If you have read any of my other recent food type posts you will know that I discovered I have a milk allergy so have been trying very hard to find alternatives to dairy foods without breaking the bank.
Hooray I managed to make a much more cheese like cheese on my second attempt.
It grates and slices and looks like cheese.
It is softer,like a very firm mousse,not hard and crumbly but it is good on pizza or sandwiches or crackers and I even secretly made Quiche with it and nobody commented that the cheese tasted funny.
The recipe is from reciperenovator.com
1 C cashews
1 1/2 C water
4 teaspoons agar powder
OR
4 Tablespoons agar flakes
1/4 C nutritional yeast
1/4 C lemon juice
1 Tablespoon onion powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
Soak cashews for 4 hours and then grind em up or just used ground cashews like I did without the soaking.
Boil water and add agar simmer for 5 mins stirring.
Put everything into a blender or food processor and blend it smooth.
add any herbs or whatever(I didn't) .
Oil a bowl or tub to shape your cheese.
Pour in the cheese and let it cool.
Put in Fridge when cold enough.
I did this exactly as above and have a yellow,almost cheddar coloured cheese.
You could add a little bit of tomato paste for oranger cheese or cook a carrot before using the agar in the water.
I might try some hickory smoke powder the next time.
I don't think the cup sizing matters because it is just to get the proportions of the larger amounts right.
Half of this amount lasts me a week so I cut it in half and freeze the second bit.
It thaws out well and keeps its firmness.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Monday, 9 September 2013
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
chopping down the clover field
Well it isnt a field at all but I liked the sound of it.
I chopped the clover that has been growing in the onion beds.
It stays in the earth and helps to improve the structure of the soil.
The Phacelia still has bees buzzing to and fro so I will leave that for longer and then chop and dig it in , in the same way.
I still havent got the new onion beds sorted.
Yesterday I dug over half the spud bed (the half that is now empty).
The onions and garlic will go in there to over winter.
OH bought me and himself new (2nd hand) leathers for the motorbike.
Mine are a very fetching white with green and purple zigzags.
His are black and have a wolf logo.
We are going to look the Bees Knees next time we go for a ride together.
I canned quite a lot of Pumpkin on Monday.
The biggest pumpkin yielded 11 jars .
Then I roasted the seeds which are quite like crisps (to snack on).
I did mine with no oil by using a browning plate in the microwave.
You are supposed to use oil but they are much healthier without .
OH tends to glutton-out on anything the least bit snackable so I put them in a screw top jar and whisked them away out of sight .
There are 2 more pumpkins out there but I don't know if they have time to ripen off as we are already getting ground frosts in the morning.
Indoors it is about 15 degrees c in the mornings.
The front room warms up to 17 once the sun hits it.
I brought the greenhouse heater in so that we could give the bathroom a 10 minute zap before bathing or showering, rather than turn the heating on all over the house just for the same effect.
The heater is from OH's work and was being thrown away but is really for a greenhouse.
It would be far too expensive to run it over the winter for the amount of food I might produce from the greenhouse.
The greenhouse is now empty of plants except the box of carrots.
It becomes a store room over winter.
...............................................................................................................................
My online earning is going well.
Today I cashed out 10 pounds in Amazon vouchers from Ipsos
There is a 25 pound voucher to cash in from another survey site and nearly 30 pounds from one other so Christmas and the last birthday of the year are accounted for.
We are lucky with birthdays as they are evenly spaced across the year.
I go on Mccains site once a week and play their games which pay in spud shillings.
The shillings go towards a voucher and I am hoping to have 10 pounds to redeem in a couple of weeks.
Sadly they are winding up their voucher earning scheme in december .
...................................................................................................................................
At the moment I am reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo which you can find on Guttenberg
I'm also reading Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (free on Amazon).
Les Miserables is very long and a little hard going with its turns of language and descriptions.
If you think Dickens is too descriptive, you wont like this one but if you don't mind long detailed outlines,you will most likely love it.
Micah Clarke is one of Doyles Historic Novels which are by far his best genre and although they are very prose filled, they have a huge lot of history and factual information also.
This one is about the Monmouth uprising (after the English Civil war).
I chopped the clover that has been growing in the onion beds.
