Sue's Blog - Some assembly required.

Cooking up a storm....

It hasn't been a very exciting week............oh apart from my adventure on the bus.
On Thursday I decided to attempt the north face of the mall so I hiked to the bus stop.
A journey remarkable only in its lack of excitement.
The view from the window was mostly........white.
Anyway, after a trot round the mall and a cup of coffee from Micky D's (it is the cheapest and the best......Starbuck's tends to be very bitter on a Tuesday when the mall isn't busy), it was time to get the bus back again.
I know the excitement and the anticipation of this tale must be killing you.
The idiot magnet was in fine form and a friendship was struck up (whether I wanted it or not) at the bus stop.
This young chap wanted to know about everything English.
As he was travelling on my bus, and we were the only two on it ....I couldn't get out of it.
The bus pulled away and was exiting the mall ring road........this guy was in full flow....
"What did I miss?"
"What was the same?"
"What was different?"
Suddenly...........................I noticed our bus had been sat sitting at the junction for rather a long time.
I halted my tormentor in mid flow and said................"I think our bus is broken".
Shock....Horror.
The bus was making an interesting noise and the bus driver was clearly agitated.
My young friend thought it was stuck in the snow but I didn't think so.
A call to the depot prompted this advice to the bus driver.

Turn it off , wait a few minutes, then turn it on again.

This really made me chuckle. It must be the universal answer to everything.
My little mate was getting upset but I told him to think of it as an adventure and enjoy this unexpected treat.
This is my philosophy on life really.
As luck would have it, after a few false starts, we conked out completely in the middle of a wide and busy junction.
All the cars were honking (this is America) as we coasted gently through at around 3mph.
I decided to have a little more fun and proceeded to wave in a mostly queenly fashion at the irate honking drivers as we glided through.
We came to rest just on the other side and the driver had to call for another bus to come and rescue us.
What an exciting day.

Today hasn't been quite so exciting.
Shepherd's Pies.
They don't exist on this side of the pond. Oh you can't go willy nilly into a store and pick up half a dozen frozen ones here you know. No frozen Yorkshire puds either....or any sort of meat pie come to that.
So, today I made 6 shepherd's pies to freeze. I had lots of taters that needed using up and I hate to throw anything away.
A tip to all other would be shepherd's pie makers.
I put some garlic powder along with the butter in the taters when I mashed them.
Delish.

posted by Sue Banks @ 2:32 PM