That was better.

The two Projects I have been assigned to, in my new role, have reached a stage where my activities cease, or at least diminish, and others take over.

A consequence of this is that this working week has had approximately 30% fewer hours and required about 50% of the mental effort of the preceding five weeks. I am therefore considerably less frazzled than I usually am on a Friday evening.

The change of pace has allowed me to assemble supper during my lunch break so its Delia's Smoked Fish Pie for 30% and me. TP has a couple of friends over for a sleep-over tonight so we will hurl a couple of pizzas and some fries in their direction and let them do a reasonable impersonation of a pack of wolves around a deer carcass before retiring to their lair for yet more electronic death and destruction courtesy of Microsoft's X-Box.

Today is day #9 of 10 which means that the ham, currently being salted in the garage, will go through the next stage of the curing process - more on that tomorrow.

Whilst in the curing vein, I also need to nip in to Stratford tomorrow and pick up a side of rare breed pork that I ordered a couple of weeks back. I took ten minutes today to make some cure mixture as I have a suspicion that it gives the bacon a better flavour if the salt and sugar has time to absorb some of the essential oils from the peppercorns and bay leaves that are ground and mixed in.

I'm guessing that tomorrow's entry will be predominantly pork based - vegetarian's  LOOK AWAY NOW!