Pretty in pink

Hello Wafflers. Say hello to my new cyclamen. Pretty isn’t it? I bought this at the garden centre today after I met my friend for coffee and catch up. It was a lovely sunny morning. After coffee we had a wander around the garden centre shop, donning our masks, of course. They also have an aquarium and we enjoyed looking at the colourful fish and also baby sting rays that had beautiful brown and white markings. I love the way they move. I think they were about £300. each. We didn’t buy any!

The cyclamen is now on the patio. It needs to go into a bigger pot or into the border. I was going to do this this afternoon but felt quite tired and drained so have left it for the weekend. I’ll probably put it in one of the sweet pea pots as they are pretty much dead now.

Here was the view from coffee break.

And this was the walk home.

I did find enough energy, however, to prepare the slow cooker supper of beef and anchovy stew. Last time I made this we gave it a * marking in the book. This means we thought it was absolutely delicious. Fingers crossed for this time too. It looks and smells great. I’m going to serve it with mashed potatoes.

I like to get all the ingredients out on the side to start.

Obviously the sultana bran flakes, cake and packet of chocolate digestives were already lurking on the side, they are not part of this stew!! For some reason I also got the cardamom pods out of the cupboard. They are also not in it! (Honestly, Gail, get a grip… ). I also realised I’d forgotten the important ingredients of red wine and butter for this line up.. and added them later.

Once prepared for the slow cooker, it looked like this..

And now, many hours later, it looks like this…(it’s a shame I can’t put the amazing aroma on the blog… you’ll have to imagine it).

Hopefully the Marks & Spencer’s beef will be nice and succulent. Half of this we will probably eat, and half will go in the freezer for another time. I’m not sure there is much room in the freezer, I’ll have to do some rearranging. There’s probably some weird old stuff in the bottom that can be chucked away, there usually is.

We had a quick walk around the block before tea and I spotted another beautiful pink rose I though you might like, on this pretty pink Waffle day.

We do eat well I must say. Last night we gobbled up homemade mushroom tarts with baked beans.

These are so tasty. It is Nigel Slater’s recipe using ready made puff pastry. The mushrooms are fried in butter and garlic, parsley added and then put on top of the pastry and baked in the oven. Gorgeous! Clean plates all round.

Well I hope you’ve had a nice day. We came across this half mast Union Jack on our walk today. What’s that all about? Brexit? The virus? Something else…..? 🤔