Last week’s plan went well; most meals were enjoyed, although some “constructive criticism” was given!! As I planned the shopping lists for the weekly plans as well, it’s certainly made the job of making the shopping list easier!
I plan from Wednesday to Tuesday, as I usually go shopping on Wednesday, although I’m going on Tuesday this week, because Wednesday is a bank holiday – Toussaint (All Saints) For a country that prides itself on separating religion from secular life, there are a surprising number of religious bank holidays in France!!
So here’s the plan:
Punjabi Partha
W
Lentil Herder’s pie with sweet potato topping Green beans
Th
Punjabi Partha (aubergine curry) WITH green beans!!!
Pulled pork sloppy Joes, (pulled pork in the freezer) sweet potato wedges, onions – HM coleslaw
T
Salmon, garlic chickpeas, spinach
There has to be a major Eating Green Beans plan as I bought a pack last week and haven’t opened it yet! There’ll be some in tomorrow’s stir fry, and I might make a green-bean-and-onion salad tonight (felafels and flatbreads) but I still need to use them next week too. They should go with the lentil-herders pie and the aubergine curry quite well
The Mary Berry lasagne is one I make quite often – it’s quick, simple and enjoyable, with at least three vegetables in it. I’ll put half in the freezer for another day and we can have salad with it. Or green beans!!
So these are the dishes I’ve planned…which do you like the sound of most?
Not one of mine, unfortunately, but (with the preacher’s permission) one I’m sharing with our congregation on Sunday. It was given at Morning Prayer at Convention in Wiesbaden, and everybody thought it was really good. So I’m sharing it with you, together with how I’m introducing it…
Today I’m not going to preach from the readings proscribed. In fact, I’m not even going to preach one of my sermons. I’m going to share with you one of the homilies given during Convention. This was such an inspiring sermon, that summed up so much of what Convention & the Festival of Gathering was about, that I wanted to share it with you. It is about humility, about doing what you can for the individual, about giving what you can to do God’s work; it is about Beloved Community. This homily was given by Megan Preston-Meyer, from Emmanuel Church, Geneva, using this reading from Luke chapter 7
Luke 7:19-23 John’s disciples reported all these happenings to him. Then he summoned two of them and sent them to the Lord with this message, “Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?”
20 When the men came to Jesus, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you with this message, ‘Are you the one who was to come, or are we to look for someone else?’”
21-23 At that very time Jesus was healing many people of their diseases and ailments and evil spirits, and he restored sight to many who were blind. Then he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind are recovering their sight, cripples are walking again, lepers being healed, the deaf hearing, dead men are being brought to life again, and the good news is being given to those in need. And happy is the man who never loses his faith in me.
Megan says:
I really like John the Baptist.
He’s fascinating; he’s the forerunner of Christ, one of the most important prophets ever, and yet, the Bible only has a few paragraphs about him. Almost all the other prophets get entire books. I mean, look at Jeremiah. He’s got a book. Ezekiel’s got a book. Isaiah’s got a book. John the Baptist doesn’t get a book.
But, and here’s why I am so drawn to him, I think—he really doesn’t care.
Icon of John the Baptist
John the Baptist was not in it for the glory (at least not his own). He just did his job—paving the way for the Messiah—and he did it well. He was laser-focused on his mission and didn’t care about going down in history. He didn’t care about making a name for himself. He didn’t care about being recognized as an industry leader, as being named one of LinkedIn’s top 40 Prophets Under 40. I bet, if he were here today, he wouldn’t even have a LinkedIn.
And that’s why he’s so fascinating. I can hardly conceive of someone who so clearly played an important role being so utterly unconcerned with recognition. John the Baptist exemplified humility, and that’s not something we see a lot these days.
I, myself, struggle a lot with humility. I want to be impressive. I want people to look at my LinkedIn profile and be wowed. I want people to think I’ve done a good job, that I’m a good problem-solver, that I add value.
But enough about me; let’s talk about John. John had the humility that we so often lack. He knew that his life’s work was to prepare the way for Christ, that his job was part of something so much bigger, and that he was not the main character in this story. And yet, he still questioned Jesus. Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Is this what we’ve been working toward? Has the Messiah finally come? Are we done now?… Is the world saved?
Was that what John was thinking?
I don’t know. I’m not a New Testament scholar. I went to business school. That means I know a lot about LinkedIn and laying out your assumptions and identifying frameworks to arrive at optimal solutions to your problems, but not a lot about the contemporary consensus on John the Baptist’s motivations.
