We got the Wii on Friday night. And then on Saturday we got another controller, and a charging station, and Winter Sports 2008. We played with it quite a lot, so on Sunday we went out and got another Nunchuck so we could do split screen slaloming.

My word, but perlmonger and I are crap at it! But we shall persevere. We did this all yesterday afternoon, and then went out to the pub quiz, which we didn't win. No change there.

My shoulders ached this morning, as did my legs a little bit. But still, we sallied forth to the North Somerset Show - walked there and back, a round trip of about 5 miles, and then 3 hours or so around the show. Quite enjoyable, but the weather was horridly humid. I bought a hemp hat for six quid, and perlmonger purchased another wooden spoon, for verily 10 cannot be enough for any household.

Cooking was non-existent, mostly - we've been eating out of the freezer to make some room. Sossidges Saturday, and a rather splendid upside down pear pudding, Sunday night was home made kofta meatballs, and chick peas with spinach, and tonight is chicken and chorizo with chickpeas, and couscous. Nice having home made convenience food :)

Hope you all had a good one.

Never set foot out of the house. Made a batch of bananananana muffins on Friday night, and then we ate far too many of them, and both had a nasty sugar hit overnight. Serves us right.

Saturday, made soda bread for lunch, which we had with the previously mentioned chickie! soup. Supper was pork and pineapple - I went into autopilot while I was making it, and did a load of ginger, which isn't actually in the recipe. Was still delicious.

Sunday was toasted soda bread for breakfast, and a moussaka for supper, followed - foolishly - by a plum crumble with ice cream. Belch.

The rest of the weekend involved doing all the little changes on the map site, doing the front office and some (but not all) back office changes on a journo site, doing the start of the support structure on the Huge Intranet Project, and various other work bits and pieces. Things are manic right now.

And more West Wing - we're about half way through series 3 now.

Lazy, by and large. We found a tub of goose in the back of the freezer that we didn't know we had (more on that project later), so half of it was stir fried on Thursday, and most the rest was shredded, and turned into a goose and leek rissotto. The balance went in the soup pot.

The car has been playing up - we don't use it enough, and the battery tends to run down. So on Saturday morning, perlmonger went out with his trusty jump starter, planning for us to go to Sainsburys, so I could do some shopping, and he could sit in the car with the engine running. I spotted a flaw in this plan, but went along with it. Of course, the bloody car started quite happily, so we both got to go round the stupormarket - how I hate them. Came back via the farm shop, bought chicken and cheese and stuff. Back in the car - nothing. Zilch. Engine wouldn't even turn.

Considered contents of boot. Considered bright sunlight. Removed ice cream, chicken, milk, cold meat, etc, distributed it round bags, and walked the mile or so home, leaving the rest in the car. Then phoned the AA, who gave us an ETA of 60-70 minutes. Pete trudged manfully back to the car, while I did some work, and the AA turned up on time, and said the battery was shagged, and not taking a charge. Arse - new battery today then.

Having picked upI made the dough for hungarian fennel bread on Saturday night, then got up at ridiculous o'clock on Sunday to knock it back. It was worth it - gorgeous. perlmonger went out on his velocipede yesterday afternoon, and I made a carrot cake. Supper was roast chickie! with roast spuds, and courgette and kale stir fried with some tamari, and the carrot cake with a rather splendid blood orange compote, and vanilla ice cream.

Six (I think) episodes of West Wing consumed too.

And now it's Monday again.

On Saturday, I set to with a will, and the determination to complete Project Kitchen. And I won!

• All pulses and similar enjarred (apart from some odd pastas, where I simply ran out of jars).


• The the shelves above the cooker - everything taken off, the shelves cleaned with bicarb, then steam cleaned, then new and different and more appropriate Stuff put on them. This was horrible, and involved me standing on a stool, which surprised perlmonger somewhat, as i get verdigris if I'm anything more than 12" above the ground


• the crockery cupboards were reorganised - all the bowls and jugs were sorted, and moved to a different cupboard, while the everyday plates were shifted to a cupboard of their own, where they should hopefully be more accessible


• the shelves by the kitchen door were completely sorted, and now hold only "spare" stuff - all current foods are now properly organised into appropriate cupboards. I also found room on there for the bits of the Kitchenaid food mixer that I rarely use


• moved said Kitchenaid to the other side of the kitchen - meaning that the Magimix is far more accessible, and the mixer is more usable

This - I think - concludes the kitchen reorganisation, and took me most of the day.

Supper was sausages, with red cabbage and roast potatoes.

