Rocking Your World 2021: Week 37

I don't have a lot to write about this week, not because it hasn't been a good week, it has just been an 'ordinary week', with its ordinary ups and downs, but one thing I am really happy about is that I can now show you my Sophie's Dream afghan (designer Dedri Ulys). I completed the border on Wednesday night, doing just a little bit each night. It is all a cotton-acrylic mix, and is surprisingly heavy, and I was just too hot with it on my lap for long at a time. But I got there in the end. Because I spent the time blocking each square as it was done, it all went together really well and the finished blanket lays flat and square (well rectangular really). I love the way the colours changed with each yarn cake, and as predicted they all went together perfectly at the end.

I am not sure what I will be working on next just yet. I have a green cardigan that I started at the same time as Sophie's Dream and now might be a good time to pick it up again, and I have a few fun items I may have a go at. For now, I am happy spending my evenings reading and doing online jigsaw puzzles, so I am in no hurry to pick up a hook again, but I am sure I will soon be working on something.

It has been a week of good and bad news. Several of my friends here, and in UK, have developed worrying health issues. One has lost his mother this week. But another who received rather devastating news after an operation, has now been given some much more encouraging news. She is back in UK now and the health service seems to be under a lot of pressure, so we don't know how long she will have to wait for more treatment, but at least now she has hope, and something to look forward to. So this week I managed to sit in my hot craft room for long enough to make her a card. All four of my September birthday cards will be opened during this week, so maybe I will get round to writing a blog about them soon.

I have been really spoilt too because on Monday we needed a little shopping and we stopped by a Ferrateria so Chris could replace his office fan which had packed up on him a good month before he could manage without it. I wandered around browsing the kitchen equipment while he chose the one he wanted, and then he found me looking at air-fryers and bought one for me. I had one a good few years ago but found it too big  and difficult to clean and it seemed quite limited in what it could do. They are much improved now. This one is smaller but taller, so fits up next to the new mini oven. It is a dream to clean and so far I have liked what I have cooked in it. Although it can do many of the things that the mini oven does, they each have their own unique uses, and both are quick, save on energy, and save me putting on the main oven, so it is win win all round.

Yesterday I did a bit of 'batch baking' sort of. Because I am a bit of a messy cooker, I like to do all my baking in one go, making several meals at a time, and then clean it all up, hence my term batch/baking.

At the market on Tuesday I was pleased to see some Autumn vegetables creeping back in. Carrots are mostly available all year, but other vegetables are often scarce, and look a bit limp and sad in the hottest weather. But this week I bought clabaza, celery and leeks, and I decided to make a beef casserole. We quite enjoy eating a hot dinner some days in the summer. It is the long time cooking them that makes the whole kitchen like an oven, that puts us off. But today the kitchen was relatively comfortable for the preparation so I cut up lots of veggies to go with the beef and filled my Instant Pot. For anyone who doesn't know what this is, it is basically an electric pressure cooker, though there is no steam pouring from it and no continuous hissing, and an integral timer that switches it to 'keep warm' when the cooking is done. And it also has a slow cook facility, cooks rice perfectly every time, sautés meat, and makes yoghurt. I mainly use it as a pressure cooker so my cassrole was done in about an hour. And as the Instant pot (plus my Ramoska, Mini oven and Air fryer) lives in the utility I was hardly aware of it cooking at all. I have had it for a couple of years and have never burnt anything in it, and it has a large stainless steel pot that is super easy to clean. The dinner was delicious and I have boxed up two more meals to go in the freezer, so that's two more days when I won't need to cook!

I started the morning gently poaching some plums I also bought at the market. Occasionally these are ripe enough to eat and I love them, but  usually they are better poached and I make them into crumble.

So again I used a large bowl and made a big crumble mix. There was enough to cover the plums and put two more bags of crumble mix in the freezer. This is super useful when I have fruit to use up and no time to make the crumble. It freezes very well. The plum crumble was yummy. It's one of my favourites. It looks a bit dark because for Autumn fruits I use half white and half dark brown sugar.

Then I weighed out half a kilo of dried fruit and some sugar and left it to steep in a mug of cold, strong tea over night. This morning I made it into an Irish tea loaf, (or Barra Brith, Barm Brack etc depending which part of the UK you are from), which was my dad's favourite. With that amount of fruit it does, of course, make a large loaf, so as soon as it is cold, half of it will be tightly wrapped and stowed in the freezer for another time. And lastly I weighted out half a kilo of flour to make my large batch of scones. The egg and milk would be stirred in later so we could have fresh baked scones for tea. These are much better the day they are made. When mum was still living with us, and I had my herd of hungry boys to feed, we had no trouble finishing the whole batch for tea, but now there are only two of us, it again makes sense to do them up in bags of four and freeze them. I won't need to bake again for a while will I?

They all passed quality control, so half have been eaten or stored for this week, and half are in the freezer. I ended up cooking the loaf yesterday evening. It cooks on a low heat for almost two hours, but half way through I moved it to the main oven because I thought It was cooking too fast in the mini one. Next time I will adjust the settings better, but last night I wanted to leave to just cook while I was in the other room so I took the safer option and moved it.

I had a nice encounter with 'nature' on Wednesday when I spotted one of these. (photo from Google).

It is a hummingbird moth, and there was no way I was going to get a photo of it using my phone. It needed a special high speed camera to take that.They move so fast with their wings constantly flapping and flit from flower to flower just as an actual humming bird does. But I had no doubt about what it was and I stood watching it, fascinated by its movement, for ages, but it never settled anywhere. It was the first time I have seen one although I knew they were native to these parts, so I was happy that I spotted it.

On Wednesday we put in a big order to Amazon.es. Half of it was for cat food. I am trying out some different makes on them. They are quite fussy eaters so I thought a change might be good for them. But I also bought some headphones - really as a birthday present for hubby next month, but when they came we just had to try them out. They are called bone-conduction headphones and they are so small and light. The sound is excellent and they are so much more comfortable than either little 'in-ear' pods, or big 'over-ear' ones. We are reeally impressed. I may have to invest in some for myself soon too.

Here they are but I should have added something for size comparison. There are no wires as they are of course bluetooth, they only weigh 25 g, and the receiver sits on your face, on the bone in front of your ear, not on or in it, which is why they are so comfortable.

I also bought a couple of cooking pans. Having tried the local shops I was unable to find a smaller flan tin. We really enjoyed the sponge base flan the other week, but I don't want want to make one that size again unless I have visitors. But I managed to find a smaller pan on Amazon so I ordered that and also a set of six (two of each colour) smaller ones to make individual flans.

Because Chris has Amazon Prime, he does the ordering, and the headphones, flan tins and half the cat food came the next day. The last items will be here on Saturday. It really is a good service, and one we rely on more and more as import duties are making buying anything from outside of Spain, so expensive.

While out watering the pots at the front last night, I noticed the clouds were tinged with pink so I thought there was probably a pretty sunset out at the back, but by the time I got there I was too late. It had faded away. But a short while later I did catch this moment which I labelled "Venus peeping from behind a cloud to smile on the waning moon". Some you lose, some you win!

For a quiet week, I seem to have found plenty to ramble on about, so I had better stop here and link up with Rocking Your World and Annie's Friday Smiles.