A good day in the office

or rather the kitchen. John had to take the car into Tobermory for its MOT and decided to ride the e bike home, it was wild and cold out there. He chose to leave early and was home by 10.00 with cold fingers but feeling jubilant. I suspect we will take the bus in the morning to collect the car.

I did some tidying up in the garden to prove he wasn't the only mad person although it was reasonably mild here. He came home with a couple lemons meaning I could continue making lemon curd - - Delia recipe - the other jar is a spicy red pepper chutney. The mince pies are to J's taste in that the pastry isn't short, he hates shortbread and short pastry. This was made using half fat to flour, freezing a block of butter, grating onto the flour and lightly mixing in with a fork, adding just enough cold water to mix. The idea is to come up with a sort of flaky pastry. It seemed to work.

The main purpose of this blip was to use the manual setting on the camera and look at depth of field. I'm sure I will be highly embarrassed when looking back at these but so interested to see how the shot changes when concentrating on one subject. I had to do this in the kitchen, the day has deteriorated into a dark and wet one.