Saturday 7 March 2020

On the hunt for pasta...

I didn't have a brilliant night's sleep last night because of the blood pressure monitor, and at 2am I was sitting downstairs watching television with Monty keeping me company...

However, when I went back to bed I must have fallen asleep and I woke up at 7.45am. The blood pressure monitor did one last reading at 8am and then I took it off. What a relief!

Sophie had an eye test this morning at the Weston Favell Centre, which is not an ideal place to go to on a busy Saturday morning! We managed to locate a space after driving around and around, and she had the eye test to be told she really needed glasses for reading and working on the computer.

After she'd chosen some lovely frames and paid for them, we went across the road to my office as Sara had asked me to go in and check the cinema box office returns, which had to be done today. I wanted Sophie to see where I worked, which was great! We had a chat with Sara and Sheila and then we drove to Beckworth to try and find some pasta for tomorrow's dinner - the orecchiette (or "little ears"). Beckworth didn't have any so we decided to get some bread and cheese for lunch and then headed home to have a quick bite before going to pick up Mum from home.

She said that Dad had had a better night so that was a relief. We headed over to Kettering and Sophie popped to Next to take back a gym top she'd bought. We then headed to Costa for a coffee and a cornflake crispy cake which I just cannot resist!

Our next stop was Tesco where Mum did some shopping and Sophie and I went on the hunt for the pasta again. Imagine our shock to see the pasta shelves almost empty! The only packets left were the expensive real Italian brands and we still couldn't find the orecchiette, so we had to make do with conchiglie instead. Were the shelves empty because people are panic-buying or was it because Tesco had a problem sourcing the pasta from northern Italy? I noticed that the noodle shelves were also similarly affected!

After dropping Mum back at her house we returned home where Sophie hoovered, bless her and I tidied up. We then prepared all the vegetables for dinner but by now I felt really weary so it was time for a little nap!

Dinner tonight was "Coq au Riesling"- a Hairy Bikers recipe - and the chicken had been soaking in a whole bottle of wine since this morning. Sophie cooked the entire dish and it simmered away in the oven for an hour and a half. We enjoyed a bottle of Riesling with it as well, a wine we'd bought in Wimereux last year and it was very good indeed.

Dinner was delicious - I said to Sophie it tasted like a meal I'd eaten in France and it was full of flavour. To carry on with the French theme we watched a new drama that we'd recorded over the last couple of weeks called Just One Look. It was very intriguing!

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