From SS Quarantine #9

Jim and I still haven't killed each other, but it was a close run thing yesterday.

He went outside to tackle the last of the hoeing around the edges along the fence and the house.  He moved the herb box (with a bit of help) and got stuck into the mass of grass and weeds underneath it. Then he decided to do around the plastic cold frame (which I had been intending to do all of last week).  It had to be moved.  It was tangled in the long grass.  He gave it a yank - and there was an ominous cracking noise and the cold frame fell apart.

It is possible that his wife may have YELLED at him.  Applying brute force is not always helpful.

Fortunately it had merely disassembled itself and one of the poles was slightly bent.  He's put it all back together now.

And now it looks like this:

He even swept and tidied the tiny patio:

The backyard is now looking very good.  Perhaps I won't kill him after all :D

I now have no excuse for not getting on and planting the winter and spring veg seeds.

In another mad burst of experimentation I tried using the barbecue as an oven last night and put a roasting tray with a leg of lamb and some potatoes in it. It was only semi successful. The lamb wasn't roasted through - this wasn't entirely a disaster. It tasted lovely and we ate the cooked bits from the edges.  The potatoes were lovely.  Crispy and fluffy but just a bit over browned on the bottom.  Using the barbecue as an oven needs more work, but I can see how it would work really well with a bit of practice.  I shall carry on.  Sometimes having two "ovens" would be quite useful.

In the meantime I have stripped the rest of the meat off the bone and made a stock with the bone and other bits and pieces and added it to the "everything" stock I made yesterday.  I can feel a lamb tagine coming on.  Assuming I have all the stuff I need, but I think I probably do. Otherwise - improvisation is the Queen.

Apart from that a fairly normal day aboard the SS Quarantine. I did some work on the webpage and updated the RMG  Facebook page with my Thought for Today. I did a bit of tidying and a bit of cleaning.  We're pottering along.

Not dead yet 😜

From SS Quarantine #8

Last June I took out a subscription to Amazon Prime (Australia) so I could check out their video and TV service but mostly because they had just released a new series that I quite fancied watching.  I thought about trying it for a month but then  decided that wasn't long enough. After all, it might prove to be an unusual month and therefore not give an accurate picture of likely usage. So I thought about three months and decided that likewise, a winter quarter might not be typical of general usage.  So I took out a 12 month subscription.

And then didn't watch more than one episode of the program I had particularly wanted to watch.

You could hardly say that this has shaped up to be your typical 12 months, but yesterday Amazon Prime came into its own.  I received an email alerting me to the existence of a new series called The Test, about  Australian cricket post the ball tampering scandal.  There are 8 episodes.  Jim very happily watched 4 of them after lunch before drifting off to sleep. He'll watch the rest of them in a more measured way.  Then I watched a food and travel program.  My two favourite things combined :D

I may keep it after the subscription runs out.  And I should probably have a closer look at Apple TV+, which came with a years subscription when I upgraded my phone.  After all, we may be at home for quite some time. The government has stopped short of locking down people over 70 for now but is making very strong recommendations that people over 70 should stay at home unless there are pressing reasons to leave it.  Frankly, I think everyone should stay at home unless there is a pressing reason to leave.

I have no pressing reason to leave just for now.  Lindsey went out hunting and gathering yesterday and delivered unto our doorstep a positive mountain of food, including a supermarket rotisseried chicken, meat pies, bread, veg and other essentials such as wine and milk. She also delivered a block of fresh yeast that she got at the farm shop.  I have never, ever used fresh yeast.  I have no idea what to do with it.  It's sitting in the fridge while  I do some research.  The Quarantine Kitchen looks rather as though a bomb has hit it while I make soups, stocks and stews. My stockpot, slow cooker and largest saucepan have all been pressed into service. I may need another freezer!

We should be more than ok for sustenance until our quarantine finishes.

I was going to go out after lunch and tackle this

Then a storm arrived.  We had thunder, wind, rain, a sudden drop in temperature. The storm dropped 8ml of rain us in around 10 or 15 minutes and then went away, leaving a delightful late afternoon and evening.  Too late by then for me to go out and tidy up ready for seed planting.  I was happily ensconced in my chair playing with Amazon Prime.

From SS Quarantine #7

This is my Quarantine Best Friend

If the electricity goes, it won't be very useful, and I do have a grater and mixing bowls and wooden spoons and whisks and whatever (although if anyone wants to give me a decent grater for my birthday, it would be gratefully (😋) received).  However, I had a bag of carrots and half a cabbage that were looking a bit sad and the food processor chopped and grated them in under 5 minutes, ready for chopped and grated adventures. Would have taken me ages to do it by hand.

