Comments (2) 
Here are the results:
Comment number 28 – that’s Isabel! Congratulations Isabel!
Comment number 45 – that’s Weesie Malarkey! Congratulations!
I have just e-mailed you both – be sure to e-mail your addresses so that I can get these in the post to you.
Thanks for playing y’all 
Hi all, thanks again for all the good wishes and for thinking about Mum and Dad whilst we chug on through.
Mum has been doing really, really well. Both surgical sites are healing well and she’s being the poster girl for post-operative exercises. Three times a day she has to wave her arms around in the air. Now that she’s fully in her stride with them, I’m considering sending her to various airports in the area. I feel she may have found another niche.
There is one fly in her Chardonnay, however.
Clue one:
Clue Two:
No? OK. She has a Seroma under her left arm. Muh Muh Muh My seroma!
A seroma is a large swelling that is full of serous fluid – the same fluid that’s in a blister, for example. Except it’s much bigger than a blister, it’s, well, really big actually.
Maybe not quite as big as SJP’s clutch or the two gentlemen’s bagpipes, but you take my point. Were it not for the fluid, (erm and the discomfort and weirdness) it would be a convenient storage area. I mean, I really struggled to find an armband thing to hold my MP3 player when I go running. I had no idea that the body could grow this type of thing so effectively – so relentlessly. I mean, really, stop growing already!
Anyway, she goes back for the pathology results on the lymph nodes tomorrow and they’ll look at it again then (she’s had it drained once already – that was a fun way to pass an hour).
In order not to be excluded,
the ginger high-maintenance dog has developed a limp.
She’ll be fine – lots of rest and hugely expensive anti-inflammatory medication should do the trick. Vet’s bills are never less than £50 eh? For a limp, I tell you. She nearly developed a limp on the other side as I staggered backwards when Mother paid the bill. She dodged just in time. The dog; not Mum.
Dad isn’t much better. He’s done two rounds of antibiotics and steroids to no avail. I blame witchcraft and curses, myself,
Oh, my mistake, it isn’t witchcraft and curses. (It isn’t TB either – they’re trying to identify the specific infection. this would be much easier if they didn’t lose the sample.). He’s horribly hoarse as well now, from all the coughing, so it’s mugs of honey and lemon for him all the way. The Pulmonary nurses are keeping in touch with him, so that’s great.
That’s it so far. Back for the results tomorrow – don’t know whether they’ll tell us more about when the radiotherapy starts, just keeping our fingers crossed that those lymph nodes are clear.
No cakes yet – I nearly made a banana cake today, but ran out of time. Maybe tomorrow
Things are a bit hectic here and will be for a while, so my posts may be sporadic at best. I shall explain.
My Mum:
goes into hospital tomorrow to have a malignant breast lump and a couple of lymph nodes for good measure, removed (not the lamb – the lamb was NOT attached) and once she’s healed, will have three weeks of daily radiotherapy. Her BFF, Brenda, has taken her over to the breast care unit today to have a wire placed into the tumour ready for surgery tomorrow.
So I got this lovely e-mail from Yasir on behalf of the lovely people of Dr Oetker and they were sweet enough to send me some Dr Oetker goodies to try out.
Chocolate Regal Ice , Draw and Dip Egg Decorating Kit, Chocolate Hearts, Citrus flavour Sprinkles, Soft Sugar Pearls and Cake Release Spray (I think this is a new product, so I’ll link to it once I can find one )
You can find more information on Dr. Oetker products via their Facebook page. Check me out there too, whilst you’re at it 
The next blog post will show you the lovely looking – and tasting – Chocolate Hearts. What a difference a little decoration makes…
As promised in my initial Fish Fight post, some more local fish caught by my clever husband to showcase the local, sustainable fish available to us here in the UK.
Dear little Dabs. They are little, by the way, so either have one each for lunch with bread or be sure to have it with a filling side for dinner. You could easily eat two… Beautifully delicate, soft, lightly flavoured flesh and it cooked in six minutes – that’s going to be a winner every time. If you like Sole (I have a sole one-liner that I always perform when anyone mentions sole – do ask if you wish me to share) you’ll LOVE Dab.
Have you tried Dab?
As my husband is an avid sea angler and has his own blog, we are lucky enough to eat fish that he has caught with his own fair hands. Well, I say with his hands… there are poles and hooks and bait involved too, but you get my drift.
This does spoil you a bit when it comes to eating fish. I am used to eating fish no more than 24hrs after it has been caught. I know that it is a good size, was caught fair and square and was despatched quickly and humanely. More to the point, it tastes fantastic because it hasn’t been travelling around the country in a refrigerated van for a week. This is lucky, I know this.