It stays in the earth and helps to improve the structure of the soil.
The Phacelia still has bees buzzing to and fro so I will leave that for longer and then chop and dig it in , in the same way.
I still havent got the new onion beds sorted.
Yesterday I dug over half the spud bed (the half that is now empty).
The onions and garlic will go in there to over winter.
OH bought me and himself new (2nd hand) leathers for the motorbike.
Mine are a very fetching white with green and purple zigzags.
His are black and have a wolf logo.
We are going to look the Bees Knees next time we go for a ride together.
I canned quite a lot of Pumpkin on Monday.
The biggest pumpkin yielded 11 jars .
Then I roasted the seeds which are quite like crisps (to snack on).
I did mine with no oil by using a browning plate in the microwave.
You are supposed to use oil but they are much healthier without .
OH tends to glutton-out on anything the least bit snackable so I put them in a screw top jar and whisked them away out of sight .
There are 2 more pumpkins out there but I don't know if they have time to ripen off as we are already getting ground frosts in the morning.
Indoors it is about 15 degrees c in the mornings.
The front room warms up to 17 once the sun hits it.
I brought the greenhouse heater in so that we could give the bathroom a 10 minute zap before bathing or showering, rather than turn the heating on all over the house just for the same effect.
The heater is from OH's work and was being thrown away but is really for a greenhouse.
It would be far too expensive to run it over the winter for the amount of food I might produce from the greenhouse.
The greenhouse is now empty of plants except the box of carrots.
It becomes a store room over winter.
...............................................................................................................................
My online earning is going well.
Today I cashed out 10 pounds in Amazon vouchers from Ipsos
There is a 25 pound voucher to cash in from another survey site and nearly 30 pounds from one other so Christmas and the last birthday of the year are accounted for.
We are lucky with birthdays as they are evenly spaced across the year.
I go on Mccains site once a week and play their games which pay in spud shillings.
The shillings go towards a voucher and I am hoping to have 10 pounds to redeem in a couple of weeks.
Sadly they are winding up their voucher earning scheme in december .
...................................................................................................................................
At the moment I am reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo which you can find on Guttenberg
I'm also reading Micah Clarke by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (free on Amazon).
Les Miserables is very long and a little hard going with its turns of language and descriptions.
If you think Dickens is too descriptive, you wont like this one but if you don't mind long detailed outlines,you will most likely love it.
Micah Clarke is one of Doyles Historic Novels which are by far his best genre and although they are very prose filled, they have a huge lot of history and factual information also.
This one is about the Monmouth uprising (after the English Civil war).
Friday, 31 August 2012
'Funny food'
The marrow and ginger jam was fine.
It looks looser in the jar than the normal jams I make but is actually quite spreadable and firm once opened.
All but one jar sealed properly.
We have already worked our way through one jar and will start the non sealed jar next.
My Aunty used sometimes to give Mum jam to bring back when we visited.
Marrow or Rhubarb and Ginger I seem to remember.
We ate so much junk back then that it tasted 'funny' to have real Jam and I expect mum and dad finished it off between them.
My mother seldom made preserves of any kind.
I remember seeing tins of Marmade but never Seville Oranges used to make marmalade.
One year they had an awful lot of onions from somewhere which they pickled .
They were very strong tasting to we kids who were only used to little silver skinned onions from the xmas hamper.
I cant help thinking we were walking junk food zombies.
Nearly everything was laced with sugar or salt back then.
Those huge Wagon Wheel biscuits, Jammie Dodgers, Tea time fancies.
We had them every Sunday tea, 'dip in and grab' sandwiches of cucumber or beetroot in vinegar (never without).
A salad made almost entirely of lettuce with a few slithers of tomato in a bowl.
Shiphams Meat paste or fish paste in tiny jars shared between 5.
We were allowed to take the bread (already spread with cheap marg) and load it with the other ingredients.
No one was allowed biscuits or 'cakes' till they had had the sandwiches.
Mum would say 'who wants the last....'and my brother no doubt hungrier than we girls would already have his hand on the offering before the article was even named ,with a loud aggressive MEEE.
To drink there was water from the tap but usually there were no drinks at the table,you just helped yourself at the sink throughout the day.