I understand that there are returning travellers who are not taking the mandatory quarantine seriously. After all - who is going to police it?  (Er - the police!).  Jim and I are taking it seriously.  As I have said before, not only is quarantine protecting other people from anything we may be incubating, but it is also protecting us from anything that other people may have or be incubating.

The government has lost patience with these people and returning travellers are now required to be quarantined in a hotel in the city in which they entered Australia. There has been considerable community outrage that some of these people are complaining that being quarantined in a hotel room for two weeks is "like being in prison". This does tell us that the complainers probably haven't actually ever been in prison. The hotels are 4 star hotels so quite comfortable and with decent food.  However, I am enormously grateful that when we came back we were able to isolate in our home, where we have access to multiple rooms, a garden and a kitchen with supplies to play with. I can see that being confined to a hotel room, no matter how comfortable, might become irksome and a bit claustrophobic after a while.

Jim has been taking advantage of having the garden to play with.  He turned this:

into this:

and this:

into this:

Plus he's raked up loads of leaves and mowed the grass.

We had a garden waste bin delivered while we were away. It was empty last Sunday.  It's full now!

So that's a wrap for Week #1.  On to Week #2

From SS Quarantine #6

I know, I know.  I said I wasn't going to do this.  But Freyja drew my attention to this: Rosie and Ralph's Vegan and Gluten Free Chocolate cake

I realise that my Coeliac cousins are unlikely to come a-calling any time soon and my Vegans are equally unlikely to come visiting in the immediate future.  But I had all the ingredients to hand. You can't have too many vegan and/or gluten free recipes in your repertoire.

I decided to give it a go.  Rampant food experimentation in the Quarantine Kitchen.  To make it even worse, I messed about with the ingredients. 350g of sugar seemed a ridiculously high amount of sugar.  I reduced it to 250g which still seemed a lot but I thought I shouldn't mess with the recipe too much.  I also didn't use oat or rice milk. I didn't have any. I could have made some but I didn't have any lurking vegans and I do have some tins of evaporated milk which are past their best before dates loitering in my pantry.

I baked it in two cake tins. It didn't rise much and makes a dense, moist cake, much like a mud cake

Result?  It's much, much, much too sweet.  Much less sugar next time.

Grinding rice into rice flour was a revelation.  I had no idea you could make rice flour simply by blending rice until it forms a powder.  I think I didn't grind it quite enough.  It was a bit gritty, which didn't bother me but got stuck under Jim's dental plate. Also, I have rice flour so I could have used that.  And, I actually do have wheat flour so I could have used that.  I'll have a play around next time I am minded to bake cake.

There is absolutely no need to add raspberry jam. Nor a runny chocolate ganache to the top.  It would benefit from cream or custard I think.

I need more cocoa before I can do it again.

Otherwise, we carried on with Quarantine Life as normal.  Jim has carried on hoeing along the fence line and along the side of the house.  I haven't yet sorted out the cold frame for winter seeds but I will.  Apparently the garden centres, DIY stores and supermarkets have had their veg seed and seedling supplies ransacked.  People have decided to Grow Their Own.  I think they think it's easier than it sometimes can be and I suspect they don't realise quite how long it takes before you can harvest anything.  Fortunately, I have the seeds I need for winter and spring. Hopefully by the time I want summer seeds things will have calmed down a bit.

Time is passing quickly.  It's a week today since we got back.

And the sun continues to rise each morning - a bit later than before we went away, but it does come up

From SS Quarantine #5

A quietly domestic day yesterday, although I did have another look at the RMG Facebook page.  I must have a proper go at the webpage in the next day or two.

I was looking at the empty glass "oil" dispenser during the day and noticed that the tap was a bit loose.  I tightened the tap up, and then wondered if that might be causing the slight leak.  I put some water in it to test my hypothesis.  No leak.  So I dried it properly and then tipped the oil from the other jar in. That tap was loose too.  I've tightened it up as well.  Now I have drips rather than a leak.  Perhaps I won't buy a new jar after all!

I also decided to sort through the freezer drawers in the fridge freezer in the kitchen.  In them I found:  1.5 loaves of sliced bread, a half packet of mountain bread, a packet of flatbreads and a rosemary and garlic pizza base plus there are tortilla breads in the pantry. No more bread baking until that lot is eaten. I also found a giant bag of frozen chips, a giant but opened bag of potato gems and only a small number of hash browns.  It shows how unreliable your memory of what is in the freezer is.  Had you asked me I would have said we had loads of hash browns but not much else.

