Tag Archives: courgette lentil curry

Tuesday 28th April 2015 – I STARTED BACK …

… to work again today. And I felt a little better, especially as the weather wwas better. Mind you, during the night the temperature outside had dropped to 2.5°C and so I’m back in a jumper.

I’ve finished off cutting and shaping the shelf that will be the top of the beichstuhl – the composting toilet. The lids have been cut out and the “porthole” cut into the larger lid.

I’ve had to put quite a large amount of reinforcement under the lids as the pine isn’t as strong as I would like it to be. Having saved the offcuts from the heavy floorboards that I used as the under-layer in the shower room, I had a good supply of decent reinforcement too.

The hinges were not a success though. This is due mainly to the thin-ness of the pine shelving. Discreet, hidden shelving is not really possible and so I’m going to have to go for intrusive tee-hinges, which is something of a let-down.

However, a couple of things that I wish is that –
1) I wish that I would stop cutting bits off the top of my old Workmate every time I wield the circular saw.
2) whenever I cut myself with a tool, I wouldn’t bleed all over the clean pine shelving.

For tea, I made a courgette and lentil curry – enough for four days. And it took longer than planned because I had to dismantle the cooker. It seems that there was something growing in one of the jets. It’s amazing at just how much better the gas is burning now. It must have been blocking itself up for a couple of years.

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Thursday 30th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I was going to do today.

I was up early and spent a few hours on the computer as usual, but it was after that that it all started to go wrong

Finding a fully-charged battery for the Hitachi SDS drill was the first issue that I had, and once I’d managed that, then drilling the brick pillars has caused some of the bricks to split. That’s annoying to say the least.

But anyway the window frames are fitted and that’s something. Next plan was to fit the fascia boards to the end of the chevrons on the lean-to,

However, in an astounding achievement the type of which surely only I can be capable, it seems that having cut the wood to the right length, I somehow have managed to discard the piece that I want and I’ve painted the off-cut instead.

As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”

I didn’t get much done after lunch as the phone rang. The handbrake on Marianne’s son’s car has ceased to function and so could I look at it.

He brought it round and I dismantled the rear end (brake drums held on by the wheel bearings, how I hate that!) to find that the auto adjusters aren’t working. So no surprise as the handbrake needs 12 clicks to work.

I reset the adjusters but that didn’t do much so crawling underneath the car, it turns out that the cable adjuster (there’s one of them too) has slipped out of position. I reset that and now the brakes will stop that little Twingo on a sixpence.

But that cable is totally weird. Most cars have one single cable and there’s a slider at the centre of tha cable that’s attached to the handbrake arm so that the brakes pull evenly, and when you work the manual adjuster, the adjuster works on both brakes.

But not the Twingo.

There’s no slider at all but just a single fitting on the end of the handbrake arm, and two cables, one for each rear brake on each side.

Consequently although moving the manual adjuster will tighten up the cable, it doesn’t equalise the brakes. If one side is lack, then tightening up the cable adjuster will over-tighten the good side.

It took us ages therefore to adjust the brakes correctly, setting up the automatic adjusters individually by trial and error until they were equal, and then tightening up the cable adjuster.

And then of course we had the issue of refitting the hubs and bearings, and torquing up the nuts. That’s something I really hate doing.

Back on the lean-to afterwards (just as well I finished the car as we had a torrential storm straight afterwards), I’ve fitted one window pane (one of them survived having a ladder thrown on it) and the second one is ready to cut.

But by this time, it was 19:00 and I was well fed up, so I called it a day.

And tea tonight? Courgette and lentil curry. You can see that things are going berserk in the garden right now.

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Thursday 13th October – Just for a change …

… nothing happened today that was any different than the last few days.

I managed an early start for once and spent the morning on the computer. I have all of the Canada photos properly labelled and in some sort of order and so I’ve been sorting out my notes and putting the correct notes with the correct photos.

And that’s not as easy as you might think either. I’m … errr… somewhat disorganised. Anyway I’ve managed over half of that and if things go according to plan I can finish that tomorrow morning.

rebuilding stone wall collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I was back up the wall again and much of the time spent there was sorting stones so that I can find the best ones to use in the corner. That’s not easy either.

But anyway,I’ve now put the stones in right up to where the beam is going to go,and now I just need to find two stones for the side of the pillar. Once that is done and they are in place I can infill with stones and concrete and then drop the beam in place.

And when the beam is in place I can fill in the back wall behind it. That’s tomorrow’s work anyway.

And you can tell how carried away I was – it was well after 19:00 when I knocked off and that’s not like me at all, is it?

I’ve also finished the last of Tuesday’s courgette and lentil curry. That was a shame as I had been quite enjoying that. It’s fun to think of 1001 ways to use up a Combraiiles Courgette.

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Tuesday 24th August 2010 – Just look at the size of this!

monster courgette les guis virlet puy de dome franceNever mind the Winter of our Discount Tents, this is the Summer of the Monster Courgettes. This one has burst into life from being a cigar-shaped nonentity, is just a few days. Now it’s 44cms. I’ve got a luvverly bunch of coconuts indeed.

It’s so big that I only cooked half of it tonight, and with the spinach (out of the garden), carrots (ditto), beans (ditto) and chili (ditto) together with sone onions, lentils and garlic I made a huge mega-curry and there is enough to last for three days.

As well as the other half-courgette of course, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with that.