As DH fishes, fish issues are a bigger feature in my life than I ever intended them to be. I saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Fish Fight programmes advertised and we watched them last week. Uncomfortable viewing indeed and a message that needs to be shared.
The main points are:
1. When species quotas are reached and those specific fish are subsequently caught as by-catch, they have to be discarded. They are thrown, dead, back into the sea because it is against the law to land them. This accounts for around half of the total catch. There isn’t an easy solution to this; many of the target species inhabit similar grounds and are inevitably caught. There has to be a better way than this.
2. Tuna that claims to be environmentally friendly and dolphin friendly may not necessarily be so. The only way to be sure is to only buy pole and line caught tuna from Sainsburys, Marks and Spencer or Waitrose. If it doesn’t specify this, then it’s caught by purse-seine trawler method. Buy what you like, but be aware that purse-seine trawling has a by-catch. That by-catch is dolphin, shark and turtle. All dead.
3. Farmed Salmon. Their feed includes wild fish. 3kg of wild fish are hoovered up to contribute to the feed for each 1kg of farmed salmon. That’s insane. If you eat farmed salmon, try to buy organic farmed salmon because the feed is comprised of trimmings from fish that has been processed for food, thus has a lower impact on the wild fish stocks.
4. Vary the fish you eat. Everyone eats Cod, Haddock and Tuna. This is madness! There is a huge variety of local fish that can be eaten – spread your wings and try other fish.
Visit Hugh’s Fish Fight for full details about the campaign and how to get involved.
—
So, with my soapbox nudged to one side, let me encourage you to eat the humble mackerel. It is so good to eat and very easy to prepare.
Learn how to fillet and remove the pin bones from mackerel
Here’s a lovely recipe for marinated and grilled mackerel
If you want an uber quick meal, just fry the mackerel fillets
I’ll be blogging about other fish dishes as we have them, but in the meantime, be adventurous and pester your supermarket, fishmonger and chippy for locally caught fish other than cod and haddock! Tight lines!
A passion for baking.
Thousands of recipes in the cookbooks that fill 3 shelves of our bookcase.
A whole internet-full of recipes from all over the world.
A larder filled with interesting ingredients.
A freezer, well actually, no. The freezer seems to have lots of fish in it and some freezer-burnt ribs, but nothing amazing, so forget the freezer.
But I have all the basics.
So what am I going to make this evening? Nothing. I’m just not feeling any of the recipes.
What I really want is a great big bag of Maltesers and for NCIS and True Blood to be back on. And The Sopranos.
But mostly, I want a big bag of Maltesers. Have I got any? No.
Bugger.
I really fancy some Maltesers. Or those little KitKat Kubes that disappeared as quickly as they arrived. (Why did they stop making them?)
That’s all. Just wanted to put that out there. Blackberry Curd to follow, as promised.
… walked into a pub.
Actually, they attached themselves to my husbands fishing line. How perfectly marvellous of them!
said the Jack Russell bitch to the Mastiff dog.
Apart from that universal truth, we have technologicalityishness problems with our PC. I was informed that there were many facets to the problem – indeed he began not only to list, but to explain them – but I have happily accepted the more layman’s explanation that ‘the computer is trying to die’.
What does that mean for us, dear blog-reading-foodies? Well, I have crept on here between my beloved’s swearing/problem solving sessions and as you can see, am typing this to you with little difficulty.
In fact, I have a few recipes to share and have drafted the prose, finalised the format of the recipes. There is one little problem though. Photos.
For some reason, known only to itself, the computer has taken against the hub/camera card reader with an anger so vehement that it’s shocking. It doesn’t quite reach the point of the blue screen of death, but the hatred that spews forth with each dismissive message is palpable. In true windows style, the explanations are different every time:
‘This device is not working’
‘Windows does not recognise this device’
*freeze*
< nothing happening
‘please insert disc’ (that one earned a wtf? from my husband)
and other silly things.
So the answer is to re-load the camera software and put the lead straight into the camera to enjoy the agony that is the very slow uploading of photos to computer. And that is what we shall do.
As soon as we can find the lead.
You don’t even want to KNOW what happened when he tried to save something to a CD.
In short, bear with us. The PC’s acting up. Shall we have a sing-a-long whilst we wait? Shall we daydream about what we could eat right now, this second if it were to magically appear in front of us?
I’ll start. I wish for grilled lobster and chewy bread. Next?
Calling readers of Cream Until Fluffy.
We found a little widget that allows you to rate the tastiness of each post by clicking on the amount of stars that you feel the post is worthy of. It displays at the end of each snippet on the front page and then again at the very bottom of each complete article, so click away!
Theme adapted from Panorama theme by Themocracy