Jim went out and hoed along the back fence to curb the growth of grass and weeds which we are finding difficult to control.  We do have a whipper snipper (small brush cutter) but no fuel for it, so the only way we have of doing the edges is using a set of hand shears. Our backs do not enjoy this!

It looks great - but it crosses my mind that you have no frame of reference, although if you look at the side of the house it gives you some idea. I hadn't thought to take any "before" photos.  I have now taken a few of the rest of the garden, just in case we are motivated to do any more work out there :-D

We had a butterflied, boneless chicken for dinner last night.  I roasted it and we had it with a load of roasted vegetables.  It was a lemon and Greek herb flavoured chicken and not the sort of thing I usually buy. I would have preferred an ordinary whole chook, but the online supermarket didn't offer them and I thought I would give this one a go.  I am reminded that I very often do not like pre-flavoured things. I prefer to add my own flavours. Pre-flavoured things so often seem heavy handed to me. And too salty.  I won't buy it again. However, it fed us and there is some left.  Might make a small pie with it.  But not tonight.  I have some turkey mince to use before it gets to its use by date.

From SS Quarantine #4

I had quite a productive day yesterday.

I actually did some work.  Like real work. The work I get paid for.  The webpage needed updating. I fixed that but I might have a trawl through it and see what else needs to be done.

Work now has a Facebook page which had been set up but needed populating.  I did a bit of that yesterday and will mess about a bit more today.

I also had a happy time messing about in the kitchen.  I used the left over Yorkshire pudding batter to make some pancakes which I filled with cheese and caramelised onion and put in a baking dish with a jar of tomato and basil pasta sauce over the top.  We had half of that for lunch.  I made a mushroom and chicken risotto for dinner - inspired by something I ran across on Instagram.  My Instagram feed has quite a lot of food related things on it.

While I was poking about in the pantry cupboard I found two drink dispensers that I bought 18 months ago and which I have only used once.  I decided that they were not earning their keep and was about to put them in the "Take these to the Op Shop whenever Op Shops become available again" pile. Then I thought that perhaps they could be used to keep cooking oil in.  I cleaned them up and decanted the better part of a large bottle of canola oil into one. It looks great and makes dispensing oil more convenient.  But they were only very cheap from Kmart and they leak very slowly.  When all this is over (and always supposing we survive to the end) I might buy proper Mason jar drink dispensers for oil

In other news, I had a phone call from the Airport Shuttle Bus people yesterday asking if we still wanted to use the return part of our tickets.  I said that we were now back home and couldn't see that we would be travelling anywhere much in the next little while. And she refunded the return portion of the fare.  I also had emails from the Trainline in the UK offering a refund on the tickets we were supposed to be using tomorrow to get from Sheffield to London.  Plus I have had an email from eBookers offering to try and get a refund for the return leg of our flight home, which is supposed to be next Monday.  I wasn't expecting any of these things to happen and am quite impressed.

There are reports in the Australian press that some people who have returned from overseas are breaking their mandatory quarantines.  Apparently The Powers That Be are going to start checking up on all of us. (They know who we are and where we should be - we had to fill in declarations at immigration.)  I have no plans to break the quarantine.  I may never leave the house again.  The only germs, viruses and contaminants that are in our place are the ones that Jim and I brought in with us. If we get the end of any incubation periods for any ailments that may be brewing, we should be in bounding good health for months - if we stay at home and don't let anyone in.

From SS Quarantine #3

A quiet day yesterday, mainly doing useful domestic things.

I am trying to "spring" clean one room at a time. I didn't do that so much yesterday as tidy various categories of things up.  Like sorting out the winter and summer wardrobes. I think it's supposed to warm up a bit at the weekend but we've had the heating on since we got home and I thought it was likely that we would need our winter clothes more than the summer for now.

Jim ran the vacuum cleaner round. I swept the floors.  It's a thankless task sweeping our floors.  No sooner have you done it than bits of grass, leaf, mud, dust, whatever start making their way back in. Still, it needs to be done. Every so often, at least :-D

I put the soaker hose on the front garden yesterday evening. The ground is very dry and getting some of the weeds out was proving to be quite difficult.  The hose is on a timer so it turned itself off after the set time.  I intended to go out and turn the tap off before I went to bed. Sometimes the joint leaks and I don't want to pour water expensively and unnecessarily down the drain.  I forgot.

