Albatross, sounds like absolutely no loss, there.
KF I think we have variants of the same thing. I had chalked it up to all the foreign students bringing foreign germs back lately, but....
1) I can breathe again without sounding like the fish filter. My nose has stopped bleeding (from sneezing and blowing it) and seems healed. The outside of my nose, from the tissues. I look like WC Fields, though.
2) The Daughter whipped up a big pot of chicken tortilla soup, and six jars of it are processing in my pressure canner. Later said canner will be processing spaghetti (with meat) sauce and a few jars of potatoes. (They were starting to sprout, have to do something with them, this freezer is ridiculously small!) The Daughter made a really nice tomato sauce from a recipe from a magazine, so we're going to try canning it to see how it takes all that heat. Much cheaper to make your own as long as you can get good tomatoes on sale!
3) Apparently it's going to be lovely here for the next few days. If I had the energy I'd take the Weber kettle grill downstairs and cook the steaks we had the butcher deliver, later today. Not sure I'm up to that. Might have one cooked on a ripping hot cast-iron frying pan, though. New butcher, hope the meat is good. The chicken was fantastic (so hard to find chicken breasts still on the bone and with skin on!). I think the target steaks will be the Popesye ones - I ordered two of several different varieties to see which we prefer. ( But what a weird name!) They look pretty good. Maybe with a baked potato and a green salad.
4) I got so tired of this lame oven that takes forever to heat up and then has temperature swings of up to 30 degrees (in C) that make a shambles of trying to do proper baking that I bought a counter-top one from Lakeland. It heated up in less than 5 minutes and the temp (in the few tests I've done) has not varied more than 10c up or down, although it tends to run a little "hot". But reliably so, so we can adjust the temp we set the unit for to compensate. As a "new" customer to Lakeland they gave me 10% off and also sent some chopping mats and kitchen tools as gifts, plus a coupon for £5 off my purchase of £30 if I buy anything in October from them. Delivery was free, too. It has separate controls for the top and bottom heating elements, has a rotisserie unit, and can do conventional or fan cooking. Plus has a "crumbs" tray at the bottom. I'm happy with it, so far. (Made a nice freezer pizza the other day, will have to test it further when I'm feeling better.)
5) I am surprised it took this long, but we are now starting to get "we want to come visit" messages from friends and old co-workers. For the Holidays. After Brexit. Possibly bad timing, there!
