Cooking and home renovations - STILL!

Its been a week since we last posted - its been a long week.We've had a friend that passed away during the week, a good friend in Paris - a cycling friend. We also had a good friend here in Melbourne who lost her father. As we grow older these things will happen around us - its inevitable. Live for the day.

As our regular readers know, we enjoy entertaining and we are in the midst of renovating the house to have the house ready for auction so this post is about both.

Firstly - Sue's foodie Post;

Our older son was working away in Gippsland for the week, climbing up on roofs to restore them. The weather was such that in the mornings there was ice on the roof so they had to wait for it to melt before starting work! Yuk! Consequently it took them an extra day to finish. He didn't get home until Saturday night. He loves German food. Me, not so much. But thought I would give it a go. The cold weather certainly suited it! The menu was roasted pork knuckle, which is really just a hock, potato dumplings and braised red cabbage. These are the dumplings prior to cooking.

Red cabbage, braised with apple, bacon and other things that I don't really remember right now. That could be because I am  under a lot of pressure from Leon! I just want to watch Masterchef, but he has his laptop on my knee and is such a nag! What a bad boy! It was tasty I will say. The cabbage was my favourite part. One thing I discovered is that the recipe for German potato  dumplings is the same one I use for making gnocchi. Cooking method the same too. I wonder which came first? I guess it depends whether you ask a German or an Italian!

The finished, rather unattractive looking plate. The pork knuckle, braised red cabbage, apple sauce and potato dumplings. I cooked two pork knuckles for four, so some got the bones and some not. This one, no bones. The flavours were all good. Our resident German food lover really enjoyed it. It's not my favoured style of food. But OK.

And now for my Renovation Post - Last weekend my "Chippy" mate Greg completed the posts and rails of the front fence. My job now is to cut the existing pickets to length, sand and repaint. This should save a large amount by using the old pickets. Most were in good order which is saying something considering I built this fence 25 years ago.

Just the start - sanded and undercoated.

I finished one side of the fence over the weekend, only another two sides to go.
Note the path that I put on years ago. I like paths that lead you to around corners to hidden areas. I'm  not a straight path person. Next is to do some planting of tall greenery to contrast with the charcoal grey.

Posts and rails undercoated and all the rubbish in the skip.

I've also started removing the top layer of grass so we can re-turf the front yard.

Due to Lizzie's birthday - in Aussie we celebrate the Queen's B-Day in June - with my Friday off and the Monday celebration it gave me four days on the house renovations. Back to work at the office tomorrow.