St Stephen's Day Pie

The weather forecast for today was much better than it actually turned out so when we got up it was cold and grey and miserable with spits of rain and so John and I did not go for our walk as planned - we hunkered down and I kept myself warm by getting ready our lunch for tomorrow at Mum's.  We didn't even want to nip down to the shops for provisions so it was to be a right old 'make do and mend'!!!  I had chosen to make St Stephen's Day Pie - St Stephen's day is December 26th so traditionally this is made from leftovers from Christmas Day - so turkey and gammon.  I had turkey and gammon in the freezer and I had a carrot, onion, sweet potato and half swede along with a few potatoes so enough to rustle something up.  As it happens enough to make a meal for us and a smaller second meal for mum which, looking at it, would probably feed her twice.  The larger one I made with layered cheesy potatoes and then used what was left and mashed it for the smaller one - mash is traditional for this recipe BUT you always need far more potato with mash and I didn't want to not have enough.  I have to say that this would not normally be my favourite recipe - not being a lover of gammon but it was all the things which Mum likes and I made the sauce with a dollop of the orange marmalade Lilian had made from oranges growing in Mum's garden.

The hunkering down and cooking ploy worked - I got everything sorted for tomorrow, got ingredients together to pimp up a pizza for our supper and whilst doing that we put the immersion on and by the time I had finished we had hot water for a shower and to wash up.  By the time we were clean and tidy the weather had improved sufficiently for us to go for a bit of a walk through the village to check the post and the cemetery.  We went up along the top and past David and Edda's - David must have been expecting some nice weather because he had his ancient old Land Rover outside - it has no roof so is normally in the garage - it is a marvelous beast - no idea exactly how old but old.

We carried on down through the village so that we could check the post before walking on down to the cemetery - it is very quiet - not surprising under the current restrictions and conditions but quite sad really now that the road works are completed there aren't any visitors to see it.  We didn't have any post but there was a letter for the people who bought Sheila and Klaus's house and one for Isabel and another for Das and Belinda so we took them with us to deliver as we went round.

We delivered the first letter and then went to the cemetery where everything was fine.  We watered Dad's and David's and I need to get down and give the marble and good wash and re-black the lettering as this has now faded in lots of places and we like him to look spick and span.  

It was really quite warm on our walk back which is all uphill and so by the time I got in I was feeling rather hot!!!  Mum had been out with Lilian for lunch - I was so glad that she had as it would be a nice change of scenery for her and I had advised her to wrap up warm because the restaurants have to be open on two sides to comply and so if there is a through draft it can be quite unpleasant.  She said she went fully prepared and had had a lovely time which is great and gives her a bit of 'normality'.

We settled down early for our pimped up pizza because John's team were playing today - a Yorkshire derby against arch rivals Dirty Dirty Leeds.  The pizza was a fabulous success, the football was not - even though the Mighty Blades scored the winning goal it was unfortunately in the wrong goal.  This is the sorry story of the SUFC season.

We settled down for some more inspiring TV and started to watch The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel which is a four parter - we only managed one part!