At lunchtime I stopped work at the computer, had lunch (just a trio of crumpets) and started to bake. I had soaked the fruit for the tea loaf overnight, so that was OK, and I decided to make use of the oven by making a small bread pudding. The tea loaf went well. I used chopped dried apricots to replace some of the dried fruit. It made a moist loaf that was very sweet despite me reducing the quantity of sugar. The bread pudding tasted good, but I used the wrong dish and it was spread a bit thin. However, it did let me use the last of the loaf of cheap white bread I had left.

My sister came round for tea and we had vegetarian sausages with Toad in the Hole, roasted vegetables (carrots, parsnip, cauliflower and leek) with tea loaf and coffee after.

In plant terms we had:

Mixed dried fruit
Apricots
Coffee
Carrots
Parsnips
Leeks
Cauliflower
We also had spices – Cinnamon, Nutmeg, Mixed Spice not really enough to count.

I’m not sure if the vegetarian stuff in the sausages counts as a plant-based portion. It’s some sort of laboratory grown fungus as I understand it, so it should.

Rolling total for Day 1 is about 12. Not bad.

It would have been more, but distracted by a major loss of internet, odd jobs, cookery (Julia was forcing me to make Toad in the Hole – first time in 15 years I’ve made it, bound to be a disaster, it didn’t occur o me that the occasional rich aromas I was getting (spice and apple) signified the destruction of a pot of red cabbage with apples and onions. Despite using the tiniest of flames my loss of memory/lack of awareness resulted in a pan of red cabbage that was mainly welded to the bottom of the pan.  Such a shame, and a worrying step along the road to mental decline.

Then we ate a lot of the cake before I remembered the photos, and the camera battery ran out. Plus the kitchen lights turned the photos yellow. Not my greatest  day.