Sunday

It was our turn to host lunch for Chris, John, Irene and Gillie.

I bought a fillet of girello from the butcher in Summerhill a couple of weeks ago.  It was not a cut that I had ever heard of until he started bringing them in. The Americans seem to call it Eye of Round, but I didn't know what that was either. I asked what it was and discovered that it's a fairly lean cut from the silverside part of the cow. He said it benefitted from slow cooking.  So I bought one, tried it in my slow cooker and thought it was fantastic.  Lovely flavour, nice and tender. I decided it would do for yesterday's lunch and bought another one.

On Saturday it sat in the slow cooker with some onions, mushrooms, spices, a bit of wine and some stock, while we were out and about. Then I let it go cold and strained the cooking liquid. Yesterday I sliced it up and put it in the oven with a gravy made from the strained liquid. We had it with oven cooked vegetables along with carrots and cabbage (not oven cooked).  I thought it was all delicious.

You may remember that some time ago I bought a box of apricots and made apricot pies and dehydrated apricots.  I had intended to make some apricot jam - until we went to Mount Martha and I cleared out the pantry, discovering many many jars of apricot jam as I did so.  I asked Stella why she had so many.  They had been bought for Tony who was very partial to apricot jam (not that this explains why there were quite so many!!).  Stella isn't a big jam eater and didn't really want them.  So I bought all the jars of apricot jam back with us.  We now have what I suspect is a life time's supply of apricot jam, even though I took some to Hill House.  Definitely no need to make any more.

So the apricots were bagged up and put in my small freezer, where they have been slumbering, taking up space.

I enquired if the lunchtime visitors liked apricots.  And they do!  So I made an apricot crumble.  Have to say that I have never made an apricot crumble before.  Lots of other kinds of fruit crumbles, yes.  Apricot - no.  So I put fresh (defrosted and de-stoned) apricots in a dish.  I added some of my dehydrated apricots, rehydrated in water and orange bitters and a dash of golden syrup. I topped it with a crumble mix (flour, brown sugar and butter - no nuts, coconut or other fancy extras) and baked it.  We had it with cream and custard. It was lovely. We will be having apricot crumble again.

Another good day.  Lots of chatter and merriment. Good to catch up. We had all seen each other at Chris's birthday party in January but there wasn't really the chance to have a good natter. And it was the first time they had been to Tani (#2; they had been to #1) so we got to show it off.

It's a public holiday today. We have absolutely no plans. It's quite nice sitting around, drinking tea and eating toast and not rushing about.  We will head up to Hill House later today but otherwise we are just pottering.