Toast ?

We've spent the day engulfed in sea mist.

Why toast? Well, I woke early and after a relatively relaxed lie-in got up at 7.00. I fed the cat, watered the plants, prepared the breakfast then went to do my daily Duo Lingo. As I sat at my PC I could smell toast. Must be somebody's breakfast I thought though how could I smell it through the double glazing? Thinking I'd better check the kitchen I walked in to find smoke pouring from the porridge pan. On the days I'm up early I get the porridge (which I prepare in the saucepan the night before) up to the boil, turn it off then put a lid on it and the tea cosy on top to keep it warm. That way all I need to do is cook it for a little when we're ready for breakfast. Today I forgot the turning off bit. The burnt porridge went outside, then I turned on the extractor fan and opened the outside door to get rid of the smell.

Toast story no. 2 - We've just started a unit on describing various ailments in our Welsh class. The word for ill is sal, easy enough to remember but I'm sad we don't use the South Wales version - tost and yes that does also mean toast. I'd love to be able to say I'm toast but while it might be understood here it would be seen as rather odd. Incidentaly I don't like to eat toast, or crusty bread. To me that's like filling your mouth with nasty painful shards. (The dentist says my gums are in good health.)

With the burnt smell still lingering after breakfast I wiped down all the cupboards and then realised that the worst of the smell was around the extractor hood itself. That was the one thing I had forgotten to clean in the recent blitz of the kitchen. My excuse is that I didn't have an extractor of any sort for 25 years in the country so it's not on my radar. Also we do almost no frying so the amount of grease generated should be minimal. But when I took the extractor apart I found it quite greasy as was the housing over the fan itself. Instead of a paper filter our model has a metal mesh which took forever to scrub clean and that was after a soak with a dishwasher tablet. I cleaned the fan housing as best I could using dry cotton buds. Luckily I had some paper filters that I'd bought for the extractor in our last house and I've put one in front of the metal mesh to catch the grease. The saucepan is having a second soak with a dishwasher tablet but I don't know if I'll be able to rescue it.

When all that was done I put a bara brith in the oven. I followed a new recipe and the mix looked a lot better. Peter still has a slice of the last bara brith left so I won't get a taste report until tomorrow.

Eventually I was able to do some more work on the cupboard. I took out three shelves, prised the wood off the walls and cleaned up one shelf. Not only was it covered with a layer of sticky backed plastic but there was laminated hardboard stuck on one side. It looks like it was once a shelf in a kitchen which leads me to think that maybe the last owners made all the built-in cupboards themselves. They had that very large work shed in the back garden after all. The three shelves can be re-used so I only need to find one more shelf and then buy some wood to edge the shelves.