State of Alarm - Day sixteen

After a short spell of rain this morning the sun appeared, and the breeze blowing the clouds away was noticeably warmer than at any time since I've been here - a breath of spring at last. I was glad to capture a couple of shots of an almost white butterfly feeding on white flower similar to a big Michaelmas Daisy.

As I'm almost out of home made bitter orange marmalade, with no chance of acquiring any, and most reluctant to settle for the bland shop bought kind, I resolved to make some lemon marmalade with fruit from the tree outside the front door. Sarah sent me the recipe, a useful reminder of scale and proportion of quantities, then I collected five smallish lemons from the tree, and realised there was no kitchen weighing scales to be found. 

I improvised a balance using a pack of three small tins of tuna, which I think was just about the same weight as the lemons, just 350 grams. There was a kilo of white sugar in the cupboard, and I used roughly the same weight of sugar, not being all that keen on really sweet marmalade anyway. It probably wouldn't keep as long as a standard batch, but then it wouldn't last as long either. 

While I was doing my daily circuit walk after lunch, Clare called. We remembered making  marmalade with ignored  lemons dropping off the neighbour's tree during a locum spell in Nerja. I ad libbed a recipe for one batch, and Clare cooked some properly by the book! Then we both went into our respective kitchens to cook. Clare was baking biscuits, and I cut up and cooked the lemons while we chatted. It was most enjoyable, and free of the usual pressures and conflicts which arise if two people with different cooking styles are occupying the same work space. As well as praying on line together, it occurred to me that people may want to try cooking at the same time and chatting on-line as they do so. 

My marmalade trial was quite encouraging but yielded just one full standard jam jar and a third of a second smaller jar - call it proof of concept. I can scale up and make more another time.

This evening, with my exercise and cooking done, I thought I'd join the evening's prayer vigil on Zoom. Just as I was about to start the app, the house phone rang. Earlier, a local church member had rung on the landline so I thought I'd better answer it just in case. It was my 91 year old sister calling to check me out from Weston super Mare, where she lives, housebound on her own, unable to be taken out anywhere at the moment, relying on home deliveries of food ordered on-line by daughter Nicky from a hundred miles away. It was lovely to hear from her. We last spoke on her birthday, the day I arrived in Ibiza. That was a lovely surprise. Try again to join the vigil tomorrow.

Time to start work on preparing next Sunday now, and Holy Week beyond that. My first month away from home has slipped by very quickly.