Cooking up a Storm

As I mentioned in my previous post, as I tried to watch the Natural History documentary last night my viewing was interrupted by the telephone. I had just let it ring and let the answering service pick it up. But as soon as it stopped ringing then it started again. By the time I had pursued the cat to vacate my lap and allow me up it was ringing for the fourth time. Therefore, I thought it must be something urgent. It turned out to be the Estate owner where I was caught hanging around (Literally) at the weekend. He was still rather miffed that I firstly had not removed my commentary on the incident from cyberspace and he was still insisting that I had no claim against him. When I told him that I was going to see a solicitor today, well his whole manner changed from one of a bully to being very chastened. I hope he remains that way when he gets the letter from my solicitor.

It was not because of that incident that I had booked an appointment to see him, but I mentioned it to him while I was there as I strongly suspect that I have not been given the truth regarding what was going on and I am wondering why everyone seems in denial that they were at fault. It has lead to my solicitor asking me to do the strangest thing I have ever had to do, and take pictures of my genital area. No I will not be posting it here, let this mouse have some dignity.

After going to the solicitors, I had to get back my stills camera. I had leant it to a local library group. It was reaching the point where I was not sure I was going to get it back. But I did, although the person I retried it from admitted that she liked using the camera so much that she would have preferred that I allowed her to buy it off me. I suggested she looked on Ebay for the same model. I am glad to have it back as I can start taking and posting still images again.

The real reason I had gone to the solicitors though was related to the food and cooking video podcast that I am planing to do. I had a couple of legal questions that I needed answers to and I wanted to copyright the format. While I hate having to do something like that, I have in the past put a lot of effort into projects only to see other people pinch the ideas and make money out of them. Anyway I have my questions answered and I have the legal protection of my ideas. So I can now start moving forward with doing the podcast. My solicitor also thinks its a great idea, but as I am paying him, he would say that.

As I already have quite a bit filmed already, I hope that it will not be to long before I can get that rolling. Already I am seeing doing this subtly adjusting my shopping habits. In a previous posting I talked about the way I knew that my food shopping had gone up. Well last week I got my Tesco
club card points and my food spend for that quarter was up by one hundred pounds. Now when you also take account of the fact that I have been shopping more carefully anyway and have made sure I buy my fruit and veg from the greengrocer and meat from the butchers, had I relied on the supermarket then I would have been even further out of pocket.

I think this is where this podcast could really help people as by shopping more carefully and buying what's in season and hence cheaper, everyone could benefit. Well that's my hope, but as with this web log it could just be one human and three cats that watch it.

While I was a bit rushed I did make the free bus to the supermarket today. If only my cat could have done this shopping run as the main things I needed was for her. But when I ask her all she can do is roll over and go to sleep. Thus, her trained human had to go. As I have been cooking for the camera, I knew what I needed. While I am repeating some dishes, I have had ensure that the recipes are mine and not just copies of other peoples. Also with some techniques, I am realising that I need to film the differences so that folks can discover that there is more than one way to prepare the dish.

It is all rather fun though. I do enjoy cooking and while I cant do everything straight away, it makes a change to be doing something in a warm place, rather than being out in the cold. Also I am being inspired by things that my friends are saying. For example last week I got some Blueberries as I am going to do some Blueberry Muffins. But as I love Blueberries so much I kept on raiding them until I had eaten most of them. So I had to get some more today, and they were half the price.

One last thing, when I went to catch the bus to go to the supermarket, I saw that one of the branches of two big oaks that are in the goat field (my name for it) had snapped. It was laying in the field and it did make me wonder if this is what the Blogger Goat Correspondent calls goat wood? I hope to go and get some pictures tomorrow. Then on the way back I saw my neighbour. I wanted to have a word with her as I had not seen her friend for the past four weeks and wanted to check that she was okay. Well she had seen her and was fine when she last saw her. But my neighbour also gave me some good news. Her grandsons partner was in hospital giving birth to their great grandchild.

Well as there is snow forecast I think the baby will want to go back where it came from.