A One-Handed Fish Pie
When I Cooked my last Jamie Oliver’s Fish Pie, I hadn’t had a stroke and had full use of both hands. Now my left hand has a lack of feeling in the fingers and tends to drop things a bit. But at least my right hand is almost unaffected.
Making the pie was surprisingly easy, using mainly my right hand :-
- Peeling the potatoes wasn’t too difficult, especially as I used a plastic chopping board to cut the potatoes into smaller chunks for boiling.
- Jamie said to use a big box grater in the middle of the baking dish and my left hand was strong enough to hold it completely steady, whilst I grated the carrot, celery and cheese. It was very easy and it was almost if Jamie had people like me in mind. Good on you, Jamie, if you did!
- For chopping the chilli, I used one of Delia’s little choppers.
- I did have a problem getting the skin off the salmon, but the simple solution to this, is to get the fishmpnger to do it as I did with the haddock. Waitrose and good fishmongers are happy to do this.
- Mashing the potatoes wasn’t too bad as I have a proper one-handed potato masher.
It’s amazing how much the good and sensible tools helped.
Peeling Potatoes
Would anybody describe this as a go0d exercise for someone who has had a stroke? But I’m making one of Jamie Olivers’s fish pies and that needs a kilogram of potatoes to be peeled.
I peel potatoes with the potato in my left and the knife in my right, but then I’m right-handed. I also tip the potatoes into a largew bowl of cold water and in fact just retrieving the next potato is quite soothing. But the action of holding the potato and then twisting it so that the next bit of peel is removed, seems to be a good exercise.
It’s also rewarding to yourself, as you see your naked creations gradually filling the saucepan.
I think though that peeling potatoes is one of those mundane jobs, which because a knife is involved, you concentrate about to get done well and then get a large degree of satisfaction, when you complete it.
I found the same satisfaction, when I cleaned my shoes on Saturday. Perhaps stroke recovery is all about getting back to normal and that means doing all those day-to-day tasks.
A Courageous Woman
Gill Hicks lost both her legs in the London Tube Bombings of the 7th July 2005. She has not embraced as many would hate but founded M.A.D. for Peace.
She is an example to us all!
There is a Lot of it About!
My page on NetTemps Inc, is just a repost of a spam e-mail I received. But yesterday it had 404 hits, so there must be thousands of these scam e-mails going around the web and people are doing the sensible thing and using Google to find the truth.
Look at this web site, where someone turns the tables on this type of scam. He’s just having fun and it’s a very interesting way to waste the criminals time. But as he says, he’s had death threats, so don’t do it yourself.
The Anonymous Widower 