Hello Blog Friends!
Welcome to the month of May!! It is hard to believe that spring has truly arrived, although,Thursday night, we did have a frost ,just so no one gets too excited about warmer weather! It has been an interesting few days; mostly due to my trying to get the hang of the “new to med” laptop, which I received late last week.
Sunday, I was foiled in watching the Eucharist from Canterbury as there was some sort of glitch that prevented the livestream from being aired. The same thing happened to Evensong, which was extremely distressing! As the Pod had ended at 830am, I had plenty of unexpected extra time and after taking 90minutes to clean and reset the pantry shelves (a quarterly task) I thought I would set up the agenda for the May DC committee meeting, coming up on the 6th. That was when to my HORROR, I discovered that the Word app was no longer activated. Ater a certain amount of trial and error (quite a lot of error!) I decided to leave the problem until Monday morning at which time I could reach out to the Diocesan IT consultant.
First thing Monday, an email was sent to Ardyth, the Synod Office Verger, asking if she could please put me in touch with the IT rep. Sadly, it turned out he was on vacation until Wednesday , sigh. Ardyth very kindly offered to send me a fresh password to my Diocesan Microsoft account, but that did not work either so on both Monday and Tuesday, office time was confined to working outside the parameters of “Office” software. When I finally reached the IT person, he explained that my version of Office is for online use only. Given that there are literally over 1000 offline documents, PowerPoints ,spreadsheets etc. that I need to access, daily, both for my CTM work and Diocesan work, this has posed quite a problem , yet to be resolved. Compounded with the fact that I was also unable, until Thursday evening, to connect the office printer to the laptop, it has been a pretty stressful week!
Let me hasten to say that the new laptop is very lovely; it has a larger screen than the previous one, and loads of storage capacity, is super fast and very smooth to work on! I had expected a bumpy “transition” period but had not anticipated some of these larger issues.
Wednesday, for a couple of hours, I was able to take my mind off all this mess as Sarah and her 7year old daughter, Serena, came for a morning “crafting” tutorial and lunch visit. Sarah had approached me a few weeks ago to say that Serena had a day off school, on April 29th, and would I be able to give her some sort of creative tutorial? I agreed and then spent some time trying to decide what sort of activity would be enjoyable for Serena landing, eventually, on… BUNTING!! Regular readers may have noticed that I am pretty obsessed with bunting and it seemed like a good choice. With a suitable amount of prep work, everything ran pretty smoothly and we completed Serena’s bunting, cleared up, set the lunch table and had a tasty meal together, before they headed home. Serena presented me with a beautiful “Thank you” card she had made and a bag of organic, fair trade , Kenyan coffee beans, which her Mum had sourced. All in all a pretty successful visit.
Thursday, Jillian and baby Clara were supposed to be coming for a lunch viist but I received an early text to say the Clara is teething and had a very rough night (so did her Mama ands Papa!!) so we compromised and they came for a shorter coffee visit and an exchange of various parcels. This left me with the rest of the morning and so, after some quite Herculean efforts, I managed to find workarounds by which I could create the Day Camp meeting agenda, AND edit an item in the Diocesan Council minutes, finally hitting the “send” button around 1pm and eating a hurried late lunch! Later that afternoon, I was blessed to have the previous owner of this laptop come by and help sort out some of the difficulties. They were able to get the printer up and working, and even showed me how to use the scanner function, which I had never been able to use before.
Yesterday morning, the scanner was used to upload some income tax documents, that needed to be sent to the accountant, after which this post was begun, completely using the Word Press platform, as I still do not have access to the Office software.
The weather has turn quite cold again, but most mornings I have been able to put in a short stint of garden work and am discovering spring flowers popping up in the beds. It was particularly exciting ,yesterday, to see the fritillaries in bloom, some of my favourite bulbs!
Unfortunately, it is rainy this morning but the Bake is now completed. Pippa and her daughter have arranged to drop in, as they have asked me to alter Seren’s Prom dress. So, while waiting for their arrival it seems like a good time to finish this post. One night this week , I adapted this recipe, which I hope you will try. Serve the curry with fresh Chapati, yum!!
Red Lentil & Sweet Potato Curry
- 3Tbsps olive oil
- 1lb sweet potatoe, peeled and cut into ¾” cubes
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 1 Tbsp curry powder
- 1 Tbsp grated garlic
- 1″ piece fresh ginger, grated
- 2 tsps chili flakes
- 1tsp ground turmeric
- 1cup red lentils, rinsed
- 4cups vegetable broth
- 1tsp sea salt
- 1tin full-fat coconut milk
- 1 cup frozen peas
- Lime, juice and fresh cilantro leaves, for serving
In a Dutch oven, heat 2Tbsps oil and brown the sweet potatoes. Transfer to a bowl ,add the remaining oil, onions, garlic and spices. Cook for a few minutes, until the onion is softened and the spices are fragrant. Add the lentils, broth and salt. Stir well then add the sweet potatoes and simmer for 20 minutes, until the lentils are cooked. Stir in the coconut milk and continue simmering, gently, for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in the peas. Serve in bowls adding lime juice and cilantro, to taste. Serves 4-6.