You could have tea though and we were given it with sugar in our baby bottles and so were quite used to being caffeined up to the eyeballs and sugared to the point of cavities.
Dad drank nothing else and always had 3 sugars (He had about 3 peg teeth in his whole head).
Dinners during the week were usually something and veg.
We ate a lot of cheap tinned sausages or pressed meats.
Now and again mum would make a pie but usually she bought processed meat products that she would divide up into small amounts and there would be that awful powdered potato that you were supposed to add milk and water to with a dot of butter.
I think the more expensive 'mash' had those things incorporated already but the cheap ones were cheap for a reason and tasted of nothing very much when only how water was added.
We ate processed peas that were mushy and granular with a thick dropping consistency. They cooked up a sort of khaki colour and were heavily salted by us as we automatically put salt and white pepper on everything labeled dinner.
Carrots were almost always tinned too and had a sort of slippery,slimy property to them.
We would have real meat on Sunday for Dinner which was mid day.
Real potatoes too .
There was pudding every day.
Sometimes jelly and something.
Mostly those little pots of slop that are coloured and flavoured and called things like 'smooth melody' or 'top pudding'.
There was always Supper too .
This often consisted of toast or bread and something.
We quite often had dripping which was the juices of the Sunday roast ,mashed up with the little meaty bits.
This was lovely with some salt.
Other times it would be banana sandwiches with sugar.
We hardly ever had fruit as a whole piece of food.
It was chopped up in one form or another .
Dad would bring home jam donuts if he won anything at the betting shop.
That and the cigarette voucher Christmas and birthday gifts were the only time I ever remember him 'paying' for anything.
Did mum get Gifts too?
I really cant remember.
Anyway, Breakfast..
Usually this was cereal in a box.
Mostly Kellogs something or other.
We sometimes had boiled eggs and even fried eggs and bacon very occasionally.
The milk was I think watered down as it always tasted of nothing .
We never drank actual milk on its own or juice of any sort.
Once in a while there would be 'orange or lemon squash' which tasted of chemicals and was highly sweetened.
Pop was only bought at Christmas,birthdays or if the cousin visited.
If it was a school outing, we would be bought a tin of cola or some such thing.
Iced fancies were usually given and a sandwich.
(I hate icing so often threw my biscuits away).
Now and again we would have actual real food.
I visited various friends after school and tasted home cooked meals which were yummy but I didn't comment about them at home ,Mum took offense very easily.
At school we had school dinners which were made on the premises.
They were lovely and filling and flavourful.
There was always pudding and a drink of orange squash or water.
Most children who at dinner in school,had tea at home of sandwiches or a small portion of something.
We had free school meals ,ate the lot and then a second dinner at home with pudding.
I can only imagine that our own home food was so awful that the calories were empty (bulked out foods with nothing substantial) because I was never over weight and neither was my constantly eating brother.
My little sister however, was fed sweets almost every day after school and expanded accordingly.
Her portion sizes were equal to our own which didn't help matters.
Xmas was a time of indulgence all round.
Ours was generally a hamper of stuff that mum paid into all year.
There were tins of meat, vegetables,fruit and nuts.
We would have a turkey from the butcher and pop.
The adults had sherry but I think the bottle was perpetual because I don't remember ever seeing them buy it.
Maybe it was gifted from mums employers (she was a cash in hand cleaner for various people).
Dad drank Drambui in tiny little frosted green glasses. One little tot of it at a time.
A big tin of Quality street was a yearly thing. Did it come in the hamper? Dad only ate the soft centres given his lack of teeth.
The pop bottles were taken back to the shop for the deposit money.
Dad always carved the turkey and made mince pies. He had once seen mum make them and decided he could do better. They were brimming with mince but the pastry was usually rock hard and shiny with glaze.
If you got a mice pie outside of home,it was like eating manna, soft and short pastry with a sugary coating.
We never complained of course, we just shoveled them down.
It looks looser in the jar than the normal jams I make but is actually quite spreadable and firm once opened.
All but one jar sealed properly.
We have already worked our way through one jar and will start the non sealed jar next.
My Aunty used sometimes to give Mum jam to bring back when we visited.
Marrow or Rhubarb and Ginger I seem to remember.