But I don’t think John was looking for Job-Well-Done, and I don’t think he was looking for proof, either. He did ask for an answer—and Jesus sent one, listing out data points that most analysts would agree indicated a positive trend.
As someone who likes data, who likes spreadsheets and certainty and solving problems, this is a tempting way to interpret this passage. Statement of the problem: Pave the way for the One who is to come. The One comes: Problem solved. John— and I—are happy.
But life is not just a series of problems to be solved. Somehow, though, we’ve turned it into one.
I mean, think about it… Most of our To-Do lists are framed as problems to be solved. Sales are down? Implement a new marketing strategy. Congregational growth has slowed? Get the Welcoming Committee to work double-shifts. Have a homily to write? Easy—just do all the Homily Things: Pick out one line of the Scripture readings to riff on, connect it to something contemporary, define a word in the original Greek, and then name-drop a prominent theologian or Christian thinker.
Now, I don’t know Greek, but, as the mystery writer, & apologist, Dorothy L. Sayers says in the Mind of the Maker, “the careless use of the words ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ can betray us into habits of thought that are not merely inadequate but false.”
The lens that we look through, where everything is a problem and we need to solve it, is a problem in itself.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we don’t have problems. I’m not making light of any of the issues that we’re facing—of anything that’s going on in the world or that any one of us are going through at the moment. There are problems…God knows we have problems… but that’s just it. God knows we have problems. We’re not in it alone. The responsibility, the weight of solving them, doesn’t rest 100% on our shoulders. Sometimes, thinking that it does—and that we can—can border on hubris.
That’s the danger in this problem/solution lens, because when we start thinking that everything in life can be broken down into a problem and a solution, it doesn’t take long before things turn dark. We quickly get to the really big problems, the ones we’re facing right now. Poverty. Injustice. War. We see huge, global, overwhelming problems—and we assume they need huge, global, overwhelming solutions. And we assume that we have to find them.
The thing is, there are no global solutions. No policy, no program, no multinational set of goals, is going to save the world. They can inform, they can encourage, they can lay out a framework—but the work-work is done one person at a time. One human at a time. One moment at a time. And that is something we can do.
That, I think, is what Jesus was getting at when he responded to John the Baptist’s question. He didn’t send back the message that he had put into place a policy of redeeming the world. He didn’t enclose a glossy brochure of his Future World Vision, proclaiming his ambition to lead 100% of the world’s population to salvation by the year 40. He didn’t talk about a global solution at all; he listed individual cases. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed. These are actual people, actual instances. The deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.
This is the evidence that Jesus offers John the Baptist: Individual acts of healing, of hearing, of new life.
The Bishop of Minnesota, Craig Loya, said recently that “We won’t fix the world and the church by simply trying harder. And in fact, trying harder is part of the problem. But,” he goes on, “neither are we called to just give up and sit on the sidelines. The world and the church will be saved by God and God alone. Our job is to yoke our lives to God’s living power, moment by moment by moment, so that what we do flows from that source, not our own limited wells.”
Our wells are limited. God’s is not. We must yoke our lives to God’s motive power, using that momentum, that direction. We still do our work—we plant the seeds, and furrow the fields, and… whatever else one does when plowing—but we’re the hired help. We’re not in charge.
That, right there, is the biggest temptation, and the reason that John the Baptist is so fascinating. We all—I say, extrapolating from one data point, which is me—want to be in charge. We want to solve the problem. We want to find the huge, global, one-size-fits-all strategy and then save the world.
But that’s not our job. We do have a job—like John, it’s to prepare, to usher in, to pave the way for Christ’s return… and to do so without any promise of recognition or even certainty.
Most of us, in all honesty, probably also will never have a book written about us, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make an impact. We can follow John’s lead—and Jesus’ lead—by helping, by healing, by bringing the good news. I like to think that, at some point, John the Baptist did get his Job-Well-Done… and on our last day, on the last day, we’ll get ours, too.
May God grant us the strength—and the humility–-to wait until it comes.
Today was my turn to walk Marvin, so I went down to feed & walk him before my breakfast. I don’t know if I was weak-and-wibbley because I hadn’t eaten or what, but I managed to have a fall. The path we were on is gravel/stones and I think I just stepped on a bigger stone that wobbled so I fell. I sat on my bottom for a few minutes (damp floor!) and almost let myself cry: it hadn’t hurt too much, but I was in enough pain to warrant a rest. Marvin, who had run ahead, came back and sat next to me whining for a couple of minutes; then he ran up the path to the road and looked back as if to say “Do you want to go home?” I struggled to my feet, and we carried on with the walk (not very long) .
