Baking, Birds, Hair and Hicecream!

 You know that moment in the film ‘Of Mice and Men’ when Lennie flings himself into the pool for a drink and George tells him off for gulping the water like a horse because it might not be fresh and he could get tummy ache? (You’ll be trés au fait with this scene if you are a teacher of English because, well, how many times have we read that bloody novel and watched the film? Too many times, that’s how many. Hours and hours we shall NEVER get back...sigh...)

Anyway, there was a wood pigeon at the water bowl in our bird feeding station this morning re-enacting that VERY scene. Seriously, I thought it was going to drown, such was the energy of the quaffing, and then I’d be obliged to make pigeon pie for dinner. Waste not, want not, eh? Also visiting the bird feeding station have been Alan and Jean Pheasant WITH A BABY CHICK! Mucho excitemondo from me, I can tell you! And in the bird box at the top of the Damson Cottage estate...

...baby blue tits! They look almost ready to fledge. How lovely are they?

This week we have taken delivery of an ice cream maker. We had one years and years ago, but it expired. I’m put off buying manufactured ice cream because of the list of unpronounceable ingredients listed on the tub. I tell you, the older I grow the more fussy I am becoming about what I eat. I don’t want those man made engineered chemicals any more, oh no I don’t. I reckon that if can’t pronounce it, I probably shouldn’t be eating it. 

Thus, because we both like ice cream and we remembered how fab was the ice cream we used to make, we bought another maker and Lord ‘Gelato’ Malarkey himself set about making an enormous batch. Strawberries, cream, milk and eggs. I can pronounce ALL these ingredients! So far, so good! 

However, one uses only egg yolk in ice cream making, which left 5 egg whites languishing in a bowl in the fridge. Waste not, want not again, so this morning I turned them into 36 meringues. Egg whites and sugar. Still pronounceable. They are drying in a low heat oven at this very moment. Not the best day to have the oven on, to be honest, what with Summer arriving at last, but I am counter-acting the heat of the kitchen by not moving around very much. 

Prior to my meringuetastic moment, I also made two loaves of wholemeal bread and a flan. The flan is my ‘leftover’ recipe. This means I make a wholemeal pastry case and then fill it with whatever odds and ends of food are still sitting in the fridge at the end of the week. This morning’s ‘leftover flan’ comprises : sweet potato, leek, onion and feta cheese. And some thyme from the herb bed. 

Meanwhile, Andy is taking a break from his burgeoning EBay business and is in the garden doing the weeding. I took him up a mug of coffee and whilst I was there, picked some home grown Sweet Williams...

Such a gorgeous scent! Over the next year or two I’m aiming to grow more and more flowers that are suitable to cut for display in the house. Some people say, ‘Oh, it’s such a SHAME to cut flowers and bring them into the house to basically DIE.’ And to those people I say, ‘Bah and poo!’ In fact, just to prove a point, I’m going out NOW to cut some of the aquilegia that are positively rampant at the moment. 

Finally, I bought a new hairdryer yesterday. It was £12.99 - oddly, I declined the £250 price tag of the Dyson brand - and I got it because my old hairdryer is knocking on 20 years ancient and smells a tad of burning rubber when I use it to dry things that are mostly not my hair. I’ve never really bothered with drying my hair artificially, preferring to let it dry itself. This, of course, explains the ‘frizzy wild witch’ look I have frequently exhibited over the years. 

But yesterday I had a new hair do, and to keep it looking just right, it requires a short blast of warm air in order to ‘pouffe’ it up or, in hairdressing parlance, give it volume and lift. My hairdresser, Eddie, is very mindful of my minimal hair faff requirements, so we came up with this...

‘It doesn’t need much effort,’ said he. ‘Just a quick blast of warm air from behind. And some sculpting clay if you want a textured look.’ 

Well, I can cope with a quick blast of warm air from behind with the best of them. I’ll sort out the clay thing later.