A Strange Weekend

It's been a funny old Bank Holiday Weekend. It started well with all of the dancing on VE75 Day, but from there it kind of went downhill and I hit a bit of a mental slump.

I don't think it helped that I spent virtually the whole of Saturday down a Pinterest rabbit hole, re-arranging all of my Pin boards and deleting pins I no longer wanted to keep. My computer was so slow during the process too, so it was very frustrating. Anyway, it's now complete and I'm being careful to pin things to the right boards, so that it doesn't get into such a mess again.

Looking through Pinterest one day last week, I came across a recipe for pickled red onion which looked interesting. As a consequence, I bought some red onions from Lidl last week and on Sunday I decided to follow the recipe.  I only used one onion to begin with, in case I didn't like the end result, and one onion just about filled one of my preserve jars, which was perfect. Basically, you slice the onion really thinly, pop it in the preserving jar with white vinegar, sugar, salt and water and then leave overnight.  Here's the jar I made:

I then proceeded to pickle the last of the beetroot from the allotment. I only had enough for half a jar, but it will get eaten in my daily salads. I use a similar process to the onions, but just use half malt vinegar and half hot water to pickle them as they are very sweet already.

On Monday, I tried some of the red onion pickle on my salad and it was very nice. It will be nice in a cheese sandwich too I imagine.

 

Yesterday, I made the blackcurrant jam I'd been meaning to make for ages. The 600g of blackcurrants that were left in our freezer from last year, made two and a half jars of jam, which should keep us going until lockdown phases out I think. 

I didn't do any exercise, bar the dancing over the weekend and I think this made me feel very lethargic and feeling a bit low I tended to overeat all weekend. The dog wasn't well too on Sunday, so I didn't even get a decent walk with her. By the time it got to Monday and I got on the scales, I was disgusted, but not surprised that weight was creeping on, so I vowed to get more energetic this week to keep my spirits up.  Even just going back to doing my morning floor exercises made me feel a lot better and then getting out for a proper walk with the dog helped too.

From this week onwards, I'm going to get out on my bike at least every couple of days. Now we are allowed to  exercise more than once a day, I won't feel guilty about doing it. I am going to try to work out a cycle route to work in Central London, for when we go back. I'm going to work my way up to it slowly, doing a bit more each time, until I find out how long it will take me. It might not be an option, when I actually do it, but I've got plenty of time to find that out and it will be good to get out and about again. I feel like I'm stagnating at the moment and living in a tiny bubble.

Another current plan is to watch two episodes of Escape to the Chateau DIY each day. I've now created a series link and there are 4 series to watch, each of 20+ episodes, so that will keep me entertained for the remainder of lockdown.  Not having to tune in at a specific time of the day is useful too and frees me up to go out cycling in the afternoons.

I do find that I enjoy the weekdays of lockdown much more than weekends. I find it easier to keep to a routine and be more productive, whereas on weekends I tend to waste time and laze around doing very little. I guess it shouldn't be all work and no play, but sometimes I find weekends a bit disspiriting.

I had one more small job to do in the kitchen last night,, namely make some lemon curd/jam tarts, to use up some lemon curd that had been in the fridge a while and some pastry that was going out of date. These will definitely be all gone in a few days. Nothing sweet lasts long in our house.

One last thing, I am currently trying to regrow the lettuces I buy from a local greengrocer.  They are lovely red lettuces and I've seen on Pinterest that leaves will re-grow if the stalks are left in waterformed.  Here's the ones I've currently got on the windowsill:

I know make sure that I don't remove the very small leaves growing in the centre, to let the plant regrow from them. I'll let you know if I'm successful in this regard.