The pan was full to overflowing but as most of the courgette is nothing but water it soon simmers down to a reasonably size. And it was absolutely delicious.

Mind you, I’ll be eating courgettes until they come out of my ears. It’s the one thing that seems to do well here.

It was raining when I woke up and so after I let Terry and Simon into Lieneke’s house I carried on here – but not outside. The composting toilet will have to wait.

wardrobe back wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat I did instead was to carry on working in the bedroom – the first time for about three months I reckon. And I now have the back wall finished as well as one of the sides of the fitted wardrobe that I’m building. That’s what is going down the far side just there.

I can’t do the other side of the wardrobe as it’s out of there that the electric wiring is coming and I need to work out how I’m going to fit it. But it’s nice to see progress all the same.

The weather brightened up this afternoon and so I reckoned on a shower, but the temperature has plummeted. 19°C it was outside, and the water temp was only 31°C. But not to worry – I tipped a kettle-full of boiling water into the solar tank. That took the temperature up to … errr ….45°C so a half-kettle of cold water took it back down to 42°C and that was my shower sorted. Delicious! Mind you,  won’t have to boil up water much longer as Simon gave me the boiler out of his van. It’s only 2.5 litres by the way but it will go nicely in the garage running off the excess charge over there. I’ve made a note of the maker and I’m going to see if they can do me a 50-litre one. That would be progress.

But the temperature is still falling, and with a clear sky, full moon and no clouds at all, it seems that the weather has turned (already!) and autumn is just around the corner. That’s depressing.

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Monday 16th August 2010 – We start off today …

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome france… with a couple of photos that features the inside of the roof, by way of a change.

Don’t mind the loose lath that is on top of the wall just there – we will be moving that in due course. But the rest of it looks pretty impressive.

You’ll also notice the black damp-proof membrane up there. That’s to stop the snow drifting in underneath the tiles and falling inside, something that’s a real problem around here in winter.

roofing inside lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see that we have extended the walls by mounting breeze blocks all the way up and we’ve put chevrons on there.

You will also notice the cross-beam that we fitted to the wall of the house the other day. The chevrons are supported on that. The cross-beam goes all the way across the wall of the house and it’s a good job that there were three of us to lift it as I remember it being flaming heavy.

roofing tiles lean-to lieneke les guis virlet puy de dome franceFrom the outside, however, it looks even more impressive. We had quite a few tiles left over from when we did the roof of the house and so we nailed the laths to the chevrons and popped the tiles onto the roof of the lean-to.

We didn’t have quite enough as you can see if you look at the top left-hand corner, and so we’ll have to go and pick up some more tomorrow. But we aren’t ‘arf cracking on with the job and we can be proud of this.

So my day has been spent in non-stop cement mixing – load after load after load, with a slight break to go to the quarry for more sand. So I’ve mixed a ton and a half of sand since the other day. No wonder I’m exhausted.

And so when we knocked off I went round the garden, weeded the carrot patch, pulled up some carrots, beans, spinach and a courgette, and sowed some lettuce and parsnips.

After crashing out I made tea – lentil courgette and split pea curry, with carrots spinach and beans. All followed by fresh strawberries. And it was gorgeous.

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Thursday 29th July 2010 – Today was exciting.

courgette strawberry les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis evening I picked the first courgette out of the garden and made myself a delicious courgette and lentil curry. It was magnificent, and furthermore there’s enough left over – and stored in the fridge – for 2 more days

I also went in search of strawberries as there were quite a few when I last looked, but it seems that mildew has done for most of those and there were only two left. And they were delicious too.

roofing edging tiles les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning we were back on the roof. One side is finished, complete with edging tiles all in place and properly cemented in.

We did however have a problem – the roofing tiles are 40cm so I dunno what possessed someone to buy 43cm edging tiles. Because of that, they don’t fit properly!

Still, we managed to get them to look very nice by using an aluminium straight-edge and an angle-grinder but it would have looked nicer with 40cm edgings.

kwikstage scaffolding les guis virlet puy de dome franceNow that we’ve done all of that, this afternoon we took down the scaffolding and put it up around the other side of the house. But that is on a slope and, like the Irish expedition to climb Mount Everest, we ran out of scaffolding.

We’ll have to finish off the other side of the edging tomorrow, and then re-position all of this scaffolding and then start to strip the roof.

roof collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter Terry left I went home and did something else that I was meaning to do for quite a while – years in fact. Keen readers of these outpourings in one of their many previous forms (it was after the Xoom blog but before the Yahoo one – might have been the Bravenet one) will remember that back in 2002 I was repairing a collapsed outbuilding when I collapsed, and it was never finished. But that is where the composting toilet is and where the washroom will be and I’m fed up of being rained upon. I can’t refit the roof just yet but I can put in the floor at the first floor level so I made a start on that. At least I won’t get p155ed on now when I’m riding the porcelain horse.

But, quite strangely, I’ve been hearing some bizarre noises in the verandah just recently and as I was coming back from this roof I heard a similar noise coming from the barn. I stuck my head inside just in time to see a flaming huge hedgehog drag a plastic bag full of wire rope off into one of the deepest and darkest recesses.

What is all that about?

The amount of stuff that I can’t find in that barn that I know full well is there – there’s probably a group of hedgehogs about to open a hardware store somewhere in the vicinity. I bet they will be doing deliveries too – using a SatNav that they will have acquired from somewhere.

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