Hello 2024

Monday 1st January 2024

A new year beginning, what will it hold?  I'm sat watching Sky news, I'm in a great deal pain, having trouble walking, I've seized up from doing stuff but hopefully it'll ease off over time when we stop doing stuff!  Himself is in bed, he's just not shifting this dose of whatever, it's on his chest now and in his sinus's, I think he'll possibly need antibiotics when we get back home.  At least he finally stayed in bed yesterday and rested, because if you don't get better if you don't give your body time to rest.

I haven't blogged since boxing day, so almost a week and it's been a quiet week pottering about the bungalow, fetching logs for the log burner, cooking food and of course I wouldn't be Bev if it didn't also involve drinking wine, not as much as you'd think though, I've been relatively restrained considering it's Christmastime.  Food wise too, we've not gone crazy, with him being poorly, Aryn being out and about with his mom, we've just eaten food because you need too, I've not cooked 'special' stuff.  Of course we've not starved either!  He's a fan of a cooked breakfast, although I managed to get him just to have scrambled eggs on toast yesterday, that will be a breakfast I'll enjoy when I get back home and start to focus on weight loss.  Losing some weight has to take some pressure off my back, leg and knee and ease my pain somewhat, I really hope it does anyway!

Other meals we've had include, pork in a tomato sauce with pasta, that was tasty, we had lamb chops, cauli, broccoli and garlic bread last night, I realised I can live without lamb chops and garlic bread.  

My beef stew did two meals, I hadn't got my oxo cubes, Lidl's only had beef stock pots so I used those and added a bit of bisto gravy to thicken it at the end, worked really well and the beef from Lidls was good too, Irish beef, cheap as well, I get excited when somethings cheap here because not much is.  You think our supermarkets are expensive!  

I'm trying to think what else we've eaten,  I did cook a chicken and we had sandwiches with that as our neighbour was here changing the light switches and plug sockets and fixing a couple of them, he's also fitted an outside plug for us and changed my light fitting in the kitchen to spotlights so I can actually see to cook!  B&Q is an hour away so when you go to get stuff, you can't be forgetting anything but these lights were worth the drive (they weren't all we went for).

I can't explain the joy having these lights in the kitchen have given me!

I also made a curry with leftover beef, again I couldn't get a hot curry sauce so I went with what I could find and it turned out banging!

 

I used the entire jars of both the curry sauce and the Lidl massaman curry paste and 2 heaped teaspoons of spice bag.  Now 'spice bag' in Ireland is something you get from a Chinese takeaway and it's really good, its fried chicken and chips with salt and chilli, red and green peppers, sliced chili peppers, fried onions, and a variety of spices in a bag.  It's really good, the pot of seasoning is obviously them trying to recreate the spices used in those bags.   I can't believe I didn't take a photo of the dish, I haven't been taking my food photos, I need to get back to it don't I.  I might nip and get those jar sauces before we leave so I can make it again at home, I have plenty seasoning left and I can probably use any massaman paste and medium curry sauce if we don't get back to the shop. 

The house has at least 5 chest of drawers, you know the old wooden ones that are really well made but scratched and scuffed from years of use.  I decided to try painting one to go in one of the bathroom, it's not perfect but it'll serve the purpose, hold some towels and stuff. 

I'm going to chill today, do some of my jigsaw I think.  I've got pork chops for dinner, we'll either have with oven chips or rice, again not going crazy, trying to keep the food we buy down to a minimum so we use what we buy.  

Despite him being really poorly, he managed to fit all the windows we bought with us, so now we only have one more to bring over and two new doors.  The carpets aren't getting fitted this trip, we'll leave them for another day.  My brother has said he will come next Christmas and do lots of jobs for us, so hopefully this time next year this house with be almost complete!  It's already looking more like a home compared to the first Christmas we came, which was 3 years ago, where's that time gone!

They've recently bought fibre broadband to the area so next year we'll have a decent connection, there's so much I can't watch here not just because of the connection but because we're not in the UK, it won't let me watch bbc iplayer, I've still not seen Christmas Day's Doctor Who!  

I could waffle more but it is just waffle and me trying to not do the washing up, plus the laptop needs charging and I want to post this before it dies!  

Happy New Year to you and yours, 

Mwah, luv ya 

Love me x