I remembered again when I woke up around midnight.  Reluctantly, I got out of my warm and cosy bed, put my dressing gown and slippers on and went out to check.  The joint was not leaking. I turned the tap off anyway. Then I looked up. And my reward for getting up in the night to check the tap  was a breathtakingly beautiful starry, starry sky.

I didn't hurry back in.

My other reward for checking the tap was that when I went back to sleep I didn't wake up again until 5:00. This may seem early to you but it is when my alarm goes off on Tuesdays and Fridays when I am off to work, so not an unreasonable time to wake up. And it is a huge improvement on waking at 3 or 4 and not being able to go back to sleep at all.

My front flower bed:

From SS Quarantine #2

Morning sky on Monday

From our front door

Some people who know me well have asked/commented about having the time to enjoy playing about or experimenting with food.  It is true, I do enjoy messing about with ingredients and experimenting a bit.  I don't want to experiment too much at the moment, though.  I can't pop to the shop if I need something and don't want to waste what I have got.

I have, however, been reading.  Tin can cook and Vegan(ish) both by Jack Monroe and One pot wonders  by the Hairy Bikers.  I have been re-reading some old favourites such as Love your leftovers and Three good things by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall.  I have new books that I haven't got to yet.  I've also noted that one of the people I follow on Twitter has been having an entertaining discussion with his followers on how to tart up cauliflower cheese. (I had cauliflower and broccoli, milk and cheese to hand. I hadn't thought about cauliflower cheese before reading the Twitter feed. I didn't tart it up - much).  I am reading the Aussie food magazines online.

And those months of volunteering in the Pot Luck Pantry in Sheffield will prove useful.  Look at what you've got and think of what you can do with it.  I would blitz a Masterchef Mystery Box challenge (but none of the rest of it - I won't ever be auditioning!!).

I do have to hand the ingredients to make lots of things that I enjoy eating but don't often get around to making. I may play about with those as the fortnight progresses

You won't be surprised if food figures in the blog for the next little while (crumbed lamb cutlets with mash and the cauli-broccoli cheese last night, since you ask).  But don't expect Fine Dining!

I had a fairly productive day yesterday.  I have caught up with the washing. I weeded most of the front garden. I need to water it today and then dig out some of the agapanthus which are starting to grow back. I cleaned the bathroom.  I watched the last episode of Griff Rhys Jones' journey around Australia by train.  They had the first three episodes available to watch on the flight home.  Alas, episodes 4 and 5 are no longer available on iPlayer. But episode 6 was fun.

I haven't made much progress on the learning Japanese and refreshing my French front. I possibly need to make a daily timetable to fit it in (which I will then completely ignore :-D)  I can't find my DVD player which I took to the UK.  I don't remember actually taking it out of the suitcase. Maybe it has gone into its own form of quarantine

So far Jim and I have narrowly avoided killing each other.  Imagine how much worse it must be for couples or families shut up in hotel rooms or granny flats.

From SS Quarantine #1

Officially it's called Self Isolation but really it is a quarantine.  A bit like pets. You come in from overseas and you need to stay put in one place for 14 days.  Fortunately, we have a house with multiple rooms and a garden. Others, less fortunate, have to stay in a hotel room, or a parental caravan, or other tiny spaces (I know this from talking to returning people in airports and on planes).

It is only day one and things may get boring or frustrating but I will try to remain grateful for having our own space to quarantine in.

Yesterday I went quite Old School.

I made a Yorkshire pudding batter.

I took some vegetable stock out of the freezer and chopped up loads of veg, added a tin of kidney beans (must add tinned beans to my shopping list when I can go shopping again!), some tinned tomatoes and some pasta and made a large pot of minestrone soup.

I am fortunate enough to have flour and yeast so I made a loaf of bread. We had some with the minestrone for lunch.

We had a lovely piece of beef that Lindsey had left in the fridge for us. I roasted that in the evening and we had it with roasted potatoes, from the crop at Hill House, green beans from our boxes and broccoli that Lindsey had got at the vegetable farm. And the Yorkshire puddings, of course with a mushroom gravy.

I have made an apple crumble with some sad looking apples that we left here when we went away. I meant to give them to Lindsey and forgot.  But they chopped up fine for a crumble.  We haven't eaten it yet but we will.

