Hello Dear Reader,
We are busy renovating our cottage! Neither of us enjoy this at all but it needed to be done. Dearly Beloved has: removed a stair rail (there were two, one either side of the stairs for the old couple who lived here before us), filled in holes, put up shelves, painted and fixed anything that was broken. I made a complete mess of painting the stairs and now I'll be removing the paint with paint stripper and starting again!
However, I have done a reasonably good job of upcycling the cheap furniture that we bought. I now know to leave the paint for 24 hours between each coat, give it a sand where it's lumpy and then wait another 24 hours to wax it. The living room furniture is almost done. We can't finish painting the living just yet as we're waiting for the plaster to completely dry. It's almost done!
So, there's not been much time for cooking. What we eat needs to be simple and quick. I love smoked mackerel in any form. It's so easy to make it into a pate.
I used
4 Smoked mackerel fillets - Aldi £1.59
1 lemon, zest and juice. 15p
100g of soft cream cheese - Aldi - 25p
All eaten with a 49p every day essentials bag of salad.! £2.48 for lunch. This could go a lot further with some cheap carbs such as new potatoes or some salad and is plenty enough for four. We just ate the lot for lunch!
To make the pate, remove the skin and any tough end bits from the mackerel and add to a bowl with half a pack of cream cheese, the zest and juice of a lemon. Break the mackerel down with the back of a fork, whilst mixing it into the cheese and lemon. You can mush this in a food processor but I like to keep the fishiness. Just eat is as it is.
You could eat this with toast or fresh crusty bread and butter but neither of us now eat bread and as few carbs as possible (saves the spikes and dips of energy and stops us feeling hungry so we can eat less) so we just ate ours with salad.
We're working as hard as we can on the cottage as Dearly Beloved goes back to work soon so I will have to finish the rest of the work myself. I'm slow working on my own and get distracted. In the middle of painting, I'm likely to start sewing, browsing the net or reading. However, I must get on with it as I will be back at work soon enough and the cottage won't renovate itself!
Over to you Dear Reader, I'd like some words of encouragement to get me through painting, sanding and mending. You know me, I'd much rather be in my kitchen or sewing!
Until tomorrow,
Love Froogs xx