Potatoes....tomatoes....

Up at dawn to cook potatoes and add them to the blasted soup.
Well, not actually just for that...of course.
But up with the cats at 5.30 am, coffee, breakfast...cook potatoes and correct the soup.
Ready to stay a new day.

A good day. NIce normal stuff. SO good!!
We ripped down our tomato vines, picked a kilogram of green tomatoes and then, inspired by fellow Hokkaido blogger Vicky (Hyotenka http://hyotenka.blogspot.com/2010/10/chutney-chunterings.html  ) I set to to make chutney.

1 kg of green tomatoes...plus a few peppers.

Tomatoes, apple, onion, cucumber, sugar, apple vinegar, chilli pepper..

Simmering down after 2 hours.

5 little jam jars of chutney!

Oyomesan's Chutney. (oops...no potato!)

It was so relaxing. Sitting in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with a cat on my lap. Not bothering about all the million of things in my mind at the moment. Oh - and the delicious smell in the house as it all cooked! Thankyou Vicky for the inspiration to do this! Even if it all goes bad and I have to throw the chutney away in a few weeks time, I don't care because just having this time doing this relaxing activity was so gooooooood!

AND...Okaasan stayed safely put, under her kotatsu watching Chilean miners emerging on TV. So I didn't have to share the kitchen space with her.

After that, nice ordinary day off. Yujiro and I went to a skiwear shop to look at ski clothes, we did stuff in the garden, we bought in the cat cage to make a winter nest for them in the office, we did housework, watched TV....read newspapers...watched Chilean miners HUG their families and the Prime Minister. If this mining story was in Japan they would emerge and bow and do that strange chopping hand gesture, and apologise to everyone  for causing so much trouble.....

And I cooked lunch and dinner. And the pork soup WITH MORE potatoes got eaten, and was appreciated...and all was well in the world.

Next Wednesday I am off to England. Step-aunt and I are lining up the schedule of the week - the stuff like lawyer, investment advisor, antique appraisers, furniture auctioneer, shipping company...and the poignant: collecting Jane's ashes from the funeral company and scattering them under the tree in the garden with Dad. 

Some of my students are surprised that a Christian lady would choose to be scattered in the garden and not the church, and even more that as the house is rented the garden itself will not be in my family's ownership anymore so the "grave" of Dad and Jane will effectively be out-of-reach to me and family members within a month or so when the house is returned to its owners. But, Dad and Jane knew that and they wrote in their wills that they wanted to be scattered under this tree at their home. And that is fine by me. I will go and visit the house and garden again in years to come I am sure, if they new owners let me, but I don't need a grave to visit.

** And....a personal little milestone: I peeled off the final bits of tape from my operation cut and now I can completly see the scar across my lower tummy....have to say it: Dr. Zero Bedside Manner actually did a good job.:-))