Today is Friday

And Friday is cleaning day! Is everybody happy? I bet my socks they are!

Well I am anyway. I've spent the last 7 days staring at complete and utter chaos. We arrived home from holidays in the early hours of last Saturday morning and fell into bed. When I woke up around 7.30am I had an awful headache and a wretched cough, the aftermath of a particularly stressful week away from home.

All that means that I spent the weekend in bed (most of the time anyway) and have just slothed around since Monday, only doing what I absolutely had to. Thank goodness for the freezer or the kids would've revolted! As is is they managed to eat all the bread, drink all the juice and deplete the pantry of most spreads as well as finish off the fruit cake, shortbread and choc chip cookies. The joys of hungry teenagers on school holidays!

So today was cleaning day and I couldn't wait to get started. The weather is cooler too, so that helped a lot. I don't like the heat. And my Darling was working so that meant the alarm went off at 6.30am and after he brought me my morning coffee (isn't he a sweetheart?) I was up and at 'em by 7am.

A load of whites, a load of darks, run the dishwasher, wipe over the benches, marinate the chicken for dinner (tandoori, yum - recipe coming), sweep, dust, mop, vacuum, put away loads and loads of "stuff" (where does it all come from?), clean the bathrooms and then conk out around 2pm!

But our home is sparkling, fresh and just the way I like it to be for my family. It may be old fashioned but I think my job is to keep house and to keep it to the best of my ability. I think that I owe it to my Darling to show him how much I appreciate the long hours he works and the effort he puts into caring for me and our children and one of the ways I can do this is to make our home a haven for him. And I love doing it too.

Ok, here is the recipe for Cheat's Tandoori Chicken:

What you need:

500g chicken fillet, skin off
1/2 cup plain yoghurt
2 tsp tandoori seasoning

How to make it:

Dice the chicken into 2cm cubes. Mix the tandoori powder with the yoghurt. Stir in the chicken and leave to marinate at least 2 hours. Heat a non-stick wok. Add the chicken, turn the heat down. Cook 20 minutes, until chicken is done and sauce has thickened. The chicken will start to brown. Keep the heat low so the yoghurt doesn't boil and curdle. Serve over steamed rice with a tossed salad on the side (torn lettuce, diced tomato, diced cucumber, thinly sliced onion rings, drizzle of cider vinegar and sprinkle of ground black pepper).

I told you it was cheat's tandoori, but it's quick, easy, cheap and really tasty.

Sunday Musings

My Darling and Train Boy disappeared about 11.30 this morning to go to trains. It's so nice to see them go off together, there are not many 18 year olds who would voluntarily spend so much time with a bunch of old men playing trains. It's a great hobby for him to have, expensive, but at least we know where he is, who he's with and what he's doing :)

Before they left my Darling put the leg of lamb on the rotisserie, ready for me to put it into place on the bbq to cook for dinner. Yummo. It's so nice done this way. I stud the outside with slivers of garlic and fresh rosemary and baste with olive oil and lemon juice while it's cooking. It has the best taste and cooked on the rotisserie it is so tender and moist - almost falling off the bone.

I used up some wrinkly veggies - potato, carrot, sweet potato, pumpkin, parsnip and onion. Cut them up roughly, into largish chunks, drizzled with a little olive oil and put them in a foil tray on the bbq to cook along with the roast.

The big boys were home by 6 and it's a lovely evening so we ate outside. The table looked lovely with new lime green placemats and the white crockery, very fresh and summery. I hunted out some greenish coloured wine glasses I had hidden in the back of the wall unit to use and the whole scene looked great. Add in a platter piled high with golden roast vegetables and a roast waiting to be carved and the scene for a perfect meal was set.

Dinner was delicious, everyone cleaned their plates, always a good sign. And best of all no cooking inside so no pots to wash, and the plates, glasses and cutlery went straight into the dishwasher.

The leftover lamb is sliced and in a Deli Keeper in the fridge for tomorrow's lunches. I can't wait.