cute and cuter - and some meal prepping

Frankie the puppy produces some foul smelling farts and brings it a lot of garden debris through the cat flap, including but not limited to plastic plant pots, chunks of moss, stones, twigs and even Josie's long lost collar with name tag. Other than that, he is really fun to be with. Jack and Frankie are slowly getting used to each other, we can now walk them at the same time without either trying to kill the other. They even play. I was a bit worried they would hate each other forever and I am glad they don’t. Frankie is responding well to training, he is excellent with “sit”, “stay” and “ball”. He actually returns the ball, something that Jack has never mastered. Jack has a lot of party tricks up his sleeves and I hope that Frankie picks those up while watching Jack performing. We are working on “paw” at the moment. Jack does this beautifully, both left and right front paws on demand. Frankie watches carefully and is trying but his coordination is still a bit off. It is fun. I need a bit of fun, life is not easy but that’s a longer story for another day. The short summary is that Iris has left home to live with their girlfriend and James got into our car, jumped the clutch and broke both ours and our neighbours car. Their’s is a write-off. Essentially, our life is a soap opera filmed on a budget. 

The endless teenage dramas have a negative effect on my appetite and I have to make a conscious effort to eat well and not to skip meals, or graze. So I thought I’d try to “meal prep” on a Sunday. Not like those obsessive bores on the socials, with matching environmentally friendly containers and a plan so rigorous that it would put a military operation to shame. Also without videoing myself chopping onions with a knife several sizes too big. Anyway, each to their own. I had a bag of quinoa with a near future use by date and there are always vegetables that need to be used promptly. Our vegetable drawer in the fridge is sectioned into two parts, one for newly purchased stuff, the other for earlier purchases that need using up first. So last week I cooked the quinoa, tossed it with a herby salad dressing and spooned it into old take-away containers. We have many of those collected over years, even more lids but not often matching ones. It is a mystery. Every time I try to find a lid I think that I should really sort through these boxes/lids then don't...Then I chopped cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for a bit of colour and crunch, added pecans and pumpkin seeds for additional nutrients and finally topped it all with my favourite ferments, red cabbage sauerkraut and dill carrots. I make those myself, I'll tell you more about this another time. It is fun to ferment vegetables. For this week I made a minestrone with a medley of vegetables from the use urgently section in the fridge that have seen better days (half a celeriac, savoy cabbage, slightly bendy carrots...). I supplemented this with fresh vegetables (potatoes, courgettes, peppers, onions), frozen green beans, tinned cannellini beans and a tin of  pulped tomatoes, herbs and chilli flakes and some vegetable stock. This made a thick and rich soup. I also added assorted pasta shapes because I like pasta in my minestrone. That's me all sorted! Now I just need some appetite. 

Anyway, I managed to read a few blogs this weekend, even commented on a few and hopefully, I can catch up with the rest of my favourite blogs this week. Thank you for visiting, as always 😊