After I had limped home, I had breakfast and felt better. I repaired to my study, where I read blogs, wrote my blog post and prepared the service for Sunday. I’m preaching, and leading the service, but I’m using someone else’s sermon. You can read it on Sunday, should you wish to.
A flammekeurch is a type of Alsacien pizza: cream base with onions, lardons & cheese.
After lunch (a shared flammekeurch and salad) I went down again to give Marvin another walk. I think he gets more walks than usual when we’re looking after him, as often A&G just let him run in the garden. When we got back to the house, I sat on the terrace with him for a while before giving him a biscuit and leaving him. F, the son, was coming home from Uni on Friday evening, so our dog sitting duties were over.
I prepared the pulled pork and put it in the slow cooker, and then I footled for a while, before making some Christmas cards, recycling cards from last year, plus using some other craft stuff from my stash. These are for the Silent Auction that we hold with our Thanksgiving Dinner at church. This is something we do for the US ex-pats (& anyone else) in Clermont who are perhaps missing home. It’s always cooked with a French “twist”, as the chef from the local international school cooks it. We held a Silent Auction for the first time last year, and raised over 800€ for church funds; hopefully we will do well this year too. I put packs of cards on sale, and also a Zentangle-Inspired-Art piece or two.
I drew this for the winner last year.
Our dinner (pulled pork, jacket potato & coleslaw) was very nice. After we watched Taskmaster, and then Mr FD wanted to watch the rugby. I scrolled my phone for a bit and then went to bed to read.
Nothing very exciting to report, but I thought I’d sign in anyway!
I got up a bit later than usual – bed is warm and snuggly, and I find it hard to get myself out!! But I was up by 8.30. After breakfast I went to my study, did my blog post and made sure everything was ready to go to the post office.
It was really damp and drizzly – not at all pleasant. But I had to go out to deposit my cash from the sale of postcards into the bank; then I had the pharmacy to visit for my monthly prescription & the post office to send various things – my letters for the Big Letter Write (finally!), some postcards people had requested, and the card for the Bishop. After my moan about prices in the supermarket,I can moan about postage costs too! It cost over 25€ to send 5 pieces of post, and none of them were packages. The heaviest one was my Big Letter Write envelope. That alone cost over 12€!!
I had a lesson online at 12.00 – it went reasonably well. In an earlier lesson, my student had expressed the opinion that life was better 50 years ago, so I had asked ChatGPT to give me two articles either agreeing or disagreeing with this view. So in the lesson we read & discussed the two viewpoints. It worked quite well. I find using ChatGPT to produce these kinds of article quite useful, as you can specify the language level, and I don’t have to spend ages trawling the Internet for articles of a suitable level.
After a quick lunch, I drove over to another student’s home for her lesson. She’s really lovely, and we spend most of the time just talking about anything and everything. Today included films she’d seen recently, and cultural differences and how these can be misunderstood or cause conflict.
Home again, and I wrote up my lesson notes for my online student and phoned Mum.
She told me about her friend, who is 100 years old, and in a Home. D has dementia, but, as mum said, it’s the best kind of dementia – D isn’t afraid or angry, or confused. She just seems to live in two worlds: this one, where generally she recognizes people, or at least, knows that she knows them, even if she uses the wrong name, and another world where she goes on journeys and visits places with people who are long gone. So D will tell my mum that she visited Paris with her mother, and they had a lovely time there, or that someone (long dead) came to visit her. Mum just asks questions, or changes the subject, never saying that this is impossible because her mother is dead. What’s the point?
Our dinner was delicious (I thought. Mr FD was less enthusiastic.) – I made a pasta bake with roast squash, courgette and onion, mixed with cooked pasta and feta cheese and topped with a cheese sauce. I thought it was yummy; Mr FD said the feta wasn’t right in the mixture. But it needed using, so tant pis!
We watched Seaside Hotel and then Mr FD popped out to take our friend’s dog for a walk. They’re both away for a couple of days, so poor Marvin is on his own. We pop down to walk him and give him some cuddles. After an episode of QI we headed to bed.