Today perlmonger took himself off to the Bristol Cycle Path protest celebration, so I had the place to myself - lovely :) Went to the farm shop for Bits, did the washing, emptied the dishwasher, hoovered (well, yes - the Roomba did it for me), made a silverside potroast for dinner, and watched lots of Jericho - not quite sure whether I like it or not. It's rather Lost-ish, but intriguing enough to keep watching.

And now to bed - I ache all over in a rather alarming pre-fluey sort of way, so I'm going to take a couple of pills and crash.

We didn't do much Sunday - ate a humungous fry up for brunch (lamb and rosemary sossidge, apple-smoked bacon, egg, black pudding, beans, sourdough toast), and then some nice fresh home made scones for supper. And slumped.

Monday I decided to go to Ikeal. Astonishingly, perlmonger elected to accompany me. The roads through Bristol were very quiet; this was because everybody in the area was already *at* Ikeal, and it was *packed*. Still, we trundled round, buying 2 wicker hampers to tidy up Under The Stairs, a plastic mat with fish on for the cats' food bowls, a new step stool, two mats for by the patio doors, and some tealights.

Came home and cooked dinner. We bought half a salt marsh lamb last year, and so we decided to cook the leg (why did we only have one leg, when it was half a lamb? Was it deficient in the leg department?). This leg of lamb was *huge*. And utterly gorgeous. Studded it with garlic and rosemary, and bunged it in the oven with a good sloosh of red wine. Had it with green beans and garlic in tomatoes, and roasted spuds.

While it was in the oven, we did indeed clear out the horror under the stairs, and put down the new door mats. So Project House is continuing well.

Last night, perlmonger chopped the rest of the meat off the bone, and we minced up most of it. We cooked some into Madhur's Ground Meat with Peas, which unaccountably I have not put online yet. There are two more tubs of mince in the freezer, and some sliced lamb in the fridge, so thats [counts] five exceedingly generous meals from that joint.

We sallied off to Nailsea yesterday morning - it's a nice little town that has most of what you might need for day to day stuff. I wanted to get some more catnip for the Tribe - they love it, but they want it in a herbal form. Sadly Aaron's Pets didn't have any, so the search continues (we are almost out of it). I also nipped (or popped) into the opticians to have my glasses adjusted *again*.

The rest of the haul included:

• a new cutlery drainer to replace the ancient and horrible dark green plastic thing
• a shoe cleaning kit wooden box, reduced to £6.50 in Woolies - been after something like this for *ages*
• a small non-stick saucepan; I don't like non-stick, but for scrambled eggs and white sauce they're handy
• cress, red chillis, eggs, beansprouts, new potatoes, cabbage from the greengrocer
• 2 plastic bottles from the pound shop, to put my vinegar and lemon juice in (switching to a green cleaning regime, bit by bit)

Then we hurled round to Taste at Barrow Gurney, to pick up some rhubarb, and a couple of their most excellent pasties for lunch. Disaster! - all gone pasties :( So instead,

• 2 crayfish tartlets - gorgeous, consumed with homemade lentil/tomato soup for lunch
• some Parmeggiano Reggiano
• a small sourdough loaf
• apple smoked bacon
• a stalk of teeny tiny vine tomatoes
• organic milk

And that was that. Home for lunch, then the rest of the day was mostly slumpage for me after the disturbed sleep on Friday.

Supper was sublime - we did the Boy Oliver's Hot and Sour Pork with Rhubarbe, and I recommend it most highly. Really, really lovely. And there's enough left over to put a tub in he freezer.

Watched the first episode of Dirty Sexy Money, which was just bad enough to be good, if you know what I mean. And I Tivo'd The Day After Tomorrow, of which I had had such high hopes that I actually *paid* to go see it, and it was appalling. I might watch it this afternoon to see if it's as bad as I remember.

Happy Easter, all!

I did the kitchen drawers, Removed everything from them, washed the drawers, the cutlery trays, and the contents. Have a box of Stuff to go to the charity shop; many different jar openers that don't open jars, that kind of thing.

It all took a surprisingly long time, but I'm pleased it's done.

perlmonger cooked us stir fried chard for supper, then we had more of the hot cross buns.

Not a good night's sleep -I was awoken at 00:15 by an AA truck, whose driver parked up blocking our (narrow) road, and left his (very loud) engine running for about half an hour, while he did ... something to a car down the road. Took me ages to get back to sleep, and when I did, some young people woke me again having a drunken row outside.

Yawn ...

We sallied forth this morning to do a bit of shoppering - something we don't necessarily enjoy, so we had several places to go. I wouldn't say the weather was actually nice when we left, but by the time we got to Whiteladies Road, it was pouring. And neither of us had a jacket, a hat, or an umbrella. Soggy.

