Measuring in cubits

[menthe]

Loiseau, wishing you a safe journey home tomorrow.

It's been raining practically non-stop also chez nous.  The flat lands around are under water as we saw last week when we ventured out and I will need to go through them tomorrow to get to the dentist's.  Our village is on a hill top and so is never likely to flood.

Strangely enough for the commemorative service at the monument aus morts yesterday morning, the sun shone fiercely and it was only after everyone had gone home that the rain returned.

The forecasts say that it will rain well into next week and beyond.

[anotherbanana]

Rain, rain, no snow, no postman to chase, Bongo, I am so bored:

 

[Lori]

What a great photo !

[anotherbanana]

From Oiseau,  a natural photographer.

[Loiseau]

I just thought the scene looked like something by a Dutch Old Master!

Thanks for the good travel wishes, folks. Home and dry now, and - astonishingly - emerged from the Shuttle to brilliant sunshine.
The worst part of the trip was getting from chez Wools to my car, parked on higher ground. Although the current along what used to be his road (!) is nothing like as fierce as it has been, it was very scary to wade through for the few moments when one had nothing handy to hang on to.  Luckily we both had stout wellies.

Made some "emergency jam" yesterday, to help use up some of the rapidly thawing freezer contents.

[menthe]

Loiseau, if you'd stood behind the pan, pouring out the contents, it could have been a Vermeer.  Except for the gas stove of course!

[cajal]

Never mind a photo of a pan of stewing raspberries. The thing which grabbed my attention was the shots of the impressive handwriting. A dying trait in today's world.

[Loiseau]

Ah, Cajal...  Those of us of a certain vintage  have had years of practice!

There were no jam-jar covers in the cupboard, but - amazingly - there was a bag of French jam-makers' wax, so i used that to top the jam off.  (Advice to anyone thinking of using this:  only put the jam into jars with traditional sloping sides, such as the Bonne Maman ones; otherwise it's a devil to lift the wax seal out when you want to eat the jam.)

[anotherbanana]

Freezer SAVED, thanks to patience and a hairdryer and some good tips. Phew, didnt want to fork out for a new one.

Some summer fruits now being cooked up before returning to freezer but meat all slung as it was just getting a bit too soft. Pity.

It is what  hides in the bottom of a freezer, forgotten, unloved, bitterly cold!

[Lehaut]

14 hours ago, anotherbanana said:

forgotten, unloved, bitterly cold!

When we had sheep and lambs, our eldest, then 10, asked the butcher (who came to our place to do the deed) for the lambs eyes.  Found those and a much reduced snow ball when we cleared out our big chest freezer some years later!

[menthe]

Wools, it's a pity you couldn't have cooked the meat up in stews and casseroles and then portion them and refreeze?

That would have been my first thought as I'd hate to have to throw out something as expensive as meat.  Shellfish and fish generally would be a different matter.  They don't like sitting around, cooked and refrozen or anthing else.  It's just cook and eat ASAP.

[anotherbanana]

Yes, minteroonie, maybe I did go a bit far but some of the meat was in the bottom of the freezer and had been there a very long time. And there were a lot of fairly anonymous leftovers that certainly should have been drawing an OAP. However, I am stewing up large volumes of gooseberries and other soft fruit which will nearly all return to the freezer within a few hours. And I am finding other ways of storing the food so that I can get a proper rotation.

Plus better labelling of leftovers.

Oiseau took a freezer box of the remaining red fruits and as you have seen had a wonderful jam making session, so some good had already come out of it.

The freezer is much too big for me really but I so hate to see garden fruit go to waste.

[menthe]

Yes, Wools, I have a too big freezer also.  I manage to freeze a lot of bread and cakes (when I make them) and these days a lot of veg like different sorts of beans and semi-cooked legumes because they are both cheaper and more available than the fresh version.

I also tend to freeze soups in the winter as it's an easy go-to something warm to eat in the evenings, our main meal being in the French lunch time.

I had considered getting rid of the freezer but it 's not easy to sell a large American style fridge freezer and I'd only end up with a smaller freezer and paying a goodly price for it.  So not definitely pas la peine.

Would also like a smaller house but, again, the cost of buying something smaller will inevitably mean a smaller property with little change from selling our bigger one.  Sometimes, whatever way you try to work something out, it ends up being a cleft stick.