Park Walk

 Yesterday was quite good weather-wise, so in the morning I walked down to the local shops when they opened, and then C came on down in the car and we went to the park. It made for a different walk for him, as normally he just departs from the house on foot and walks around the immediate area these days. And it was nice for me to get away from the main road straight through it, pleasant a commute as it is. It turned cloudy as we drove there and parked, but it brightened up again and there was real warmth in the sun.

Last weekend I made a big pot of minestrone, which did three meals for the two of us and lunch for me. By the time we got to the third meal, I was on a day off and made Parker House rolls to have with it. Normally I have used the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, which requires rolling the dough out and cutting circles. This recipe, which I found on the King Arthur Flour website, was much easier, and they turned out beautifully. I'm ashamed to say I ate four of them while they were fresh from the oven. I thought the addition of potato flour was interesting - one of the recipes I use for the nearest one can get to baguettes without French flour calls for the addition of cornflour to the regular white flour. 

October Favourites

 I must have felt I accomplished more than I actually did, which I suppose is a good thing. I didn't find as many cards as I expected.

I also realise that November must be a very bad month for photos - I know that two years ago I was still struggling with my sore shoulder, but I don't appear to have any photos from last year either. My header this month is a 2017 picture of a crow in the Phoenix Park. I'm also enclosing a carpet of leaves. We've had a lot of wet and windy weather, so most of the leaves are down. This happened to be a crisp dry morning when I was walking down to the local shops, so the leaves didn't look all wet and soggy.

I was reading one of Gerald Durrell's books, about a collecting expedition in Guiana. One of the animals he talked about was a species of crab-eating raccoon. I did in fact also make a card with this little raccoon carrying a crab - but it probably wouldn't make sense to anybody except me. 

This one is meant to depict me cycling to work through the park throughout the changing seasons. I must admit that at the end of March I didn't expect to be still doing it now.