Rain rain and rain !

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Well, not much has been happening really. The weather has been awful, and when I returned home last night from work, the wind was really bad and was blowing on to the side of the boat rather than up the back end like it usually does in this mooring spot.

The boat was moving around quite a bit and the rain was really heavy all night and early this morning.

Despite us keeping the stove in all night now as well, it felt a little chilly during the early hours of the morning and once or twice I got up to put extra coal on the stove.

I'm a little worried as the forecast for next Saturday evening shows a temperature of -6 degrees! Last year was our first winter on the boat and we were treated well as temperatures weren't that bad, but even then we had to have an electric heater for the back cabin, something we won't be able to use this year now we're not on shoreline electric.

The other day we finally got the additional glass shelf for the cabinet we had made so that's all finished now and looking good :



Today did brighten up over lunch and me and P went into the village for a coffee and a teacake :) and to do some food shopping. P left me do that while he went off to work though!
I made a simple dinner tonight , just pasta and pesto using a long time pesto recipe:

Ingredients:
- 25g/1oz parmesan or any mature cheddar if you have no
Parmesan
-1 garlic clove or a small blob of garlic paste
-60g/2oz fresh basil, this is a good two handfuls.
- 50ml/2fl oz extra virgin olive oil
- 50g/2oz toasted pine nuts
- Salt and pepper to taste

Method:
Basically, I have a mini chopper , really cheap from Argos. I think it cost around a tender and its great for preparing things like this. Put all the ingredients in like so...

...and blitz...


Cook some pasta and stir though the drained pasta, adding a little of the pasta water so that it turns the pesto into a creamy like sauce.

I served mine with a little extra cheese and some oven roasted cherry tomatoes.... and a glass of red wine of course! (Can you spot the cork in the picture below !?)



If you need to do it by hand, chop the basil and grate the cheese and pound everything together in a pestle and mortar.

I'm going to switch off now, as the leisure batteries are at 67%!!

Grrrrr!

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