Three Firsts and a Sadly

Its been a week of 'firsts' for me this week. I made marmalade for the first time! I have often made Jam but never marmalade. It was very theraputic, the hardest job was removing the pith from the peel before chopping it finely for the pan. The secret! A potato peeler! It did the job in no time. The resulting marmalade is delicious I may never eat shop bought again. I am now finding bits of orange peel stuck in all sorts of odd places though.

The next first, another culinary venture! I filleted two whole sea bass. I needed fillets for a recipe but the fishmonger only had whole fish. Ok, I know I could of asked the nice man in the white coat to do it for me, but how hard could it be?

I put the brace of fish washed and ready on my chopping board, I looked at them, and alarmingly they looked at me! So.... the heads had to go. One fishy was easily sorted and soon two neat little fillets lay de-scaled and ready for the pan. The other little fishy was reluctant to give up its skeleton, but with some determined pulling and cutting two more not quite so neat little fillets sat ready to be cooked over couscous, tomatoes, fennel and olive oil. All the more delicious knowing I had literally cooked it totally from scratch, if only I had been out and caught the little fishy's, but as I live in the dead centre of England I am about as far away from the sea as you can get on our little island home.

The third first, if you get my meaning. I , for the first time in ten years of ballroom/latin dancing actually drew blood on my poor husbands toe! We were learning a new complicated Cha cha routine I stepped forward instead of back and landed a heel lead full body weight step straight onto one of poor BJ's digit's! He was very gentlemanly about it and after two circuits of the hall hopping around clasping his foot said it was OK! I was mortified when I later saw his bare sore foot. ooops!

Sadly my Mother is very poorly at the moment, I dread every message received tone on my phone and am on tenterhooks. The fact that their are many miles between us makes it more difficult. I know she is almost 80 and has lived a difficult life with many mental health problems which has made our relationship difficult at times. But... she is my Mum for better or for worse, as they say, andI am not ready to lose her. She has been wickedly witty, funny and a loyal Grandmother (probably better at being a Grannie than a mummy) when the boys were small. Rob took his first steps to Grandma! She was delighted to have Grandsons after having three girls and was ace at story reading. Any-one reading my blog say a little prayer for my Mum! please...