Smiley

Simply had to steal my daughter's photos taken on a day trip to Enniscrone to pick up son Elliot from his long scout camp weekend. These scenes encompass the two most important things I miss: Family and Sea.

The collage doesn't need much explanation - sea and sand as far as the eye can see, ice cream, swimming, dogs having such a great time that even Flora managed a good grin for the Smiley.

Now don't get me wrong. I love it here in Bavaria, can't imagine that I would ever freely leave and now that I have German citizenship, not even Brexit can force me. In fact, there is so much wonderful countryside around here that it is frustrating to now be too old and decrepit to explore more of it. But in a message exchange with my son in England this evening, perhaps we can organise a  day or two in autumn where we can get into the Alps, maybe indeed to the Bavarian colony of South Tyrol in Italy. (Yes, South Tyrol is in Italy and around 70% German/Austrian/Bavarian speaking). The area is very well known for its "Törggelen" in Autumn, whereby one does some walking (biking) during the day and visits various wineries to try the new wine accompanied by hearty "snacks" of cheese and smoked meats, roasted chesnuts and more. The aim is to find your hotel bed before you collapse. The South Tyrol border on the Brenner Pass is less than 125 miles 200 km from Munich.

An interesting event happened this evening which goes to illustrate how close I live to so many wonderful places. Shortly before 7:00 pm 19:00 checked my mobile phone App to see what the weather was doing in the region after another very hot day. In the extra photo, another collage, you can see on the left the thunderstorm activity all to the south of us over the Alps and into Italy, Switzerland. The radio news minutes later said no risk for us. So I took my last dip of the day in the pool, showered and then went out to water the greenhouse and vegetable garden. Evenings aren't a great time to water but it's now so dry, I am feeling sorry for the slugs and snails. Afterall there is enough for all of us.

Having finished, left the still sun-drenched garden and went indoors to think about what to cook and came up with a plan which included some fresh dill. Went back out and was greeted by black threatening clouds. The storms had "broken out" of the Alps and were heading north. The second part of the collage shows the updated storm position.

And indeed shortly afterwards it did rain but only a little and would not have been enough to properly water the garden. But every bit helps. A few flashes of lightning and claps of thunder were heard in the background as I made the evening meal.

Started with a cold but "Oh-Ho" Gazpacho soup I had prepared in the morning and had chilled all day in the fridge. Where the Oh-Ho came from remains a mystery but it was good. I had tried it first and added a dollop of Greek Yoghurt hoping it would take out some of the heat! Another extra photo collage shows it - the shine on the soup looks like tomato seeds but I had both de-skinned and de-seeded them first. Discovered a new much quicker way to de-seed them today thanks to my culinary partner Delia Smith - simply cut the de-skinned tomatoes at right angles to the stalk and squeeze out the juice and seeds with your hand. A lot quicker than my previous cut through the stalk and scooping out method.

There then followed fried fish fingers to celebrate the Irish family day out at the seaside, accompanied by Indo-Irish mash potatoes with a good portion of turmeric (hence dark yellow colour) the last wedge of my bean flan and topped off by a hot, semi-chunky, cucumber dill sauce that I have never tried and which was delicious. Amazing how despite being sauteed in butter and steamed very gently for 10 minutes before getting heated up with creme fraiche that the de-skinned and de-seeded cucumbers remained so firm. Have to say the sauce was an eye-opener and tasted really good with the fish and mash.

Life can be so wonderful at times despite the Trumps of this world....