Well, that was an exciting afternoon. The parents have decided to spend a bit more of my inheritance and have buggered off to the Gambia for a week or two, leaving Nana Dearest in the care of me and my sister. She’s very independent but it’s good to check in on her every day just to make sure she hasn’t rolled a seven and shuffled off the mortal coil. So, fatty and I piled into the car today at half one and drove the thirty miles over to her house – in the ice and snow – to see that she was up and about and dutifully forgetting to take her tablets. Got there to find her curtains still shut in the bedroom and the door locked. At 2pm, and us without a key. The dog was scratching on the other side of the door. No amount of knocking and shouting got a reply. Naturally, we raised the alarm buggered off to do our weekly shop at Tesco with a view to coming back and trying again at half three. Still no reply. I had no key, remember. How do you attract the attentions of an eighty eight year old woman whose hearing aid would merely register a muffled bump if a plane crashed in her garden?

Well, here’s how – you get a clothes prop from the garden. For those of you who aren’t living in the 1940s, a clothes prop is a very long, very thin bit of wood that Geordies use to hoist their clothes line high up in the air so that villagers in another parish altogether can cast disdainful looks at the skidders on your knickers. It looks like this:

Of course, it would be altogether too easy for my gran’s prop to be a strong, metal affair like the one pictures – no, hers was a manky old bit of wood that had been sitting in the snowy mud since the Battle of the Somme and was dangerously rotten. Nevertheless I pressed on and hoisting the bendy, rotten, 14ft prop into the air like a fucking pole vaulter and standing on the tops of my boots, I rapped it smartly against her window, tap tap tap, whilst Paul brayed on the front door, with each ‘tap’ of the stick leading another muddy print against her window. After ten bloody minutes, a wispy bit of white hair appears followed by a bemused face, then the window opens and she tells me off for leaving mud all over her window frame. Turns out she had gone to bed the night before and only just woken up at 4pm, which frankly sounds like my idea of heaven. Pills dispensed and a cup of tea later, she turns to me sagely and says ‘You could have just rang the doorbell, you know’. I almost turned the one hobnob (well, Aldi equivalent of a hobnob – a notnob?) (3.5syns) I’d allowed myself to dust in my balled up fists. She’s a dear, an absolute dear, but unless I had rung the doorbell with the front of my fucking car she really, really wouldn’t have heard.

Still, how Paul and I laughed as we made our way back home, our shopping defrosting merrily in the boot. I’d do it all again though.

The shopping I just mentioned will be turned into the following meals for the week ahead:

• pulled pork, leek and mature cheese pizza;
• spinach, basil, broccoli and kale soup;
• macaroni cheese – with a twist;
• roast beef dinner;
• beef and broccoli;
• spaghetti and hotdogs; and
• chicken, beans and rice.

All healthy, all tasty. All low syns. I’m going to make a bit more of an effort to create rollover recipes – recipes which use the leftovers from another one I’ve done in the week. I thought it might help those trying to keep costs down. So in that vein, tonight’s recipe is a very quick one using up the remainder of the veg that we didn’t use on our Judy Garland Special Pizza (thank you Ms Savage!). The joy of a slimming world quiche is that you can chuck any old shite in it and it’ll taste good. Here it is – I left it in the oven ten minutes too long because I was too busy outside scratching my foot on the brick wall of my herb garden. It’s so satisfying!

No need for a full recipe for this rainbow quiche – this really is just all the leftover veg we chopped up, combined with four eggs and 300g of cottage cheese, lots of salt and pepper and chucked in the oven. Syn free of course and absolutely stuffed with superfree food, so it would be perfect for a work snack. Well, a slice or two – you don’t need to eat the whole bloody thing at once for goodness sake.

Finally, as a special treat, here’s a picture of Bowser a split second before he yawns. He looks so…speshul.

Goodnight!

J