Nutty as a Fruitcake

Nobody knows (tiddly pom) how cold my toes etc etc. I have been sooooo cold today and the white stuff has returned to the West Country. We live at the the bottom of a hill, and the patch of road in front of our houses doesn’t get sun in the winter. This means ice and trapped cars. OK during the Christmas break but less than ideal when we need to get to work . I thought I would start the day with my new porridge oats, but they exploded over the microwave…must pre-soak them tonight. So plan B was scrambled eggs on homemade bread and an cafe crema.

Today is my “Admin” day of the week, which means I have to catch up with all the meeting preparation, team focused and money jobs associated with my work as a Campaign and Team Leader in an engineering company. I look after a team of 21, working on 5 different contracts, including research, mainly software and systems engineering. As well as making sure everything is running as it should, I’m responsible for developing the business winning strategy for future work, maintaining good working relationships with our customers and making sure we are developing our capability to match the needs of our customers. It is fairly intense, and I didn’t notice it was lunch until 1:30. The kitchen still smelled toasty, and I was still cold, so opted for the British classic of beans on toast. I added some Jarlsberg for extra calcium…. sounds healthy, but the chocolate fairy landed near the plate again.

This definitely warmed me up, and kept me going all afternoon. I am going to make some more bread this evening, but it will probably be a white loaf just to keep my Beloved happy (he is a traditional boy at heart).

It snowed most of the afternoon and we have more and heavier snow forecast for overnight. My Beloved has parked his car at the top of the hill, so he has a chance of getting out onto the main road… but we are not very confident. We consoled ourselves with a slice of the Christmas whiskey cake, and trying out this new blog editor for Ubuntu called Bilbo. If it works, it offers integration with WordPress and coloured fonts.

The final meal of the day was cooked later than I originally intended, because the fruit cake was quite sustaining. In pursuit of seasonal and local diet, we had haddock with a lemon pepper crumb, calvero nero kale sautéed in a bit of butter and sprinkled with nutmeg, salt and balsamic vinegar, and roasted Jerusalem artichokes which had been tossed in some ground nut oil, lemon juice and onion seeds. The kale was that lovely combination of good texture and taste, and the artichokes go sort of sticky and crisp at the same time. Plenty left for my packed lunch tomorrow.