The Theatre, The Instant Pot & The Mushrooms

Hi there everyone 😃

I didn’t really know what to call this post as it really is just a mish mash of a few bits and pieces … namely the theatre, the instant pot and the mushrooms. On reflection it sounds like a good potential title for a crime thriller … do you think it would sell?

Swimming today was cancelled and I have to admit to being just a little bit gutted. I’d really been looking forward to it but apparently the boiler at the pool has packed up so the water temperature was just too cold to swim in.

I have everything crossed that it’s fixed soon and we can perhaps go later in the week.

In other news … we’ve been to the theatre. It’s the first time we’ve been anywhere like that since pre-Covid and it did feel a little strange being squashed into such a small space with so many other people.

We took mum and the little chap to see his mum in the local amateur dramatics performance of Priscilla. There may or may not have been a small incident relating to an arm of one of the theatre chairs but I don't think it was us that broke it …

I’ve never seen Priscilla the film and didn’t really know what to expect but it was fabulous. It was funny, it was engaging, the costumes were amazing and Alison was brilliant and I did take a sneaky photo of the finale …

After the show we headed back to mums for an evening of escape room playing and Bobby wrote his own personal review of the show …

In other news we’ve had another go with the instant pot/air fryer. This time we tried the sauté and pressure cook function for a Thai Penang chicken curry which was delicious. We did make the paste ourselves but it sounds like you could just use Thai red curry paste with a mashed up stick of lemongrass for the same effect …

We sautéed the paste and coconut milk for about five minutes then added the chicken and pressure cooked for another five. We did a quick release of the pressure then added the remaining ingredients and sautéed again for another five minutes.

I guess in total, with heating up times it took about half an hour to cook … but no dirty splashed hob to clean or expensive non stick sauté pan to wash by hand so I’m counting it as a win.

Today we harvested the mushrooms …

We fried them in butter and had them in toasted sourdough with poached eggs. They were very tasty and hopefully we will get enough for another harvest …

I did feel a bit odd though … looking at the strands on the bottom of the stalks … if you watched Jess get the ‘kiss of death’ in The Last of us you will know where I am coming from …

Tonight we are trying a sausage pasta bake in the pot and I’m not sure how the pasta will go but it will be an experiment … but not till after 6pm as we are taking part in the National Grid’s demand flexibility service … so until then we will sit here in the near dark with no TV on and as many appliances switched off as possible … I draw the line at turning off the heating though 😜

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