Huh, no rain. And don't talk to me until I've had my coffee!

 Well, no thunderstorms yesterday, not even any rain to speak of during the night.  Thankfully, it's cooler though, although feeling a bit muggy.

Did a wash load overnight, showers are forecast on and off throughout the day.....as the load is bedding and towels and I can't really get all of them dry on the concertina airer, I've put the bedding in the tumble dryer - it's still on the economy rate until 8 am.  One of the advantages of getting up early.

Another early riser advantage is that I normally get half an hour or so to myself first thing before husband gets up......I'm not human until I've had my first coffee, and I like to wake up slowly and in peace.  This morning, as soon as I opened my bedroom door, husband appeared from his room and the first thing he said was "Do you want some beetroot out of the garden?".  I won't tell you what I said.  He's always bright and breezy (and talkative!!  As he is ALL the time....) the minute he wakes up, whereas I'm like a bear with a sore head.  Another good reason for now having separate bedrooms....

I did a quick freezer inventory, menu plan and shopping list yesterday, a small top up shop is needed this morning.  I've done a list of about 12 main meals that we both like but are easy to cook, I'm going to stick to them in future, rather than pondering what to make every day.  Some of the meals we can have as leftovers for another day - e.g. a roasted gammon and veg one day,  ham egg and chips the next, or ham with bubble & squeak if I have enough leftover veg.  Jacket potatoes will feature once or twice a week too, I'll stick to my routine of buying a bagful and baking a whole trayful at a time.  There won't be a lot of cooking at the moment anyway, we'll be having something-and-salad a lot whilst it's so warm.

The air fryer is brilliant, so quick and easy, it'll be in use a lot, certainly more so than the big oven.  Husband cooked bacon and hash browns in it yesterday, with beans done in the microwave, and fried eggs on the stove top.....he could have put the beans in the AF as well, I should have told him to do that really.  It would have made things easier for him.....he's a bit uncoordinated when it comes to cooking several things at once, he gets flustered and confused about which order to do things in.  He managed though, just about.

He brought in the first lot of new potatoes from the garden yesterday, a big colander full, so there'll be potato salad or boiled new spuds simply served with a knob of butter featuring heavily for the next week.  We now have lots of yellow courgettes too, I like them sliced and lightly fried in olive oil with parsley, salt & pepper, or even grated raw in salads.