Sunday, July 22nd.....

Another quiet day.  Marilyn has a cold and is miserable so is spending the day in bed.  It’s often the only way to short-circuit an ailment.  Every piece of advice you hear about a cold is to give in to it, rest and it will clear in time. Jamie is finishing off an assignment for his IT course so I’ve taken the time to cook some zucchini pickle.

I’ve only ever cooked pickle once before: in 1975, we had a surplus of pears so I found a recipe for Pear and Fennel Chutney.  It wasn’t bad but I haven’t done anything like that since.  The zucchini pickle has turned out very well so I’m going to attack Bread and Butter Cucumbers tomorrow.  I’m using the Margaret Fulton Cookbook which has a strong Scottish influence.  Can you believe it has recipes for Finnan Haddie and Girdle Scones?  Still, there’s also Coquilles St Jacques a l’ail and Fettuccine Verde alla Gargiulo, so it’s not too tartan.  Tonight, we’re having Curried Scallops so we looked more than once at the Coquilles recipe but decided it might have too much garlic.

We’re having some trouble with possums.  For several nights now, we’ve been wakened by crashing noises from the back verandah.  I thought they might be attracted to birdseed that Jamie keeps on the shelf, but this morning I found a box of UHT milk had been punctured in one corner and knocked over.  We have got into the habit of using the shelves on the verandah for storing milk, OJ, soda water and so on – things which take up too much room in the pantry.  Sadly, we’ll have to make other arrangements for the milk.

The box, of course, was empty and most of it had dripped down into one of my wellington boots.  Typical!  What might have been a reasonably easy clean-up has the added problem of sour milk in my boots and, once the smell has established itself, there’s no getting rid of it.  Just as well that wellies are designed, not only to keep out the water, but also to keep in the smell (with thanks to Billy Connolly for his timeless lyrics to The Wellie Song).