Birthday Weekend

It was Jim's birthday on Friday. He turned 79.

I took the day off work and we had Chinese take away for lunch up at Rupert and Hugo's house, and I made a chicken curry for dinner at our place. We didn't do anything specific to celebrate, just a nice quiet day, and a nice bottle of wine with dinner.

We did celebrate yesterday. Lindsey and Ian took us to the Highlander hotel in Ballarat for lunch. The Royal Highlander was its original name. Then it was renamed the Peter Lalor and later The Pub With Two Names. Now it has been renovated inside and has reverted to a form of its first name, although Peter Lalor's portrait still hangs over the front.

The food was magnificent. A large wagyu steak and chips for me, with miso and sesame broccoli on the side.  Jim had an enormous plate of flathead tails and chips.  Lindsey and Ian both had wagyu beef and bourguignon pies. The wine was lovely.  It was an excellent birthday celebration

There were storm clouds over Ballarat all weekend.
Fortunately the rain didn't hit at the times we were outside!

A lovely bottle of NZ white

No pictures of the food. I was too busy eating it! 

When Lindsey and I went out to the mushroom farm on Saturday, they were selling 10 kilo boxes of saucing tomatoes for $18. I bought one. Usually, when you buy "saucing" tomatoes it really means "seconds" tomatoes and by the time you get down the box some of the tomatoes are going mouldy or are squishy or in other ways unusable. Not so with this box. I have no idea why they are being sold as saucing tomatoes. They're lovely.

Towards the bottom of the box, and still
excellent quality

I have put most of them through my slow cooker, then the blender and then a sieve for the freezer, and use over the winter. I've still got another portion to process, but I think I might do them as a tray bake with a load of other veg that I have kicking around.  Alas, I'm going to have to get another roasting tray before I can do this. I put a chicken and ham tray bake into the oven on Saturday afternoon and then completely forgot about it - until I wondered what the funny smell was emanating from the kitchen. Usually, when I am cooking something for later I put a timer on so that I don't forget about it. For some reason, I hadn't on this occasion. My first thought was sadness for the waste of the food. It was only later that I realised that I might struggle to get the roasting tray clean!  It's been soaking ever since. I'll give it a proper go this morning but I might get at least one more roasting tray anyway. You can't have too many.

The weather has turned cold and wet. We have got out the winter woollies and cranked on the overhead heating. Winter is approaching. Although I believe it is hanging on grimly in Sheffield. Tabitha has sent photos of a light covering of snow in their backyard. Others have posted photos of snow in the Peak District on social media. No snow here.  Yet!