A recovery day

As you might expect, we've been loafing rather today, recovering from the excitements of the weekend.

As usual, the beef joint from Coates was excellent last night; just a bit of rolled topside, but very tender and tasty. One thing I've noticed using the fiendish meat thermometer is that the predicted cooking time according to the cookbooks, especially for beef, is much shorter than what's needed to get the middle of the joint properly cooked (ie, for beef, pink and still moist, but not bloody). I take the joint out of the fridge in good time, so that it's not totally chilled when it goes in, but even at gas mark 5 things do just take a while to get going.

I use the dodge of heating the oven to gas mark 7 in advance, so the outside gets nice and crisp, but then turn the oven down when the meat goes in. It explains why, before I had the thermometer, my roast beef was not so much underdone as totally raw in the middle.

We got up in leisurely fashion this  morning, and ambled down to the village to restock. This afternoon, we grabbed a break in the rain showers to walk down to the river, which is now at summer height, below the bottom of the green marker on the gauge.

I've put some of the rest of the time to good use, bringing the Pub Guide up to date for the Braidbar Owners' Group, and otherwise catching up on reading and crossword puzzle solving.

We're running a washload at the moment; otherwise we might not have needed to run the engine today, as even with sporadic sun the solar panel is keeping up with our power use during the day.

Tomorrow, I'm doing a cooked breakfast for once; my one hour dental appointment is for 11.40, so I doubt if I'll feel like eating lunch afterwards.

/floor