We started at Kitchens, where we purchased

• a new cheese grater. The Microplane snapped its plastic handle in half last week, and we thus declined to spend £17.95 (if you please) on a replacement, and instead bought a stainless steel one for eight quid
• 3 huge and 3 medium glass storage jars - the mission to Tidy The House continues
• a 12 bottle wine rack. For shoes. Yes, really. Works really well, and we don't have much any spare floor space

From there we waded round the corner to Wild Oats, the health food place.

• two bottles of Teriyaki (two because they are tiny)
• some laundry balls - they'd better work, at 35 quid
• a sourdough loaf
• Ecover washing powder and dishwasher tabs
• no blackcurrant juice for perlmonger

In the greengrocer next door, I bought basil, mushrooms and carrots. I do very little greengrocery shopping these days, due to the Riverford box, but sometimes you gotta.

Then we hurtled over to Wai Yee Hong, the Chinese supermarket at Eastville, for

• noodles
• dried orange peel
• 3kgs of bicarbonate of soda (great for cleaning)
• oolong tea
• fresh ginger

Next up, the Better Food Company at St Werberghs.

• Ecover fabric conditioner
• posh organic kitchen soap stuff
• unpasteurised cheddar
• brie
• no blackcurrant juice for perlmonger
• maple syrup

We had lunch there too - very nice pasta bake with roast peppers.

Last call was to Asda, to pick up

• some more of the nice plastic storage boxes we bought last week - I WILL organise this house if it kisl me. Which it probably will.
• turkey mince for Iggy, as he loves it so
• some raw tiger prawns, to be stir fried tonight with the aforementioned basil
• a nice little ceramic oblong dish, which will replace the one accidentally left on the gas (made a nice BANG when it exploded)
• waffer thin meat for the cats' treats
• some cold meat for next week's lunches, as I can't be arsed to go down to Costco and buy a gammon, never mind cook it

We have to go out again in a bit to collect the wine from the offy, but that's it, now - I'm in for the rest of the weekend.

perlmonger says he may go out on his bike tomorrow to Gloucester Road in a last ditch attempt to find the blackcurrant juice he likes, but I fear he might be better off tilting at windmills ... and the forecast is very wet.

Friday night started with the always excellent Phil Beer and Miranda Sykes at the compact and bijou Nailsea Folk Club. A stonking set, enjoyable as always.

Saturday I nipped (or popped) up to the farm shop, and bought 1 orange, pork, dried apricots to make supper for self and frends. I wanted leg of pork, but they didn't have any; the butcher asked what I was going to do with it, and when I said "casserole" he produced masses of offcuts and charged me 6 quid. We got 9 generous servings out of it, so that was pretty good! I did pork with apricots and pears, followed by molten chocolate puddings. Spent the afternoon cooking that lot, plus a banana bread, as we had some bananas going over.

Nice evening with Pat'n'Dave WANOLJ.

Sunday I steamcleaned the bathroom and most of the tiles, especially the grouting. Then I put a market stall's worth of veg through the food processor for later cooking, and constructed an excellent fry up of chipolatas, black pudding, field mushrooms, fried potato, bacon from a friend in Moray, fried egg and baked beans. Then we watched the first 4 episode of West Wing, while consuming tea and banana cake, and groaning due to overindulgence. After that, we turned some of the veg, together with 4lbs of Dexter mince, into bolognese sauce. The plan to make soup from the rest, and some duck stock from last weekend, had to wait, as the soup pan had been pressed into service for the bol.

Supper consisted of crispbread with Port Salut, and another chocolate pudding (there was some left over, you see, and it would have been criminal to waste it), and another 2 episodes of WW. Which is just as good as I remember it.

Nice weekend, feel better now.

I continued the cleaning jag. Cleared out the shelves in the kitchen - the ones that are in the corner beside the fridge, and behind the bin, so hardly get looked at. Emptied out many many bottles of beer that was *years* past its sell by date.

Removed guff from kitchen floor, set Roomba going, took empty beer bottles and other assorted junk to the tip. Came back via Bedminster, called into opticians to get new glasses adjusted. How come they're always fine when you leave the optician, then immediately become too loose?

Popped into Asda and bought assorted plastic boxes, things for the organising of. And turkey mince for Iggy - he is very fond of it, and so must have it. Tried their self-scanning checkout. Gave up in despair as it is so slow.

Came home, sorted herbs and spices into small baskets, and spare herbs and spices into large baskets. Washed kitchen floor. Cooked small (by our standards) fry up - bacon, black pudding, mushrooms, beans, fried egg, accompanied by toasted soda farls.

Slobbed for the rest of the afternoon - some crap television, then a long soak in the bath. Then off to the Legion for the monthly pub quiz. No, we didn't win.