Bon Voyage, Presque

Aujourd'hui c'était la fête de ma niece qui va habiter en France d'Octobre jusqu'au Juillet, l'année dernière. On a mangé le poulpe, car elle ne l'ai jamais essayé. Je pense qu'elle l'a trouvé délicieux. Bien sûr.

English now, French is too hard at times. So today we've had a nice morning, with a celebratory lunch including octopus, mackerel with new potatoes crushed with olive oil and then broccoli, baked with parmesan, garlic and lemon. For pudding I bought in a lemon meringue pie. Lovely.

It's been a hard week at work, but the diet has continued (apart from the lemon meringue) with only treats on Friday and Saturday night. Problem is I'm not losing any weight this week, so I may have to look at cutting my weekend treats. Devastating. Friday night's pizza was a delight. As I'd had my eye done, I didn't think I'd be able to cook properly, but all was fine and so we had the seafood version with calamari, prawns, red onion and a basil and lemon dressing. I think it's my favourite.

Last night's tea was quite special as well, but only fairly cheap. We got some large green lipped mussel and some giant prawns and laid on a big baking tray. I sautéed some garlic in olive oil and then added a couple of glasses of white wine, 150ml cream, a little liquid chicken stock, some saffron and a few chilli flakes. I poured this over the seafood, added a few frozen clams and put in a 200' oven for about 15 minutes. I served it with ciabatta and parmesan baked (homegrown) globe courgette, which was beautifully sweet.

Lizzie's Seafood Bake
 

We've done really well with our own vegetables this year and had another bean salad this week for lunch. I blanched then cooled the French (yellow) beans, added tomatoes, olives and a hard boiled egg. I made a balsamic dressing and this was it. A real treat at work the next day.

This week I also had an operation on my eye to remove the lump which has been hanging around for about a year - I'm desperate to have two eyes which look even slightly symmetrical - I'm almost there! But the day was long...

• up at 6 as usual, take girls to various places of education
• dropped off at hospital by husband at 7.50am
• at 7.51am discover hospital doesn't open till 8.00am
• at 7.52am discover even checking in system doesn't work till 8.00am
• at 8.03am (I suspect someone slept in) WH Smiths raised shutter and I bought reading for next 57 minutes, including the Sun and the Mirror (problems with that...?)
• at 8.06am I bought an espresso, a latte and two bottles of water to ensure above £5.00 spend in the rip off hospital canteen
• at 8.17 was accosted by 'man' who took my copy (read) of the Mirror
• at 8.57 I proceeded to outpatients, as directed by a television
• at 9.07 was operated on by very nice ophthalmic nurse for 20 minutes, my eye being 'one of the worst examples'
• at 9.30 I was shown out 'the back door' so I wouldn't feel self -conscious'
• at 9.30 I walked out the back door knowing I looked a mess
• at 9.32 I took five attempts to get a prescription from the chemist as my eye patch ruined my depth perception.
• between 9.45 and 10.05 I waited to be collected, dropping bottles of water and unable to pick them up all the while bumping into people who clearly didn't recognise a be-patched lady in front of them

18.05 arrived home having worked the afternoon and shopped for the week only to have my family refuse to speak to me as I wasn't wearing a pirate patch. Hmph.