Slow Hand

 I was up just before 07:00, Ellie was just waking up, but she stayed in her room for another hour and came down with Nana. The weather was dreadful, with high winds and driving rain. We all had breakfast and soon after Zoe came to collect Ellie so they could snuggle up on the sofa and have a movie morning before Zoe had to head back to work for the afternoon's management meeting.

It may have been 09:30, but I started preparing a beef stew for dinner. I used the "slow cook" feature on the Instant Pot. I set it on high and fired it up for nearly seven hours.

My first task was to check the code I'd written during lockdown to see if it supported the feature my colleague queried. It did. I wrote back confirming that it was supported and suggested that he should send me a suitable code snippet that I could test if he was having trouble.

With that done, Diane and I headed out to the garage and sorted through the detritus. We have a disposal chap visiting on Tuesday and it would be sensible to sort things out in advance. This didn't take us as long as we had expected.

Zoe brought Ellie back to us after lunch. She has spent the afternoon pottering about watching YouTube, doing some crafts with Nana, playing hotels with Nana and Grandpa, and doing some Maths with Nana. She will be staying with us overnight again.

Dinner taught me that the Instant Pot slow cook feature isn't as good as a proper slow cooker. I had to finish the meal off in a conventional oven.