We ate so much junk back then that it tasted 'funny' to have real Jam and I expect mum and dad finished it off between them.
My mother seldom made preserves of any kind.
I remember seeing tins of Marmade but never Seville Oranges used to make marmalade.
One year they had an awful lot of onions from somewhere which they pickled .
They were very strong tasting to we kids who were only used to little silver skinned onions from the xmas hamper.
I cant help thinking we were walking junk food zombies.
Nearly everything was laced with sugar or salt back then.
Those huge Wagon Wheel biscuits, Jammie Dodgers, Tea time fancies.
We had them every Sunday tea, 'dip in and grab' sandwiches of cucumber or beetroot in vinegar (never without).
A salad made almost entirely of lettuce with a few slithers of tomato in a bowl.
Shiphams Meat paste or fish paste in tiny jars shared between 5.
We were allowed to take the bread (already spread with cheap marg) and load it with the other ingredients.
No one was allowed biscuits or 'cakes' till they had had the sandwiches.
Mum would say 'who wants the last....'and my brother no doubt hungrier than we girls would already have his hand on the offering before the article was even named ,with a loud aggressive MEEE.
To drink there was water from the tap but usually there were no drinks at the table,you just helped yourself at the sink throughout the day.
You could have tea though and we were given it with sugar in our baby bottles and so were quite used to being caffeined up to the eyeballs and sugared to the point of cavities.
Dad drank nothing else and always had 3 sugars (He had about 3 peg teeth in his whole head).
Dinners during the week were usually something and veg.
We ate a lot of cheap tinned sausages or pressed meats.
Now and again mum would make a pie but usually she bought processed meat products that she would divide up into small amounts and there would be that awful powdered potato that you were supposed to add milk and water to with a dot of butter.
I think the more expensive 'mash' had those things incorporated already but the cheap ones were cheap for a reason and tasted of nothing very much when only how water was added.
We ate processed peas that were mushy and granular with a thick dropping consistency. They cooked up a sort of khaki colour and were heavily salted by us as we automatically put salt and white pepper on everything labeled dinner.
Carrots were almost always tinned too and had a sort of slippery,slimy property to them.
We would have real meat on Sunday for Dinner which was mid day.
Real potatoes too .
There was pudding every day.
Sometimes jelly and something.
Mostly those little pots of slop that are coloured and flavoured and called things like 'smooth melody' or 'top pudding'.
There was always Supper too .
This often consisted of toast or bread and something.
We quite often had dripping which was the juices of the Sunday roast ,mashed up with the little meaty bits.
This was lovely with some salt.
Other times it would be banana sandwiches with sugar.
We hardly ever had fruit as a whole piece of food.
It was chopped up in one form or another .
Dad would bring home jam donuts if he won anything at the betting shop.
That and the cigarette voucher Christmas and birthday gifts were the only time I ever remember him 'paying' for anything.
Did mum get Gifts too?
I really cant remember.
Anyway, Breakfast..
Usually this was cereal in a box.
Mostly Kellogs something or other.
We sometimes had boiled eggs and even fried eggs and bacon very occasionally.
The milk was I think watered down as it always tasted of nothing .
We never drank actual milk on its own or juice of any sort.
Once in a while there would be 'orange or lemon squash' which tasted of chemicals and was highly sweetened.
Pop was only bought at Christmas,birthdays or if the cousin visited.
If it was a school outing, we would be bought a tin of cola or some such thing.
Iced fancies were usually given and a sandwich.
(I hate icing so often threw my biscuits away).
Now and again we would have actual real food.
I visited various friends after school and tasted home cooked meals which were yummy but I didn't comment about them at home ,Mum took offense very easily.
At school we had school dinners which were made on the premises.
They were lovely and filling and flavourful.
There was always pudding and a drink of orange squash or water.
Most children who at dinner in school,had tea at home of sandwiches or a small portion of something.
We had free school meals ,ate the lot and then a second dinner at home with pudding.
I can only imagine that our own home food was so awful that the calories were empty (bulked out foods with nothing substantial) because I was never over weight and neither was my constantly eating brother.
My little sister however, was fed sweets almost every day after school and expanded accordingly.
Her portion sizes were equal to our own which didn't help matters.
