Friday Smiles 2024 # Week 26

Week 26, so we are halfway though the year. In fact today (Wednesday 26th) is my eldest son's birthday, and when he was born I worked out that Christmas Day is the middle day of his year!

You may wonder why I am writing Friday's post on Wednesday. Well normally I prepare it on Thursday but tomorrow I will be in Almeria hospital for most of the day, hopefully having my hand operation. So I thought I had better make a start today in case my right hand is out of action for the rest of the week.

I have been stocking up on prepared meals that Chris can easily finish off for us, and also getting plenty of fruit ready to make my smoothies and flavoured yoghurts that I love in this hot weather. So yesterday I prepared a pineapple and open froze it in chunks. They add a great flavour to smoothies. 

Today I diced half a large melon and that is now freezing, and I poached some apricots that weren't quite ripe enough to eat raw as I usually do. 

We also get some big peaches out here in the market They look more like oranges than peaches, but they are slightly furry, and nearly always have no blemishes on their skin.

Although they look lovely they are not actually all that nice to eat. They remain quite firm and have little juice or flavour. But poached they are delicious and look and taste just like the yellow cling peaches that we used to buy canned in England.  We have a drink here called gaseoso which is a cross between a cheap lemonade and soda water. It is actually water, citric acid, a little sweetener and plenty of gas! It is used a lot in white wine spritzers and as a general mixer, and I like it as it has no actual sugar in it. I find it is perfect to poach fruit in without adding anything in the way of sugar or sweetners. So yesterday at the market I bought four big peaches, and soon they were stoned and sliced and I just covered them with gaseoso and pressure cooked them for four minutes. Now they are frozen in my oversized ice makers, in just the right portions to add to drinks or icecream. So it was a useful day.

Today had some milk that was just out of date, and I used it up to make some scones. I cooked them in my Ninja Foodi and they turned out really well. We enjoyed some for our tea today and the rest are already in the freezer for a later date.

Almeria hospital is an hour's drive from here and I have to be there for 8.00 in the morning, so we will be up with the larks. I won't be able to have my usual breakfast, but I will need to shower, and we will be on the road even before the sun is fully up. I am not usually up in time to see the sunrise, but maybe tomorrow I will be. But just in case I have borrowed this lovely photo from a friend who was up early enough on Tuesday to catch it.

And finally I am sharing a project I completed on my laser cutter this week. (Sorry if you have already seen it on Facebook). The Christmas decorations I showed last week were practice pieces while I worked on the settings for speed and power to engrave and cut my wood. So this week I felt confident enough to try the project that I was saving. It turned out so much better than I expected. It is not perfect, but I am pleased with it. I have gifted it to a dear friend, but I shall be making it again soon.

And that is it for this rather short week. If I am able, I will add a brief update before linking up with Annie's Friday Smiles and publishing this on Friday.