Prepairing for the winter...

The tarp on top of that mountain is 3x2m. We don't have a wood shed big enough. At the end of last winter our smaller wood shack was crushed by two huge spruces. And because they were huge, we have even MORE firewood to stack - but nowhere to stack.

And - of course - our biggest and oldest fireplace, the huge several ton heat reserving fireplace is out of order. It has crumbled inside, the smoke channels which distribute the heat in to the huge mass are finally given up.  There is no fix, it needs to be demolished. I knew it will come to this eventually, but I was hoping it could hold on for few more years (it's 43 years old, so it really has done all it could).

Se do have two other fireplaces in the old part of the house, so it is not a disaster as such. But it is very expensive job to demolish and replace. And VERY dirty job!!!

But, the new part of the house has only one fireplace. Some day there will be kitchen, and I need to get a wood burning stove for the kitchen. Price range is 900-9000€. I might want to aim to the lower end of the price range... It's NOT going to be an AGA!

And for the wood shed? The timber for the size of the shed we'd need would cost around 2000€. Pre-cut timber would cost around 3500€. And fot that price you still need to buy roofing.

Where is my lottery win?

It is hot - now

A week or three later than rest of Europe, we are having a heatwave. It's been +30 few days now. Quite a change from last weeks +14 degrees...

As it IS hot, I can't take 'Suma to walks during the day, we try to get going in the morning. But we also need to wait for Aunt E to finish her porridge before she can join us... I can't do anything in the garden/yard during the day, because 'Suma wants to join me and because she's a dim and a black dog, she would het a heathstroke - because she wants lo lay in the sun! I mean she's my darling, but sometimes I wish she would have few more brain cells.

I can't imagine how insufferable the heat has been in southern Europe (way over +30 several weeks). We have AC machine to cool down upstairs and heat pump to cool down middle floor. 

Meals are very simple - I cooked a big fat piece of pork to make pulled pork. We have been eating it in several ways: hotdogs, hamburgers, tortillas (or burritos? never remember which they are), in salad, in sandwiches. In fwe days I'll get my first tomatoes and maybe - if I'm lucky- a cucumber! I've already got few tiny bellpeppers, and now spinach, chard and new zealand spinach are big enought to be picked occasionally. My veggies look so much better than I was hoping for!

Aunt E is getting old

Here in my village there's quite a lot of my family/relatives. Of course there's my mother and old man, my sister with her family and my cousin. Then there's my uncle and two of my aunts with their s.o. It is very nice to have a lot of my kind here.

But we all age. My oldest aunt E is really getting old, it seems. Last summer she complained about her feet, and her eyesight is getting worse. She has real physical problems with her eyes, and she had had two operations, now there's a lot of scarring which makes her vision blurred. But it is not the problem. I think (and my yongest aunt, who doesn't live here and my sister) that she's getting some memory chellenges.

She can handle most things, but in last few months she's been saying it's very difficult for her to start doing things. When she can make herself to start something, there's no problem. And she says it's the most difficult in the morning, in the afternoon everything is easier. Hmmm.

No this week she got a change in medication (her previous one 2x4mg tablets were replaced by 1x8mg tablet) and for some reason this was something she couldn't get grasp to it. She had written down the notes from her nurse several times (and they were ok, nothing amiss there) but she was so unsure if she was going to have the right dose. (she worked over 40 years in accounting, she know he numbers). She had written and calculated everything right, but just couldn't understand.

She had called my yongest aunt a couple of times already. She lives three hours away, so of course she couldn't do anything. She called my sister, who was stuck with number three who's teething... And she called me.

One thing I also noted was her handwriting is deteriorating. She's had one of the most neat handwriting I've ever seen (another is my mother - I've not inherited it). Of course you can blame her poor sight for that, but...

I filled her medicin dispenser with the right pills, wrote down EVERY pill she needs to take for the next week and she put a mark on her dispenser what date each weekday is. She showed me a cabbage she had bought in order to cook a cabbage stew. This was yesterday.

Today I went for a 'Sumawalk and took my time to greet my aunt, too. She had taken the right pills (yay!) bus asked if I was going to town to shops. She said she needs some ready meals, because she can't just get going with her cooking. Oh dear. I asked if she wanted me to help her to chop the cabbage?

So in the end, we chopped the cabbage, then she wanted to check her blood pressure and I finished cooking the stew. I even chopped a whole onion! with gloves, of course (I can't touch raw onions). Tomorrow I'll go and check her fridge if there's any old spoiled food. I'm NOT going to fill her fridge, but I can help her do things.

Yes, she's getting older and having troubles with several issues. She lives alone, in a big bungalow, she has a swimming pool in her yard, a VERY nice garden with VERY neat flower beds, she still drives (her eye problem doesn't affect her driving, doctor has confirmed that) but everything is going to be too much for her eventually.

Eating down the freezer

 This time of the year I'm usually trying to empty my freezers. I have three, one huge chest freezer, another much smaller chest freezer, and one upright freezer.

Smallest one is half empty - it really is very very small, so we useit mainly to store ice cream (which we usually have more than excess amounts...) and if there's room, bread.

The big chest freezer is for meat, chicken and big container of berries. It has four hanging baskets which keeps all "consumables" like yeast, ginger, pastries and pasties, a tub of ice cream (because it's a bit warmer place so ice cream is soft), half bags of veggies, half bags of toast and other breads, coconut flakes and other nuts, coffee...

And then the upright freezer. It has EVERYTHING. Fish. Butter. Cheese. Berries. Fruits. Pastry and puffy dough. Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Vegetables. Mushrooms. Freezer meals (usually leftovers packed in margarine tubs). Mushrooms. Ice cubes. Sausages, ham, shredded ham. Surimi. Kebab meat. Maybe some mushrooms?

Ok, I might just got a bit over the top with the mushrooms, there is only one basket full of mushrooms left (there was about 3 just before Christmas at the end of the foraging season).

So as you can imagine I NEED to get some more space in freezers! I'm not getting another one...

So, today we are most likely to have a pork stir fry; pork, green beans, mangoldi stalks, zucchini from the freezer. I might fry some mushrooms to go with the stir fry, but I can't use mushrooms in the fry becaus hb can't eat mushrooms. I have a lot of green leaves of garlic in the veggie plot, so I use those as well. I have some bell peppers in the fridge. There's yellow rice already in the fridge, and some noodles, so I have no need to cook any carbs.

Yesterday we had chicken wings (well, not me), yellow rice, fried mushrooms and green beans and corn. What did we had a day before? Can't remember! Oh, ham! I bought a small ham right after Christmas (on sale) and I was suposed to cook it on Easter, but we had so much other stuff I decided not. I was supposed to cook it n Midsummer, but we had so much other stuff I decided not. But now even d was home, so there were six people eating so it was a perfect time to cook it. We ate ham for several days.

So, maybe tomorrow I will need to go shopping for some fresh items, like eggs and mayo - but nothing for the freezer... I promise?