Xmas was a time of indulgence all round.
Ours was generally a hamper of stuff that mum paid into all year.
There were tins of meat, vegetables,fruit and nuts.
We would have a turkey from the butcher and pop.
The adults had sherry but I think the bottle was perpetual because I don't remember ever seeing them buy it.
Maybe it was gifted from mums employers (she was a cash in hand cleaner for various people).
Dad drank Drambui in tiny little frosted green glasses. One little tot of it at a time.
A big tin of Quality street was a yearly thing. Did it come in the hamper? Dad only ate the soft centres given his lack of teeth.
The pop bottles were taken back to the shop for the deposit money.
Dad always carved the turkey and made mince pies. He had once seen mum make them and decided he could do better. They were brimming with mince but the pastry was usually rock hard and shiny with glaze.
If you got a mice pie outside of home,it was like eating manna, soft and short pastry with a sugary coating.
We never complained of course, we just shoveled them down.
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
Preserving stuff
I have been harvesting a fair bit this last week.
The dehydrator has been busy every night drying Beans, Kale, Courgettes, and spinach .
We also have a Vacuum sealer which has helped keep the freezer from overflowing because it compacts things into flatter shaped bags.
Yesterday I decided we needed the bottom shelf of the freezer back (it is only a 3 shelf under-counter style ).
There were 6 Seville oranges and 4 lemons in there waiting to be made into marmalade.
I sorted through the saved empty jars to find enough with lids.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to chop them all up and boil it down in the microwave.
Last week I made Marrow and Ginger jam using ground ginger.
The result has turned out quite sloppy as there wasn't enough pectin despite a goodly amount of lemon juice.
I can see it being mostly used as pie fillings but no matter.
There are about 8 good sized marrows under DD's bed now.
Hopefully they will last w while without needing to be dried or frozen.
The dehydrator has been busy every night drying Beans, Kale, Courgettes, and spinach .
We also have a Vacuum sealer which has helped keep the freezer from overflowing because it compacts things into flatter shaped bags.
Yesterday I decided we needed the bottom shelf of the freezer back (it is only a 3 shelf under-counter style ).
There were 6 Seville oranges and 4 lemons in there waiting to be made into marmalade.
I sorted through the saved empty jars to find enough with lids.
It took about 1 1/2 hours to chop them all up and boil it down in the microwave.
Last week I made Marrow and Ginger jam using ground ginger.
The result has turned out quite sloppy as there wasn't enough pectin despite a goodly amount of lemon juice.
I can see it being mostly used as pie fillings but no matter.
There are about 8 good sized marrows under DD's bed now.
Hopefully they will last w while without needing to be dried or frozen.
Tuesday, 31 July 2012
Tiny toms and preserving produce
We ate our first two red Tomatoes today.
They were dinky little things.
I cut each one as small as I could and DS and I had them in 1 sandwich each !
I have been dehydrating this week also.
Not bodily, I am drying produce.
The L'equip machine I bought a few years ago is still going strong.
This weekend I dried about 9 courgettes on Saturday, 9 on Sunday
Monday I dried about 5 and around a cupful of runner beans
Today was 6 trays of Spinach
Tonight will be 3 more trays of courgettes(about 5 or 6 fruits) and a cupful of runner beans.
When they are dry, they are put into screw top jars till we use them.
Drying is an efficient way to store produce and takes up less room than most other storage.
Also it is cheap fuel wise as it is an overnight job to dry them and then they don't use any more until you cook them which you would have to do anyway.
We still have a jar of dried onions from about 3 years ago which is perfectly edible.
I pickled a large jar of onions for Christmas.
We have 2 jars of pickled beetroot from several years back which is fine still.
I looked up courgettes online and discovered Asda selling 4 fruits for a whole £1
The Kale is now edible and very flavour-some after a couple of months of just spinach interspersed with Molokia
The row nearest the camera is the Kale. I am used to curly leafed Kale so was it took a while to realise that this plant was really Kale and not just a mis-labeling error for which I am notorious.
The carrot bed did turn out to be mostly grass pretending to be carrot seedlings sadly.
I have resown but don't know if it will be any more successful this time around.
There are about 7 actual original carrots remaining.
