Giant batch of veg soup prepped and cooking. Most of it is destined for the freezer in small batches. Mostly ordinary garden veg and lots of lentils plus ginger/garlic/chili/turmeric/cumin because Indian 😁

Day 5 of the cheese advent calendar and I'm already two cheeses behind schedule 😕 Catch up plan is to eat the day 3 and day 4 cheeses now, followed by another two cheeses tomorrow. I had a little nibble after taking this photo and they are both lovely - I can do this!

Today's advent calendar cheese was a rather lovely Cornish Brie. It was very moreish and all gone before I remembered I hadn't taken a photo. No regrets!

First cheese from the advent calendar was a lovely goat's cheese called Golden Cross. As a little bonus, you get a little card with each cheese with a strength score and a hardness score. By the end of the month I should have enough for a top trumps set I reckon!

Cleaned out the crap we've been accumulating on top of the kitchen cupboards this morning. 1/2 litre of cleaning fluid and a huge amount of elbow grease later, this is the result!

After an anxious wait, the cheese has arrived! Too late to eat any today, but there will be a small 🧀 treat for me every single day until Christmas.

Ate all the cheese in the fridge today, as cheese advent calendar is arriving tomorrow and I think I should start early, just in case I fall behind and suffer cheese anxiety

Dull meeting is v. dull, but I am teaching myself new knots during it.

How I know it is now Autumn - visiting hedgehogs are stealing straw from our hedgehog houses to to start their own nests under our next-door neighbour's shed 🦔

TIL that cooking potato slices in yoghurt turns them into rock solid little discs. Had to fish them out of the kadhi I was making and give them a little alkaline bath in water with a teaspoon of baking soda.

First time this city nephew had ever seen a horse :)

Our regular visiting hedgehog didn't turn up for food last night :(

No obvious reason; she's most likely just gorged herself on the plentiful bugs that are her natural diet, or the gourmet (semi-moist) food put our by one of our neighbours.

I got rejected by the Palia server today :(

Blue sky all around, even the red kites are hiding from the weather. Very grateful for patio umbrella and husband that fetches drinks and snacks!

New mouse arrived today! It turns out my inability to scroll/drag consistently was not due to my getting old but rather my faithful old Naga's age - nearly 10 years of excellent left-handed service. Let's see if my fishing skills in Palia now improve...

There have been many frivolous and expensive impulse buys I have regretted later, but the garden bar isn't one of them. It's wine o'clock!

Cooking for the freezer day. Yesterday's peppers with sliced potatoes in a tadka, along with two other curries - kidney beans & potatoes + chickpeas & potatoes (pic). Sauce was reduced to conserve freezer space. I only cook two curries without potatoes: dahl and saag - no aloo added for us Punjabis!

My 800g bag of mixed peppers was not so mixed, so I bought an extra bag of green ones, but they came with some red ones mixed in. Long story short I now have 5kg of peppers and a giant mixed pepper curry to make 😁