A Crazy Day - And Cooking (picture-heavy post)

Today started incredibly calmly and I was enjoying taking it a slow, tranquil pace.  As we know, those kind of days never pan out as relaxed as we're expecting.  It turned out there was some misunderstanding and a lot of confusion (on my part) about money issues and our new apartment (which we get the keys to on Saturday!) which Chris and I decided to sort out earlier than later which involved a trip into town, me in my wheelchair, in the pouring rain.

Once we'd sorted everything we made a quick trip to the market before making our way home.  And I reacted to all the stress the only way I know how - by cooking and baking.  In this instance, both at once.  We started out by peeling and cutting a lot of vegetables which we then made into our very first casserole.  I've been wanting to make one for a while now and recently bought a casserole dish (at the 99p store) so didn't have any real excuse not to.  It also meant we had a lot left over for freezing (something else I've been wanting to do for a few years now but never got around to).  And I know you're just dying to see pics so I'm happy to oblige:

 Chopping

 Chopping

 And more chopping!

Resulting in lots of veg!

We had to cook some on the hob as the casserole dish wasn't big enough (in fact, it only held half of it)

And the finished product:

was very yummy

As I said before (and as you could probably tell from the photos!) we made a whole lot of casserole and once we'd eaten I spooned it into 6 (yes, 6!) portions to be frozen:

So that was the cooking part of our endeavours.  (By the way, we used a bean mix that I bought from Sainsbury's for £1.99 so it wasn't just vegetables!)  However, at the same time (well, technically in the middle) I started on some baking.  Seriously, nothing is more therapeutic than baking - it solves all stress.  I decided to tackle a recipe that I've had problems with in the past - the choc-chip cookie.  Honestly, I've tried a few variations of this and I'm lucky to end up with anything edible at the end.  Today, however, something went right:

 Very unflattering angle!

Yummy cookie dough that we sooooo wanted to eat just as it was.  

However, we managed to refrain and ended up with:

My first successful batch of (very big) choc-chip cookies!

So what do you do to de-stress?  Anything you find as therapeutic as I find baking (and cross-stitch, but that's another post)?