A hunt for ingredients!

After last night's jollies I slept in late and didn't wake up until almost 9am! Unheard of!

Keith and I went to Tesco at 10am and bought the ingredients for tonight's dinner - Chicken and Spelt Risotto - plus meals for Monday and Tuesday. The Hairy Bikers' recipe called for Pearled Spelt, but we hunted high and low and had to make do with Pearl Barley instead. We also had to look for dried Shitake mushrooms again (at £2.99 for a 40g pot they are not cheap!) and some herbs such as parsley and sage, as well as Chestnut mushrooms and an Oloroso Sherry!

Keith is out on Tuesday night to see Sileby play so we are planning on cooking Jerk Chicken pasta but again, we couldn't find out usual Jerk paste in Tesco. The bill came to an astonishing £50 for just three meals (plus some beer) but the good thing is that Keith returned an ink cartridge that he'd bought by mistake (we needed black and he bought a colour one) so at least that was £18 credited back to his account!

Back home I discovered that we'd sold some more crystal and of course, I hadn't brought a box home with me! We raided my Christmas decorations stash and put a beautiful fruit bowl into a gift box before wrapping it well! I hate sending fragile items out by mail!

At 2pm Sophie and I drove to Mum's as we had planned on going to Weedon for a cup of tea and a mooch about the shops. I made the mistake of setting the satnav on my phone but she had us heading for the A14 so I turned around and went a better way. The last time we went must have been before Mum and Dad moved house! (I think it was October 2015) We saw that the roadworks by Junction 16 of the M1 still hadn't been finished (A45 link road) and I remember them from last year when I did deliveries for Majestic.

We arrived at about 3pm and headed straight for Darlington's where we ordered pots of tea, slices of cake and a scone for me. Today the weather has been absolutely gorgeous and the conservatory where we were seated was sunny and warm. Long may it continue!

After having something to eat we had a lovely mooch about the shops and noticed that there had been many changes. One shop which used to sell antiques now had other quirky things for sale alongside the older items and it had all been set out beautifully. We eyed up some Christmas decorations, but we bought two in Abraxas which will look perfect on our Scandinavian tree.

We spent a very pleasant hour looking around some other shops before we decided to call it a day. We dropped Mum off and went home via the scenic route, noticing how the Autumn colours are now out in full force.

After relaxing for a while Sophie and I made a start on dinner and I was mightily glad we'd boiled the pearl barley for a while before adding it to the chicken and mushrooms in the pan. It took a long while to cook and become tender! We finally sat down to eat at 8pm and we all agreed it was delicious - the risotto had an earthy flavour due to the mushrooms and the barley and was certainly filling!