The box in the greenhouse is looking quite leafy.
There are actually carroty ends showing which look about 1/2" thick!
Just as well with the price of grub at the moment.
I was cleaning my bike up yesterday and found the panniers we bought for it in Holland.
They are sturdy and well made ,not like the rubbish you can buy here.
I fitted my bike rack on and then added the panniers and bungeed the lock to the rack between them.
Inside one were 3 or 4 receipts for sainsburys from 2003.
Carrots were 40p a kilo and brocolli was not much more.
Milk was about 29p for a litre of UHT
On Friday,I finished clearing the next bed of weeds.
It is sown with Alfafa which I think I remember is from the bean family.
This will get chopped off and dug in in a few months time the same as the clover and phacelia.
They were dinky little things.
I cut each one as small as I could and DS and I had them in 1 sandwich each !
I have been dehydrating this week also.
Not bodily, I am drying produce.
The L'equip machine I bought a few years ago is still going strong.
This weekend I dried about 9 courgettes on Saturday, 9 on Sunday
Monday I dried about 5 and around a cupful of runner beans
Today was 6 trays of Spinach
Tonight will be 3 more trays of courgettes(about 5 or 6 fruits) and a cupful of runner beans.
When they are dry, they are put into screw top jars till we use them.
Drying is an efficient way to store produce and takes up less room than most other storage.
Also it is cheap fuel wise as it is an overnight job to dry them and then they don't use any more until you cook them which you would have to do anyway.
We still have a jar of dried onions from about 3 years ago which is perfectly edible.
I pickled a large jar of onions for Christmas.
We have 2 jars of pickled beetroot from several years back which is fine still.
I looked up courgettes online and discovered Asda selling 4 fruits for a whole £1
The Kale is now edible and very flavour-some after a couple of months of just spinach interspersed with Molokia
The carrot bed did turn out to be mostly grass pretending to be carrot seedlings sadly.
I have resown but don't know if it will be any more successful this time around.
There are about 7 actual original carrots remaining.
The box in the greenhouse is looking quite leafy.
Just as well with the price of grub at the moment.
I was cleaning my bike up yesterday and found the panniers we bought for it in Holland.
They are sturdy and well made ,not like the rubbish you can buy here.
I fitted my bike rack on and then added the panniers and bungeed the lock to the rack between them.
Inside one were 3 or 4 receipts for sainsburys from 2003.
Carrots were 40p a kilo and brocolli was not much more.
Milk was about 29p for a litre of UHT
On Friday,I finished clearing the next bed of weeds.
It is sown with Alfafa which I think I remember is from the bean family.
This will get chopped off and dug in in a few months time the same as the clover and phacelia.
Friday, 27 July 2012
Green everywhere
The good weather has helped things along in the garden.
This is the view now and the one back in April looking over the fence dividing the lawn and the veg plot.
The peas are doing much better than expected.
About 6 of the plants were transplanted from modules and the rest are direct sowings.
The courgette/Zucchini bed is about 3 feet tall and lush with growth.
I am picking them and dehydrating as there are too many to eat .
Outdoor tomatoes have picked up well. There are fruits on some which is rather suprising considering they were the left overs from those that are living in the greenhouse.
Here are the outdoor plants with the newly cleared ground that I have been working on this week beyond.
Here are the washington cherry in the greenhouse
and the marmande with their unusual shaped fruits
Behind them is the old window blind that I had to incorporate yesterday due to the ridiculous 50 degree heat in the greenhouse with the windows wide open and the fan running for hours.
This is a quick snap of the strawberry beds with the cardboard mulch.
Most of the strawberry plants seem to have strawberry leaf spot but it didn't effect the fruit at all.
The cardboard should help to keep it contained.
I will have to keep my eye on them though because I don't see any runners yet and I might need to train them into pots as they cant very well root into the cardboard.
Monday, 16 July 2012
Carrots,weeds and Strawberries
The Carrot bed is full but of what?
Many of the grass like seedlings actually might just be grass after all.
I weeded and weeded and now there are a few actual positive sightings of carrot tops but most of it looks like little grasses.
However on pulling one up,there is a distinctive carroty niff so I replanted it and have left well alone.
