A Quickish Fish Dinner
Been baking luscious cakes and biscuits and need something easy to make and digest for dinner? This fish dinner is quick and easy to prepare. Then simply put everything in the oven and let it cook. I’ve added pan fried zucchini because it was just picked and looked so fresh and green.
Place 180gm white fish fillets per person in an oiled baking dish and squeeze two lemons or limes over. I was preparing dinner for two people.
To get the maximum juice from your citrus, microwave them for 30 seconds, let them cool slightly then cut and squeeze. Lots of juice. And your hands will smell so good, especially after handling the fish.
Then, for two people, prepare three carrots and two potatoes, cut to equal sizes and place into an oiled roasting dish. Drizzle some more olive oil, then add sea salt. Microwave for 5 minutes. Meanwhile prepare ten Brussel’s sprouts and place in an oiled dish, too. Drizzle with more olive oil.
Heat the oven to 200C. Sprinkle finely chopped rosemary over the microwaved carrots and potatoes and put them in the oven. Twenty minutes later add the Brussel’s sprouts and five minutes after that, add the fish, putting it on the lower shelf. Fifteen minutes more and it’s all done!
While everything was roasting, I flash fried a sliced zucchini. It was so fresh and crisp I just sliced it and fried it and served the slices with everything else. I thought the zucchini was delicious…..my husband was not so thrilled.
Cleaning A Baking Tray
So many hints online at the moment about the magic cleaning powers of dishwasher tablets. Our baking tray was pretty grim so I decided to try and clean it with one of the tablets.
So, wearing rubber gloves I rubbed the moistened partially unwrapped tablet on the wet baking tray as instructed online and then I rubbed some more and finally scrubbed it. Total failure.
Not much difference at this point.
Then I tried cloudy ammonia, equal fail. Finally tried a cream cleanser. Scrubbed and scrubbed. Not very impressive.
So, if a dishwasher tablet is supposed to be so good, what if I put it in the dishwasher? No change at all. This tray is such a useful size I don’t want to discard it, but it is pretty awful. Any hints, please?
Renovating Worn Coasters
These once mismatched coasters live on a side table in our family room. We have sets of coasters but these two don’t belong to any of them. They are in constant use. My mother likes to sit in the chair next to the table they are on and uses one of them for her coffee cup. The other one has always sat under a vase. They were worn and the surface on one was no longer smooth. Time for a renovation.
Sanded the surface of both coasters until they were smooth.
Glued the images on the old coasters after I’d traced around them and cut carefully. I used a standard glue stick. Smoothed the images using my fingers to work from the centre out. I sourced both pictures from Dream Factory, a wonderfully inspirational site. https://bydreamsfactory.com
Trimmed around the edges with a sharp craft knife.
The white of the photocopy paper looked too stark, so I made a bowl of tea and dipped both coasters, image side down, to stain them.
Prefer the darker, older look after the tea bath!
Originally I dabbed little touches of gold around the edges but I didn’t like how that looked when they were in place, so I used a black Sharpie to create a new border. Then I coated both coasters in Gel Medium (Mod Podge) and let them dry. Really happy with how they look now and have already used them.
Other Occupations
Also made rye sourdough. The weather is a little cooler, in fact we have had some rain, so it was a drier dough than usual. Tastes very good.
Commemorated the ANZAC day Dawn Service on our driveway at 6AM. After a Missing Man formation ( one plane missing) of Tiger Moths flew over, we heard the bugler play the Last Post. This was followed by a minutes silence and then we heard the Reveille. After this we joined some neighbours on their driveway for coffee. Observed social distancing. A very memorable and moving morning, so different from the service we usually attend.
Poppies are a significant symbol on ANZAC Day and Remembrance Day (11th November) as the Flanders poppy was amongst the first plants to spring up on the devastated battlefields in northern France and Belgium . It is thought that the churning of the soil by the soldiers and their horses encouraged amazing fields of the poppies, never seen before.
We had a new car delivered yesterday. It was very strange learning the special features of the car and observing social distancing! I’ve had my previous car since 2007 so things have changed. Alot. I might have to read the instruction book!
Reading Min Kym’s autobiographical book, GONE. A Korean child prodigy, her life is turned upside down when her 1696 Stradivarious violin is stolen. Only just begun but it has very impressive reviews.
I’ve had an email from the (closed) library saying I could nominate five books or DVDs or indicate a particular genre of books I’d like and they will deliver them. Wonderful idea!
Did you know The World Wide Web (www) was first launched into the public domain by scientist Tim Berners-Lee on 30th April, 1989? Hard to remember life without the instant access provided by the World Wide Web.