............yesterday, after a shopping trip for groceries, I baked away the afternoon. And it felt good.
A dozen or so lemon iced fairy cakes and vanilla butter cream fairy cakes made all the difference. Just recently I've lost my love of cooking, preferring instead to make-do with whatever easiest, handiest. Not me at all.
Apart from baking a malt loaf for Mr Hairy's pa, I hadn't baked much at all. Not like me at all.

I made a beef and vegetable suet crust pie yesterday, didn't need to follow a recipe just used good quality minced steak and a jugful of mixed vegetables. To moisten and hold it all together; a mugful of beef stock mixed with brown sauce, garlic, mushroom ketchup and plenty of salt, pepper and thyme. The pastry, made with self raising flour and beef suet was easy to handle and delightful to cut and eat. I think I prefer it to shortcrust. It's more tolerant of cooks with other things on their minds.
Talking of which..Crying has become the norm with Mother recently.

I suppose........worrying about mum and her never ending need to go out, which I'm sorry to say, really irritates and tires me, is taking its toll. My body is screaming for a holiday somewhere, anywhere. Either warm and continental or damp and English, I really wouldn't mind. But I have to stay put, here, in the bungalow, day in day out. No postcards from me.

The one thing that gets me through each day is the night time. That time between 8:30 and 9:30 when I do the 'care' run by making sure mum has swallowed her pills (have found a  handful under the bed), dropping drops into her bad eye, looking for books and socks, doing her pillows, checking her toes and leg skin and generally making sure she's fit for bed. Then I turn and walk away leaving her to her own particular hell and me to my own. But in the bedroom even though my mind is swollen to bursting with exhaustion, I'm surrounded by my lovely run of the mill stuff, odd bits of jewellry, a colony of lipsticks, a few books and a diary. Beyond price.
If the walls fell in and the ceiling spewed piss it'd still be my little sanctuary.


Today I'm making Marjoram Pork Chops with pasta shells and garlic bread. For afters, lemon curd pudding and ice cream.