I usually teach two lessons in Roanne on Wednesday, but as one of my students is away, I only had one lesson yesterday. This is my lesson with Paul. Paul is 4 years old, and his parents are keen that he learns English & Spanish from an early age (his mum is a Spanish teacher). So every Wednesday I go, and we play games, do craft work, watch videos and talk in English. Well, I talk and Paul contributes sometimes.
The lesson is an hour long, so I have to do lots of different things to keep his attention. He also has a sticker chart and he gets a sticker if he has worked well. He has had 1 sticker to go for quite a few weeks, so I was hoping he’d merit it today.
After about half an hour he was getting fidgety and somehow (I really don’t know how, as it all happened suddenly!) he managed to get himself tangled up in his chair: legs through the slats at the back, bottom firmly wedged, and head hanging face down from the seat. I had to call mum (who has a broken arm after a car accident) as I couldn’t get him out by myself. He was understandably upset, so Mama stayed with us for a while till he settled down.
I felt that he hadn’t really deserved his sticker, and said so. Oh dear! It was then I discovered that he wouldn’t be allowed to go to the Petting Farm!!! This had been the ultimatum with Papa: Paul had to get his sticker today, or no Farm. I really felt this was a bit harsh, but obviously I couldn’t say so, so I said I’d stay another 30 minutes and if Paul could behave and work well he’d get his sticker. TBH, he wasn’t that well behaved (after all, 90 minutes is a long time to stay focused when you’re 4) but I didn’t want him to miss out on the farm! So he received his sticker.
I then went shopping – goodness me, things are expensive! I know I bought 500g of beef, and a fairly big rolled pork joint (hoping both would do for three meals each) , and, of course, cat food and litter for 4 cats doesn’t come cheap, but I spent 150€ on food & supplies for the week. It seems so expensive. Happily, at the moment at least, we don’t need to worry about money (too much!) but I am still shocked at the prices. I will need to consider how we can pare things back a little.
I came home and Mr FD helped bring the shopping in & put it away. I had a quick lunch – I really fancied a cheese-and-crisp sandwich, so that’s what I had! – and then I got on with some art work.
For the last two years I have designed the Christmas card that the Bishop of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe sends to his contacts. This has been for a donation to Phone Credit for Refugees. This year, he hadn’t decided what he wanted to do, so I said I’d design one anyway, and he could use it or not, as he wished. After all, I love drawing, designing etc so it’s not a hardship to spend some time doing it, even if it doesn’t get used.
I’d started this already, and today was working on the lettering. Here is the finished card:
I was really annoyed when I went to rub out some of the pencil markings as the surface of the paper (obviously not great quality) was also “rubbed up” which meant the lettering was less clear & a bit smudgy. If you look hard enough, you can probably see where. I finished at about 5.30, so started to prep dinner.
It was an enjoyable dinner – sausages, baked beans (Branston beans, Ang!), fried potatoes, mushrooms and onion, and a fried egg. Yummy! I’d opened a bottle of wine on Tuesday, for my birthday, so I had a glass of rosé with my meal. I’m not sure it really complimented the food! Or the food, the wine!
We watched an episode of “Seaside Hotel” (or “Badehotellet” – a Danish drama on Channel 4), then an episode of “Six Four” (a crime thriller on ITV) and finally the last episode of Celebrity “Race Across the World” (BBC) I was happy to have Lucky Jim on my lap all evening. As the evenings get colder, and the fire comes on, the cats are much happier to come and curl up on our laps. We went to bed later than usual, at about 11.00 – after giving Millie, Jim, Jasper & Bib their bedtime snack of biscuits. They are very good at recognising that when the TV goes off, it’s BISKIT TIME!!! and suddenly they all appear.
Bless’s weekly meal planning made me think I would share mine.
Before I went away, I wondered about trying a 4 week plan on rotation. Everything would be organised, and I wouldn’t have to think very hard, as every week I seem to find different recipes to try. But after I’d done the plan, I started thinking “But I haven’t included this favourite meal, or that one…” So I think I will just keep to this plan, but do another one in the middle of November.
So here is next week’s plan (starting from tomorrow):
AS you can see, the plan is to freeze extra portions so I have them for another week. And I’ve kept to my plan of 3 vegetable based, 3 meat based and 1 fish based meal.
The Carbonnade and the pulled pork will be cooked in the slow cooker, and the salmon is just using a stirfry Teriyaki sauce I bought in the UK. Nothing fancy!! Kamchaka is our family name for Shaksuka, which we sometimes have with chorizo or bacon in. I may just up the veggies, and maybe add some chickpeas, so Mr FD doesn’t complain!!
