section of our chest freezer. One bag, containing 3 smaller bags lost its tie so I put that on one side until I had put everything back. When putting on another tie, I noticed the label – December 2017. I’m currently using up from a month much later than that! Instead of the minced beef I’d anticipating using up, I’m now using up this bag of cooked gammon, probably left over from last Christmas.

In some ways I’m quite relieved. The last bag of stuff I used up contained about 6 bags of minced beef. Now, with a single day respite of lamb, we were going to start on a bag of about 9 bags of minced beef. The supermarket keeps making these offers of three packs for the price of two. I only use a little immediately for the meal I planned & put the rest in bags in the freezer. So often when I need the next lot of minced beef I haven’t frozen the old lot in the right quantity of meat so I have to buy yet another three packs. Clearly this had happened two months running. Leftover gammon sounds like quite a treat from all that minced beef. And then there’s turkey for tomorrow.

Just one more thing needs to be said. That is

Happy Christmas

to all my readers

HAPPY CHRISTMAS