Memories are made of this.

Isn't it strange how the oddest things can take us back along memory lane? Today, instead of one of my lazy 'quick and easy' dinners, I made a chicken and leek pie. I made it in a deep dish so I dug in the back of the cupboard and found my old pie chimney, which hasn't been used for many a long day. As we were eating our pie I was telling Chris about the pies Mum used to make for us, and how I loved her pie chimney which was a black bird with an open beak for the steam to escape. Mum often made pies; I guess it was a good way to stretch the meat to feed a big family, but it gave me my love of pies and anything pastry, which is still with me today. When Jean and I were the last two 'children' left at home, I was the acedemic one who actually enjoyed sitting in my room studying and listening to radio Luxemburg at the same time! Mum never understood that but she was pleased that Jean was more domesticated, and she put her efforts into making sure she knew how to budget for a family, and how to prepare and cook a good meal for them. I was happy to be let off the hook in the kitchen, but somehow I still managed to learn a lot of mum's cooking skills, and many things are still done her way. And a little thing like a pie chimney can bring back memories of a kitchen smelling of good cooking, and of mum standing at a hot stove. God bless you Mum. Gone but never forgoten!

As well as using many of mum's tried and tested recipes and methods, I also like to experiment with new ideas, and try ingredients that either were not readily available in Mum's time, or that she thought were too difficult to bother with. So today I am trying my hand at preserving ginger. At the market today I bought some beautiful fresh root ginger. It was really fresh, firm and juicy, and I wondered if I could preserve some of it before it goes stale and wrinkly. The preserved ginger that we usually buy is, of course, stem ginger, but on the internet I found a recipe for preserving root ginger so I am giving it a go. It is a lengthy process which will take several days to complete. Once the roots are cooked thay have to be steeped in syrup which then has to be drained, boiled, cooled and used again, several times. So you will have to wait intil my next blog to find out how successful it is. Not wanting to waste anything, I kept all the peelings and poured boiling water over them and made a very strong, delicious ginger 'tea'. Another little memory trigger as, on our 'holiday of a lifetime', Chris and I used to sit in a little bar in Bangkok with a pot of ginger tea that was literally boiling water poured over shavings of ginger, and the longer we left it, the stronger it got. The one I have made is pretty firey, so I will have to dilute it if I use it again.

I seem to lose track of the days out here, but I have just realised that tomorrow will be two weeks since my cataract operation, and I am managing quite well to do things around the house. I have to limit my time at each activity as my eye soon begins to feel strained, and I am still struggling outside, both with the bright light and the lack of distance vision, but at the rate the days are whizzing by, it will be no time at all before I have new glasses, and all will become clear...I hope. I wonder if any of you forgot to change your clocks at the end of October. I hate clocks that don't tell the truth, and I always reset my bedroom clock and watch before I go to sleep, and make it the first job when I wake up, to go round the house putting all the others right. But this time it struck me how very few clocks there are in this house to alter. Apart from the one beside my bed, there is really only one in the sitting room which has panels of flower fairies on it, and is more for decoration than use as I can't see the small face on it very clearly. I guess its a sign of how unimportant time is to us now. How lucky we are.

In my last blog I told you that I was waiting for two buds to open in the garden. Well I'm still waiting. I know what the first one will look like, but as yet, the second one is a mystery. The bud is growing and getting fatter every day, but you will have wait for a while longer to see the flower. In the meantime here is the bud!! So take a guess as to what it will look like, and maybe next week you'll know if you were right.

A beautiful day!

It is hard to believe that it is already one week since I had my cataract operation, but this morning we set off for the hospital again for my next checkup. The consultant was pleased with the actual condition of my eye but seemed a little surprised when I said I could not see much better with it as yet, and in fact my distance vision is rather worse than it was, so he tested me and I was unable to read any of the letters on his screen. I explained that my eyesight has been poor for many years, but as long as I use my glasses I can still see enough to get by, though my eye is constantly a bit sore because I am straining it with everything I do. He told me to go on using the drops and has given me an appointment for 16th December to have a test for new glasses. I am assuming he will then give me a prescription to take to an optician to have made up. I will need to do that quickly if I am to get them before everything stops for Christmas!

It was a beautiful day, much better than even we hope for in November, so when we came out of the hospital, we decided to go for a drive, and took the road that leads down through Pulpi to San Juan beach. For the first part we were driving along a fairly narrow, bumpy road, with a new road, under construction, running along side it. Then we joined the part of the new road that is completed. The views were stunning. The hills and mountains seemed quite green, with long, dark shadows running down them, the sky was bright blue, and as we broke through the mountain range, the sea was sparkling in front of us. All the way we passed huge areas of farm land with long, straight rows of bright green lettuces growing, fields of workers cutting some for marketing, and planting new ones, and then orange groves where the early crop of fruit was also being picked. We passed through sleepy villages, and stopped for goats to cross the road in front of us, and we felt we had seen the real Spain that we both love so much. As we drove down into San Juan we stopped to look at the mountains behind us, and the golf course, (new, and still not looking ready to use) in front of us, and across the other side of that was the mass of coloured houses and flats that make up the town of San Juan. We have a soft spot for this little town as it has one of the best beaches in the area, as well as beautiful mountains all round it. We did look at a property there when we were house-hunting, but like so many towns, it has suffered with over development, and the houses are bunched up close together, and the town lacks the amenities to supply the growing population. But it is still a lovely place to visit on a sunny autumn day. We sat at a beach café for a coffee and then drove along the coast road, passed the flat at El Calón that we rented for our first six months here, and on to one of our favourite restaurants at Villaricos where we stopped for lunch. We were able to sit out on a sunny patio to eat which is a real bonus this late in the year. I then spent the afternoon on a lounger in the garden until it was time for my Spanish lesson. That's life and it's great!

We are in the throws of seriously reducing the size of our bouganvillea 'hedge' outside the kitchen door. It is a big job and we don't really have the best tools to do it with, but we are gradually getting it done. Then we have to prune the roses right back, and generally sort out the garden for it's winter rest time. So it is nice to see that not everything is dying off and we have two plants showing signs of bursting into bloom. They are both cactus/succulent type plants and they were both gifts from a friend at church. One is a big rosette of spikey, spotted leaves and it has flowered several times before, but this time it has four heads of buds on its stem, and it is the first time it has had that. The other one is a not very striking plant but Jasmine told me that the flower is very interesting. She gave me a cutting last year and the dogs, who were still really only pups then, promptly ate it! This year she gave me another small cutting that didn't look very promising, but she thought it had rooted. I put it in a little strip of soil in the front garden (well away from the dogs) where I had dug up the 'rabbit-ears' cactus that had grown too big. It hasn't done much in the months it has been there, but it now has a bud on it that is swelling daily so I am really looking forward to seeing it open. No doubt you will be seeing it too in my next blog.....