Day 14 - Lockdown

Day 14 and its a beautiful sunny Sunday.

Chris has taken today off to spend with us which is really nice as he has been working hard the past couple of weeks.

Chris and Matthew have been outside trying to finish Matthew's Product Design project that he should have been finishing at school.  Luckily he had done quite a lot of the practical side as well as the written side, so his final grade should be based on that.  Once its been completed I will put a photo up here.

Yesterday Teddy had the family in panic mode.  He had been outside on his own which is quite normal for him, but when he came in he was covered in ants.  They were all jumping off him and running everywhere, so we were all in chase mode and trying the rest off of Teddy.  We eventually put him outside so he could give himself a good shake.  So Teddy is now known as 'Ant Boy'.  We have found where they came from - he had emptied a planter of all the compost on the patio - there are still plenty of ants left, so don't worry about them.

Not sure if you remember at the beginning of my blogs I was making a sourdough starter and going to use our own wheat to make bread.  You will also know that the sourdoughs starter did not work, we think we killed it by putting it in direct sunlight.  We are looking at starting a new one later this week.  But in the meantime, we have taken delivery of our wheat chopper and managed to make a loaf of bread from it.
 The smell of the dough was just amazing and that was before it had gone in the oven.

So todays ingredient is... Black Beans.  When Simon and I were doing our 'no meat' January we made lots of dishes with different beans in and I have to say they were really good.  The recipe I have here for you is Black Bean Chilli.  Its rom the BBC Good Food website, image from there also.  If you don't have all the ingredients like 2 tins of tomatoes and you only have 1 tin of beans, then just half the quantities to make a smaller amount.  I am always changing bits in recipes if I don't quite have what's on the recipe.  If its an ingredient I don't use a lot I tend to google it and see what you can substitute it with.

So did anyone watch Gordon, Gino and Fred the other night.  I haven't laughed so much in a very long time.  It was just so funny.  I have loved watching the different series they have made and this one looks like its going to be just as funny.  If you haven't watched it, you have to watch it on catch up.  When you look at all 3 of them individually, you don't think it will work, but put them together and they make for a really interesting and funny trio.  Gino already makes me laugh when I watch This Morning on catch up - I don't get time to watch it live on a normal work day.

We have had such a lovely and relaxed day today and hope you have too.

Until tomorrow.... keep your distance and stay in!