Swiftly the chill winds stopped blowing,
the rain went somewhere else,
leaving the sun to shine its warmth down on us.
Now one would have thought that finally we should rejoice,
and we are / did,
it is just that the sudden burst of good weather threw our bodies into shock,
and we both became as stiff as planks,
Lester, out in Veg Plot 2,
rescuing the potatoes which were fast becoming strangled with weeds,
and getting them earthed up toute suite,
well he could hardly stand up,
knealing down for a couple of hours having convinced his body,
that this should be his 'normal' posture from now on,
and wouldn't let him get up again.
As for me,
I was doing my indoor things,
and getting stiffer by the minute.
I suppose it was the sudden change in temperatures that did it.
Today we are at least able to move better.
A walk round the farm,
and Lester was working out how many pots of jam
we should be able to make with the fruit he expects to harvest this year.
In a good year,
when I am functioning in the kitchen better than I was last year,
(well we were under renovation for most of the year,
which kept me in a tizz for most of the time)
I would make about sixty pots of jam.
Now that sounds quite a lot,
but we do like our DIY bread and DIY jam for breakfast,
and for snacks.
Back in the UK we would have lots of nibbles in the larder,
like bars of chocolate, packets of biscuits and crisps,
and all the other things which seem to fall into the
shopping basket when supermarket shopping,
with one's husband.
But then we came to France,
and started on the long journey towards feeding ourselves.
Chocolate bars and packets of biscuits and crisps do not grow on trees,
but fruit to make jam does,
and over time we have grown to love and enjoy our more simple way of eating,
especially bread / toast with a slathering of jam.
I am not saying that it was easy,
and in the beginning we did have patches of having withdrawal symptoms
from the rubbish that we had been eating in our old life,
so we did have supermarket raids,
and we did fill our shopping basket with 'naughties',
but that is happening less and less.
And when we do indulge ourselves we tend to have stomach problems afterwards.
It would seem that we have become sensitized to the contents of that type of food,
possibly the chemical contents,
which would not allow us to go back to our old ways of eating,
which is a good thing.
Cadbury's Fruit and Nut chocolate bars?
Sadly, no.
But we do have the occasional jar of Nutella,
just for now you understand,
just until the fruit harvest comes in
and we get DIY jam back on the shelves of our larder.
Speaking of which,
(the larder)
I am sorry to say that the once filled shelves are empty,
except for the jars waiting to be filled again.
How did this....
....become this......
.
....Easy! We have eaten it all!
But to be fair to myself,
I did lose my food storing momentum towards the end of last year,
2015 having been a tiring year because of the work we had done to the house.
But it is as it is,
so soon those jars will be filled up again.
Meanwhile, yes I am ashamed to say this,
we are eating bread and jam,
but supermarket jam.
But we have not bought any Nutella for a while,
and we are definitely not buying any chocolate bars or crips, etc.
except for a packet of Snickers last Sunday,
when we needed our sugar levels kept up
because we had a gig with the band.
Bread and jam would have given us sticky hands
as we played our instruments!
Bye for now,
Vx