The other thing I’m considering is changing our main meal time to lunch time. I know this is supposed to be healthier, but I am not sure if it will suit my timetable. I tend to finish working/footling at 5.30, giving me time to then prepare dinner in a leisurely manner, ready to eat at 7.00 pm. If I changed to lunchtime, I’d have to finish footling at 11.00 in order to start prepping, and it feels like that is taking too much time out of the day!! Especially as I’d still want to finish my day at 5.30 and not continue.
I will continue to consider…what time do you eat your main meal?
While we were staying at MiL’s in September, I did a little calligraphy/ painted postcard which I gave her. She liked it, and we joked about selling them. When I got home, one day, I did another, using a verse from the Bible that I like. What could I do with it, once it was complete?
I thought back to MiL’s suggestion of selling, and I realised I was going to the Convention in Wiesbaden in a few week’s time. A lot of people who would be there know there that I am a supporter of Phone Credit for Refugees, and support me in my efforts.
So I decided to design three more postcards & sell them at Convention. I thought about getting them professionally printed, and they would have looked fabulous if I had been able to, but they would have cost me just over 100€ for 200 copies. Not very expensive, but more than I wanted to pay, as there’s a limit to how much you can charge for a postcard, and I wanted to make as much profit as possible.
So instead, I bought some thick watercolour paper (5.99€) and some photographic paper (3€) and some extra printer ink (which I didn’t need) and printed them and cut them at home. A lot cheaper, meaning maximum profit!
I sold them at Convention for 1,50€ each or four for 5€. Everyone thought it was brilliant, and were very complimentary about them. I had sold out by Friday lunchtime – I should certainly have printed more!! However, due to people’s generosity – either giving me more money, or only taking one but paying for 4 – I made 200€ for PC4R. That’s a great amount, but to help put it into context, the people at Convention have helped up to 400 people to feel safer, to be able to access help & advice, and to contact their families.
The theme of Convention was “Building Beloved Community” – focusing on racism, but also other “isms” that separate individual from individual – and the theme that we kept coming to was that we cannot solve the big problems of the world, but we can solve the smaller problems of one person. What’s that saying?
And that’s what we are called to do: change the world, one person at a time. Or one phone credit at a time. 🙂
Although I’m feeling MUCH better, I’m still not quite back to normal (as normal as I’ll ever be) On Sunday I joined in with church via Zoom, and then discovered that – as long as I moved my head carefully – I could do art work without feeling too bad. So I worked on some postcards that I’ve been designing: more about those another day.
Then I thought I’d go for a short walk. There’s a loop of just over 1 km that I used to do whenever I could during my chemo. I know where the walls are where you can perch if you’re feeling tired. So I started off – by the time I was halfway round my head was spinning again. I managed to get back home safely, but I felt a bit woozy. However, after a sit down of a couple of hours, I felt fine again.
Through Monday & Tuesday I kept exercise to a minimum: I had lessons, plus planning to do, so that kept me occupied at my desk. On Wednesday I went shopping (that involved driving to Roanne) and I had a lesson. Maybe I pushed it a bit much, not so much on the vertigo front (although I had a couple of episodes) but using muscles that had been bruised and battered in the fall. I was in a fair bit of pain during the evening – but nothing that the anti-inflammatories couldn’t deal with, eventually.
Today (Thursday) Friend Cathy, Mr FD and I went for a walk around the village, and then had our usual Market Day coffee in the hotel next door. It’s become a habit to meet up with FC (and sometimes Friend Alison) for a coffee. Yes, she could just come to us, but it’s nice to sit on the terrace and watch the village life going on. I had a lesson at midday, when we talked about the atrocities happening in Israel & Palestine at the moment. My student is Jewish and has relatives and friends caught up in the conflict, so she became very passionate while I tried to be more even-handed. Considering her English isn’t great, she did well and expressed herself comprehensibly!
Otherwise I have footled. I’ve actually tried to write meal plans/ shopping lists for the next 4 weeks, with the thought that I might just rotate the plans every month. However, I’m thinking it might work better on a 2 month schedule, giving plenty of time before repetitions, especially if I put servings of things like lasagne, or pasta bake in the freezer. It’s a work in progress.
I have also looked on the website for our Cruise next March, and got myself excited. I need to take some time to listen to the other bands that are playing, as I only really know the three headliners.
