We had a fabulous weekend. We travelled to Wagga on Friday afternoon.

I had my hair booked to be cut at 3pm, so Dave dropped me there and then went and visited his good friend Rob. When he came to pick me up I asked my hairdresser if she could give Dave a pre-emptive strike haircut and she was happy to do so. Dave now has a closely cropped, number 2 with the clippers hairdo!  He noticed his hair had started falling out, that dodgy army beanie he has will be in use very soon.

On Friday evening Will and I went and watched Alexander play AFL at Robertson Oval. Alex was very excited to be playing on the same oval Will played on and seemed pretty excited that his cousin had come to watch him play! Alex loves his sport and is quite talented I think. Bit like his big cousin Will 🙂

It was so lovely to be home for the weekend.

Will spent nearly the whole weekend with us, and we especially liked having an enjoyable Saturday evening at home with Bek, Karl and the kids; Dave, Will and I; Trish and Ray (Karl’s parents) and Dad & Pamela. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of dinner. I made a seafood ‘stew’ cooked with tomato, white beans, white wine and fennel, served topped with a freshly made roasted garlic alioli, and grated parmesan. Trish who is a seafood lover, has recently been diagnosed with gluten and dairy intolerance and was thrilled she could enjoy it all.

Recipe:

Sara’s seafood and fennel stew (sorry no pics!)

Ingredients

• Approx. 2kg Seafood, cleaned and trimmed where required
• (I used 2 squid, 2 blue swimmer crabs, 500g green prawns, 500g firm white fish, 200g lobster tail meat, 500g live mussels)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 stalks celery, diced
• 1 large fennel bulb, sliced
• 3 large cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 large jar tomato passata
• 1 tin white beans, drained and rinsed
• 2 cups chicken stock or water
• 200mls white wine
• 1 large pinch chili flakes
• 1 tsp sugar
• ½ bunch flat leaf parsley, chopped
• 1 lemon
• Seasoning

Method

• Heat olive oil in a large heavy-based/cast iron saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onion, celery and garlic. Cook gently for 5 minutes, until soft.
• Add fennel and continue to sauté slowly until soft.
• Add chopped squid and continue to sauté for another 10 minutes.
• Add tomato passata, white beans, stock and wine. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to medium and simmer, for 20 minutes.
• Add sugar to taste.
• Add remaining seafood except mussels. Stir through then cover and cook for 3 minutes.
• Add mussels for another 2-3 minutes until they open. Don’t overcook.
• Stir through parsley and juice of 1 x lemon.
• Season to taste.
• Spoon into bowls and top with extra parsley, extra fennel fronds, garlic Alioli and freshly grated parmesan.

Sunday morning and the in laws and outlaws had gone home, but we enjoyed a lovely breakfast at Beks – Egg and bacon rolls, bacon from Pillagio –   theres a lot to be said for good quality bacon. Drizzled with a delicious spicy BBQ sauce which apparently Bek bought at Aldi – I must remember to get some it was very good!

We left Wagga at around 12 and headed for Tumut in the pouring rain. We went to visit Dave’s Aunty Joan who is in her mid 80’s and is very close to Dave. We decided to let her know about Dave’s illness in person rather than over the phone. She took the news reasonably well, as older people tend to – she also had an acquaintance who had had Hodgkin’s lymphoma 20 years ago wand was still going strong.  She had lots of questions which we answered including the now well asked and unanswerable “But why did you get it”. She gave Dave a huge hug, and we left to take on the torrential rain in the 2hr trip to Canberra.

Today we had an appointment with Dr Choi the hematologist. I really like him, his friendly but professional manner and his ability to make you feel at ease, but still well informed. All is going to plan and he was pleased with Dave’s progress. He said ‘Wow you are looking really well Dave’  which was lovely to hear (even though lots of other people have been saying the same thing!) He gave Dave a physical examination and was very pleased that the tumors he can feel have shrunk down to almost nothing. We will be able to see more after the next cycle of Chemo when they do more scans, but so far it looks like it is working well. Yippee!

He reminded Dave not to overdo it and only to work if he really wants to, gave me a medical certificate so I can take some more carers leave and sent us on our way!

Tonight home-made sausage rolls – Dave LOVED them. I don’t think I’ve ever made them for him before. Pics follow, but I’ll post the recipe tomorrow.