The strawberries are finished fruiting and I am hard at work weeding the grass,Nettles and creeping buttercup out .
The two beds are crowded but they are beginning to take up some semblance of a strawberry patch as opposed to a miniature jungle.
Many snail and ant eggs are uncovered along with their parents.
I have sown clover in two of the onion beds and phacelia in the other.
These are green manures to improve the soil.
The clover is already up .
Amongst the Strawberries, I found several vetch seed pods and collected a few as they are supposed to be useful also as green manure.
Last week I bought a berry picking tool.
It looks like a Dustpan but the bottom is a comb rather than solid.
To use it ,you have to sort of scoop at the berries which become caught in the comb and drop into the pan.
It is an ingenious contraption, simple and effective.
I remember Ray Mears featuring a similar tool in one of his episodes.
It has sped up the berry harvesting by about 90% as previously I could spend an hour an evening on just harvesting raspberries and red currants.
My poor Berries are very crowded with weeds and will get a proper clear out once they have finished fruiting.
The Cleavers,Rogue Blackberry brambles and Bear Bind are everywhere.
On the harvesting side...
We have had quite a few courgettes and a few French beans and even one or two runners today.
There aren't many peas but they are lovely when we have had any.
Today was spent in weeding the strawbs and in hunting indoors for DS' document folder in which he had put all his qualification details and then mislaid the whole lot.
I found it .
The rain has been persistent.
There is fruit on the tomatoes but I don't know if they will ripen with so little sunshine.
We cheered ourselves up with pork chops and chips for tea.
The chops were courtesy of Lidls who were selling them half price this week.
The green veg was all from the garden which is satisfying.
Many of the grass like seedlings actually might just be grass after all.
I weeded and weeded and now there are a few actual positive sightings of carrot tops but most of it looks like little grasses.
However on pulling one up,there is a distinctive carroty niff so I replanted it and have left well alone.
The strawberries are finished fruiting and I am hard at work weeding the grass,Nettles and creeping buttercup out .
The two beds are crowded but they are beginning to take up some semblance of a strawberry patch as opposed to a miniature jungle.
Many snail and ant eggs are uncovered along with their parents.
I have sown clover in two of the onion beds and phacelia in the other.
These are green manures to improve the soil.
The clover is already up .
Amongst the Strawberries, I found several vetch seed pods and collected a few as they are supposed to be useful also as green manure.
Last week I bought a berry picking tool.
It looks like a Dustpan but the bottom is a comb rather than solid.
To use it ,you have to sort of scoop at the berries which become caught in the comb and drop into the pan.
It is an ingenious contraption, simple and effective.
I remember Ray Mears featuring a similar tool in one of his episodes.
It has sped up the berry harvesting by about 90% as previously I could spend an hour an evening on just harvesting raspberries and red currants.
My poor Berries are very crowded with weeds and will get a proper clear out once they have finished fruiting.
The Cleavers,Rogue Blackberry brambles and Bear Bind are everywhere.
On the harvesting side...
We have had quite a few courgettes and a few French beans and even one or two runners today.
There aren't many peas but they are lovely when we have had any.
Today was spent in weeding the strawbs and in hunting indoors for DS' document folder in which he had put all his qualification details and then mislaid the whole lot.
I found it .
The rain has been persistent.
There is fruit on the tomatoes but I don't know if they will ripen with so little sunshine.
We cheered ourselves up with pork chops and chips for tea.
The chops were courtesy of Lidls who were selling them half price this week.
The green veg was all from the garden which is satisfying.
Saturday, 7 July 2012
Long trips,Fish'n'chips,soggy drips
We traveled this week.
All the way to Scotland (nearly 600 miles) to see our daughter.
She had her graduation ceremony.
It was also the first time we have met her boyfriend.
He seems a nice young man, very polite and calm.
We ate at the pub for a treat.
Their fish and chips was nice but not the huge plateful you get down south.
The following day we tried a different pub.
This one took a whole hour to serve us and we had to reorder twice due to their having run out of various things. The eventual food was quite nice but it was so long in coming that the kitchen was closed before we could order dessert.
The return journey (by train) was long and a bit dull apart from the drunken revelers and the delays because of the floods which have been causing havoc apparently in the midlands .