I went out to read the rain gauge yesterday and there was a very large grasshopper trying to get in through the front door.  I discouraged it.  Perhaps I should have let it in.  A short time later we saw a magpie sitting on the fence looking at something.  Then it swooped into the garden and flew off with a grasshopper in its beak.  I fear it was the one I denied entry into the house. I had only seen one.

Jim went out through another door a bit later and a skink (tiny lizard) dropped from above his head. We thought it was dead, it lay so still on the ground.  When I went out through that door later another (or the same) skink fell from above onto the ground and looked dead for a very short while.  Then it ran away.  I think it was the same skink, climbing up the fly screen and obviously also trying to get into the house.

I'm not sure why these creatures are finding our house so enticing. It's not as though we have much grasshopper or skink food lying about. Although I suppose they might fancy mu vegetable supply, now I come to think about it.

Home

We left Sheffield on Thursday at lunchtime and headed down towards Heathrow.

We had had a notification from Qantas telling us that our plane, headed for Sydney, had been delayed from 20:30 to 23:30. This was worrying. It meant that there was no way that we would meet our connecting flight to Melbourne in Singapore.  However, the text message from Qantas told us that they were aware that we had a connecting flight and they were monitoring the situation.  I wasn't really worried.  I knew they would get us home. Even if eventually!

The car, however, had to back at its home in Heathrow by 16:00. I didn't want to pay unnecessarily for an extra day. There had already been too much profligate splashing of cash.  We were determined to deliver it on time, even if it meant a long wait at the airport.

Tabitha suggested that the airport might be quite busy. Although travellers from a week or so earlier had been reporting eerily quiet airports, it seemed quite possible that people would be trying to get back to their various homes before international borders were closed.

And so it was.  It was bedlam at Heathrow.  No one at all was taking the idea of social distance remotely seriously.  We arrived at the checkin desk more than half an hour before it opened and there was already a lengthy queue, waiting cheek by jowl.

Eventually we were checked in, through to Melbourne.

Oddly enough, it took almost no time to get through immigration and security. No idea why.I had expected a long wait.

We holed up in an airport pub while waiting for it to be time to board.  Again, no sense of keeping a distance between people.  The tables were very close together. I would have found them a bit too close even under normal circumstances.

Eventually we were on board our flight and off we went.  A good flight. Uneventful. I even managed several hours sleep.

As predicted, we missed our connecting flight in Singapore. Qantas had it all under control. Boarding passes for passengers to Melbourne and Brisbane had already been printed out. All we had to do was go and collect them. They put us back onto the flight to Sydney and then onto a hopper from Sydney to Melbourne.

The upgrade that we had  been given to Business Class from Singapore to Melbourne was honoured on the flight from Singapore to Sydney.  Our luggage went all the way from London to Melbourne by Business Class, even with the extra flight thrown in :-D

It was bedlam in Singapore too.  The Australian government had summoned its citizens and residents back from overseas and citizens and residents who had been intending to return in the near future had heeded the call.  Aussies from all around the globe were on their way back.  The Qantas staff at Heathrow, at Singapore, in Sydney, and on all three flights were magnificent in what must have been very trying circumstances and in the face of the imminent grounding of the fleet. You would never have known there was a crisis if their demeanour and professionalism were any indication.

In the meantime, Lindsey and Ian had been pondering how we would get from Melbourne back to Mount Helen. Government advice is to travel by private car if at all possible. I had bought return ticket on the airport shuttle but they required that returning international passengers wear face masks. I didn't have any face masks and couldn't get any.  So Lindsey volunteered to drive my car to the airport. We met her in the car park - at a safe distance! Then she joined Emily and they went away in Emily's car.  I picked up the car key from the bonnet of the car, where she had placed it so we could stay at a proper distance, and drove Jim and me back to our place.

And that is where you now find us. We are in a mandatory 14 day quarantine. When we arrived back in Australia we had to fill in forms that said we agreed to self quarantine for a period of 14 days from yesterday and to give the address where we would be and a contact phone number. Fortunately, I have well stocked freezers and pantry. Lindsey had picked up perishable goods for us and a few pantry staples that we might run short of. Also, we qualify for priority online supermarket deliveries. Online supermarket deliveries are largely suspended at the moment so the frail, elderly, disabled and vulnerable can have priority, including those who are in mandatory quarantine. I filled in an online form and was added to those who had been approved. If we run short of things and Lindsey isn't available to shop for us, I can order online. Assuming there is anything available to order - although I believe that things are starting to improve on the panic buying front.