Surprise visitors

 Had a very unexpected but lovely surprise yesterday morning, about an hour after husband had gone off to his Sheds group.  One of his younger brothers and wife turned up out of the blue - popped in on their way home to the Midlands from their holiday in Devon.  I rang husband (luckily, he'd remembered to take his phone with him, and he even remembered how to answer it! 😂) and he came back home straight away, it's been quite a long time since we last saw his brother and wife....it was at my Mum's funeral I think.  Lovely catch up, they've promised to come down for a holiday near us later in the year.  And husband's sister and niece are coming today, just for the day.....then my sister the end of next week for a week, then the following week our friends from Kent for a Mon-Fri holiday.  We'll be going to the caravan after that, for a week of rest!

Husband made the new house sign at Sheds yesterday, a plain circle, it's thicker and much better quality and he's sanded it lovely and smooth, which will be much better for drawing on, once it's spray painted white and the numeral taken off the old sign and put on this one.

The relatives arrived whilst I was in the middle of some cooking - veggie pasties to be frozen for when sis comes, and a nut roast for me, also cut into portions and frozen.  The pasties have a potato, cheese and chive filling - a tin of potatoes I'd had in the cupboard for ages.  I drained and roughly mashed them, mixing in grated Cheddar, lots of snipped chives from the garden, some dried sage and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard to bring out the flavour of the cheese.  I used a sheet of bought puff pastry, cut into 4 squares, once filled I part baked the pasties in the air fryer.  The nut roast I usually use....well, chopped nuts in!  However, I'd forgotten I'd used them all up a couple of weeks ago and didn't get round to buying any more.  So I used a few spoonfuls of crunchy peanut butter instead.  Each time I make a nut roast it's different - I don't follow a recipe, it's a case of throwing in the bowl whatever I've got and need to use up at the time.  So this time it was half a packet of sage & onion stuffing mix, made up, 2 medium carrots grated, some tomato puree, the last spoonful of red pesto sauce in the jar, a little bit of feta cheese left over, some grated Cheddar and the peanut butter.  Mixed well, put in a well greased loaf pan and baked in the air fryer.  Yum, I do love nut roasts.

The pasties will be a quick dinner for the day sister arrives (her coach arrives at 6 pm), we'll have them with new potatoes and salad.

In the 5 months since we've moved here, we've had so many visitors, seems like hardly a week goes by without some family members or friends ringing and asking if they can come see us.  I know some of them are curious about what a sheltered housing scheme looks like (we're all getting older!), and they've all been pleasantly surprised at how nice it is here.  Of course, here we are much closer to civilisation rather than being completely out in the sticks as we were before.  It is good to have all these visitors, particularly from husband's big family who are very fragmented and have largely lost touch. 

It's our wedding anniversary on Monday, 41 years, where has the time gone?  Rather than doing something on Monday, which is a bank holiday of course, we're going out for lunch on Sunday for a carvery - they do vegetarian options as well as the roast meats.  We do like a roast lunch, and not having to cook it myself is such a treat.