About time too! Problem sorted, and some wartime cooking

 So that arrogant entitled nasty piece of work and waste of space has been arrested - and released, oh well.  All I will say is it's about bloody time.  I just feel so much compassion for the King - however irritated and angry he must feel, the man is still his brother, he must be so conflicted.

Anyway, moving on.....

Yesterday I was stood outside for an hour with my next door neighbours and the surveyor from our Landlords, discussing the fence issue.  It was blimmin freezing!  Even though Kath and I had jackets and scarves on, we were both shivering with cold....the men didn't seem to be affected much, hardier than us weak females I guess!  I don't know what the temperature actually was, must have been around 0 deg - I know that's not really cold like it is in some countries where some of my readers live....Canada eg....but for us southern English softies it felt like we were in the Arctic.  Once back indoors it took half an hour sitting with a fleece blanket on my lap and my hands wrapped round a hot mug of coffee before I started to warm up.

So, the surveyor.....he went in the neighbours' garden (they were out at the time and there's no gate there anyway, just an open driveway), had a good look round and took loads of photos.  He then came back round to us and looked at both our fences from our gardens, asked lots of questions and listened carefully to us.  My neighbours had lots of photos they'd taken themselves over the past few months, the surveyor was interested to see them and actually took them away with him.  He agreed that the neighbour is in the wrong and has no right to damage or remove property that doesn't belong to him, which he already has done.  The surveyor said he and the legal team are now on the case and they will write to the neighbour, telling him to immediately cease removing our Landlord's property (the fences) and to reinstate the part of the fencing he has already removed.  The surveyor told us not to worry ourselves any further about it and not to get involved or engage with the neighbour, just leave it in their capable hands and they will deal with it all.  He's given me his personal work email address and said to get in touch straight away if the neighbour tries anything else, he said he'll deal with it immediately.  So that's it, I've removed it from the basketful of worries in my mind, it's no longer my problem.  I didn't really want to get involved in the first place, it was my next door neighbours who were more involved and kept pushing for me to become involved too.  At that time though, it didn't really have any impact on us.....until it did and I could no longer ignore it.  Anyway, job done.

This week I've cooked a couple of wartime-type meals, we enjoyed both.  The first was a bacon and onion rolypoly thing.....I made some suet pastry, rolled it out thickly to a small rectangle and topped it with a small amount of chopped smoked bacon and some sliced onions and a leek, all of which I'd gently fried first.  I rolled it up like a Swiss roll, cut it into slices and baked in the Ninja.  We had it with green veg and some parsley sauce.  I think I overbaked the slices by a couple of minutes, the pastry was a bit crunchy....I expect the roll would have been steamed during the war years which would have made the pastry nice and soft.  Next time I'll put the slices in a dish with a lid (I have an enamel lidded baking tin), the lid should help it to steam and stay softer.

The other thing we had yesterday, it's called Mudajara, it's a Middle Eastern dish that would have been eaten by European and American troops stationed in the Middle East during the war.  It's basically rice and brown lentils cooked in stock or water, and a pile of thinly sliced onions fried with warm spices and added to the rice/lentils.  The recipe said white rice and brown lentils - I used brown basmati rice and puy lentils, as that's what I had - I never use white rice anyway.  The recipe calls for the onions to be fried until crisp - I just gently cooked them in olive oil and butter till soft, I didn't fancy them crisp.  I used cumin, chilli powder and powdered ginger, I found the dish also needed a good sprinkling of salt.  I had it as is, husband had a couple of roast chicken thighs with his.  It would be nice with frozen peas added next time I think, and maybe even some sultanas or chopped dried apricots.

As I said before, the trouble with a lot of these wartime recipes is that they're quite carby, which doesn't really suit my guts, joints or diabetes.  I suppose the answer is just not to eat them too often, maybe just once or twice a week.

Thankfully, it's much warmer today, although showers again along with brief bits of sun.  Next week is forecast to be warmer still - and a bit drier, yay!  We'll get the garden work done soon....hopefully.