Tomorrow I have to go to Roanne for an X-ray to check everything is OK after the fall. I’ll also pick up some card so I can print the postcards (more on them later). But now, (oh look at the time!) I ought to go and start prepping dinner. I believe I have squash to roast before I can make the rest of it.
The Proclaimers sang this song, and for me it always reminds me of a road in France. I can’t remember where it was, but I can visualise it, with trees alongside, winding into the mountains. That’s because this song was on a mixed CD we had that we really enjoyed, and played almost unceasingly during the holiday.
I like the Proclaimers and their songs. There’s a really enjoyable rock musical film using their songs called “Sunshine On Leith” – I really recommend it; the songs are uplifting, the story really sweet.
The reason I’m thinking of letters is because I recently received an email from the group “From Me to You”. This group started when two friends found letter writing to be an important connection between them when cancer struck. When Brian was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2010, his friend Alison offered to write letters to cheer him up. Over the next two years, as Brian’s cancer moved from stage III to IV, Alison’s letters kept on coming. You can read more of their story here
The group receives letters and passes them on to people who are going through cancer who have requested a letter. I’ve written two or three letters for the group, but when I read about the Big Letter Write I thought I wanted to get involved. They say
October is the month of our Big Letter Write Campaign, where we encourage as many people as possible to put pen to paper for us, as part our Donate A Letter programme.
This year we’ve seen a 25% increase in demand for our letters. Whilst we celebrate reaching and supporting more people facing cancer (nothing makes us happier), there is a very real fear that we might not be able to reach this need without more people donating letters to us.
I know some of my readers have been touched by cancer, either through having it themselves, or a loved one who has suffered. Perhaps you felt helpless and unsure of what to do, or what to say in this situation. Well “From Me to You” offers a solution, and advice about how to start and write a letter. It’s a really practical easy way to feel you are doing something to alleviate another’s suffering, if only for a moment or two.
My solution to knowing what to write was to share some of the myriad postcards that I’ve bought on my travels and never sent. They gave me something to write about as I recounted where I’d been, what I’d done, a funny anecdote from the place…I’ve got a bundle of 10 packets of postcards to send off tomorrow.
This might sound like a really strange thing to do, but I love writing letters and I love receiving a hand-written letter too. Now, the donate a letter scheme only involves donating letters – you don’t get any reply. You don’t know who your letter has gone to. But I figured that if I love getting a letter, others would too. After all, you can choose to read a letter when you want (rather than a text which demands instant attention on your phone). You can re-read a letter time and again. A letter on real paper has taken time and effort and concentration and that alone can make it special. Obviously, if you are writing to a friend or family member, you do know who they are and you may get a reply.
When you sign up for the scheme, you get sent (by email) information about it all, including tips for letter writing, in case you don’t know where to start or what to include, and sample letters, so you can see what others have written.
If you are a cancer patient, you can ask for a letter to be given to you and you’ll get one of the donated letters.
I think this is a brilliant scheme and I hope you do too. Why not join in?
I’ve only planned through to Sunday this week, because I’m going to Wiesbaden, in Germany, for the Convention of the Convocation of the Episcopal Church in Europe (that’s a mouthful!). It starts on Thursday, but because I’m travelling with two church members who have to be there a couple of days before, I’m staying with Pippa on Monday, before we travel, and then in a hotel for two nights, before moving to the conference centre on Thursday. I’ve planned to meet up with one of Mr FD’s German cousins for the day on Wednesday.
So, what’s planned? I’ve taken most of the recipes from the BBC Good Food site – there are SO many different recipes to try. All of the ones I’ve chosen have an Autumnal feel (even though it’s going to be quite hot this week)
TUESDAY: Chicken burgers, HM chips & HM coleslaw
WEDNESDAY Smokey sausage & squash traybake I’ll have to use Toulouse sausages, rather than the onion ones recommended in the recipe. France doesn’t really “do” flavoured sausages.
THURSDAY: Creamy leek, pesto & squash pie Instead of using filo pastry, I’m going to use puff pastry and make two “pasties” with the same filling. We’ll have this with salad.
FRIDAY: Pasta cheese with chard, lardons & mushrooms. (No recipe. Just making it up)
I’m going to buy some frozen stuff for Mr FD so he doesn’t have to spend too long prepping food (though he’s probably a better cook than me!) and there’s some frozen meals-for-one (from leftovers) already in there. I don’t need to worry that he’ll starve while I’m away!!
View from the Teapot 