Nutty as a Fruitcake

As promised by the vigilant weather forecasters yesterday, we woke up to several inches of snow. As we live of a hill, which never gets gritted or salted, everyone had a snow-day today. Luckily I can work from home with broadband and mobile access, but my beloved was forced to play Assassin 2 all day. Shame.

My Beloved did check to see the feasibility of his commute a couple of times before it was obvious he, and everyone else, were not going anywhere.

Breakfast was pre-soaked oats with banana, dates, cinnamon and chopped candied almonds. Served with a lovely hot cup of tea.

I spent the first half of the morning rearranging all my appointments, having a dialed in meeting and going through some project data with one of my project managers. The oats sustained me beautifully.

Lunchtime was a hurried affair between meetings. Some homemade Parmesan and tomato bread, crisp dry cured smoked bacon grilled, with tomato ketchup. Perfect on a cold snowy day.

After I finished work this afternoon I went and cleared all the snow from my car, before it froze into an unbreakable thick shell. I also cleared the road in front of the car and around the types.

I had a chat with my daughter, Zoe, this afternoon to check if she was OK. She lives in an even more remote village closer to her work. She tried to get to work in her little Peugeot 106 this morning, but lost the back end on the downward part of a hill and ended up in a hedge. She and the car are OK, but she had to leave the car at the side of a side road and walk back to her village, as she couldn’t get the car up the other side of the hill. She was worried about abandoning the car, but it is pulled in to the side of the road, and there is room for a car to get past.

Somehow we have got to reunite her with her car tomorrow, and hopefully get ourselves out on to the roads too. This will sound silly to our US and Canadian bloggers, but snow is so rare here that the civic response is woefully inadequate.

Dinner was a pasta dish. While cooking spaghetti, I sautéed onion, mushrooms and celery in some olive oil until translucent. I added some cooked chicken and olives and cooked for another 5 minutes, adding a splash of vermouth at the end. Draining the pasta, I stirred in some Sacla Aubergine Pesto, and the cooked vegetables and chicken and served with a sprinkling of caerphilly cheese. ( The lovely dessert is a Cherry and White Chocolate cheese cake, from our dessert selection box and is to appease the inner nutta).

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.