Last night I came home, did the washing up I’d left to mature for a couple of days and prepared the evening meal. We had some leftover chicken, wrinkly carrots, bendy parsnips, over the hill mushrooms, softening onions and sprouting garlic. I then threw in some stock cubes, pearl barley and water.
I’m thinking of marketing a line of cookware with the motto “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here” featured on the logo.
With hindsight more water or less barley may have been better. And less cooking. I lost track of time and it ended up with a couple of hours on a very low heat. The result was a pearl barley risotto. I liked it, though I was surprised. Julia was equally surprised, and not quite so keen. She doesn’t always appreciate my deviations from the culinary norm, or the fact I hate wasting vegetables.
I watched TV with Julia, replied to comments on the blog, wrote 1,100 words in two parts, did the washing up again and made the sandwiches for today.
Then I fell asleep.
It really doesn’t sound like a lot of work when you consider it took the best part of eight hours. There was a slight nap involved (about thirty minutes – that’s all) and the TV probably took up two hours, so I suppose it becomes a bit more understandable.
Then there was today, which just seemed to fade away. I got Julia to work for 8.30, was at the shop for 9.00, bid on some ebay items by 9.30 and had several parcels packed by 10.00. After that it all became a blur and suddenly it was the end of another week – just one more day to go until Sunday.
Where do the days go, and the evenings and the weeks? In fact, where did this year go? Or my life, come to think about it. If the next twenty years go as fast as the last twenty I really don’t have time for naps.
Now I’m off to find photos for this post and to prepare myself for more postcode facts.
The picture is part of my collection that I found recently after some years in a dusty box – it’s a fund-raising flag used by the Foresters to raise money for their regimental war memorial at Crich.
Re your reply to ‘myfoodhunt’ – I am sure that all vegetables are becoming sweeter. Cabbages and sprouts are much less strongly-flavoured than they were and root vegetables too.
I am glad you featured the regimental war-memorial at Crich. We were at Crich this summer and wondered what the tower was. Now I know – thank you.
You can go up it on some days (though I haven’t done so in the last 20 years). They told me that on a clear day, using a high powered telescope from the Regimental Museum, they actually saw the Humber bridge once – about 60 miles in a straight line, 80 by road.
Thank you! 🙂
🙂
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How many years were you in that dusty box?
🙂 According to some business correspondence that was also in there – since 1993.
🙂
“Where do the days go, and the evenings and the weeks? In fact, where did this year go? Or my life, come to think about it. If the next twenty years go as fast as the last twenty I really don’t have time for naps.”
This.
And yet without sleep it all blurs more…
🙂 Yes, I suppose it does.
Dinner sounds good! We use leftovers a lot here.
I’m still buying for four – I really need to get a grip now there are just the two of us.
Be warned, as the years go past, they go past faster.
I suppose they have to compensate for the rest of me going slower.
I, too, loved that you used the leftovers. Sounds mighty tasty.
It was, and sadly it was also one of those accidental dishes you can never quite replicate. 🙂
Great effort 👍 love that you used all the leftovers and still discuss that they may have not been all playing properly in the same food playground. Hopefully it all tasted nice 😎
It was excellent thanks, though the parsnips were a little sweet. Not sure if my tastebuds are changing or parsnips are sweeter these days but it’s happened several times now. I can balance the taste in soups but I’ve made a few rather sweet stews and curries. Not sure what the opposite end of the food spectrum is but after you’ve done gourmet and street food you end up with manky veg leftover cookery. Stew, curry, rissoles hash and soup… This is my end of the food spectrum. 🙂