We had almost no rain on the three days we were away an hadn't seen or heard any news or weather forecasts so we were quite surprised to hear about the delays.
Luckily,it was only an hour and a half longer to get to our destination than usual.
The garden is looking greener.
There are 4 new courgettes coming along.
Beans are reappearing on the French bean plants.
The Spinach is trying to bolt but I keep cutting off the flower heads as soon as they appear and so far the taste is still okay.
The Carrot bed is looking a bit more carroty and a bit less weedy.
I picked two punnets of ripe raspberries.
On Tuesday I made a rain pipe for the greenhouse.
I used an old rubber watering can hose minus the perforated part, as a hopper, then a piece of plastic tube for the down pipe and a little piece of copper pipe on the end of that to divert it into the bucket at the bottom.
There was a lid for this bucket so I cut a hole to take the piece of pipe.
It has about a 4" depth of water in there now.
Today I harvested the Japanese onions.
There are loads and they are big.
10 containers were chopped and frozen .
A big bag of onion tops was also frozen for use in stews.
Tomorrow if the weather allows, I must harvest the red onions and maybe the shallots.
The beds holding them will be green manured after I tidy them up with the Jalo.
All the way to Scotland (nearly 600 miles) to see our daughter.
She had her graduation ceremony.
It was also the first time we have met her boyfriend.
He seems a nice young man, very polite and calm.
We ate at the pub for a treat.
Their fish and chips was nice but not the huge plateful you get down south.
The following day we tried a different pub.
This one took a whole hour to serve us and we had to reorder twice due to their having run out of various things. The eventual food was quite nice but it was so long in coming that the kitchen was closed before we could order dessert.
The return journey (by train) was long and a bit dull apart from the drunken revelers and the delays because of the floods which have been causing havoc apparently in the midlands .
We had almost no rain on the three days we were away an hadn't seen or heard any news or weather forecasts so we were quite surprised to hear about the delays.
Luckily,it was only an hour and a half longer to get to our destination than usual.
The garden is looking greener.
There are 4 new courgettes coming along.
Beans are reappearing on the French bean plants.
The Spinach is trying to bolt but I keep cutting off the flower heads as soon as they appear and so far the taste is still okay.
The Carrot bed is looking a bit more carroty and a bit less weedy.
I picked two punnets of ripe raspberries.
On Tuesday I made a rain pipe for the greenhouse.
I used an old rubber watering can hose minus the perforated part, as a hopper, then a piece of plastic tube for the down pipe and a little piece of copper pipe on the end of that to divert it into the bucket at the bottom.
There was a lid for this bucket so I cut a hole to take the piece of pipe.
It has about a 4" depth of water in there now.
Today I harvested the Japanese onions.
There are loads and they are big.
10 containers were chopped and frozen .
A big bag of onion tops was also frozen for use in stews.
Tomorrow if the weather allows, I must harvest the red onions and maybe the shallots.
The beds holding them will be green manured after I tidy them up with the Jalo.
Thursday, 21 June 2012
Moving a bed can take all week
I decided that I really needed to move the raised bed that has been hidden under a pile of weeds for the last couple of years.
This would
I first of all had to wrestle them free from the blackberry bramble that had them in its clutches.
Then carefully, so as not to get covered in mud, slugs and dirty rain water, carry them one by one to their new sunnier, flatter position.
The area was covered in corrugated cardboard and then each scratchy Grey stone was placed on top in a rectangle.
I was quite tired by the time they were all in position.
Next day ,I began to fill the bed with rotted compost.
I say fill but really, I managed to cover the bottom to about an inch.
The following day, day 3, I dragged the old dustbins off theweed heap Bonfire and dug it up.
Then I sifted the weeds and stones,plastic and bits of metal out and filled the rest of the bed.
Day 4 was sowing day.
I had to wash the plastic seeder first to get rid of gritty little bits of seed left over from its last outing.
Then filled it from the new packet of Nantes carrot seed.
The seeder worked perfectly.
I did about a 3-4" spacing per row because that is how far it was between the right most wheel and each new furrow.
The whole bed was sown in around a minute and there was a half a packet of seed left.
Last of all, There was the great cat deterrent.
That is another name for the net that I stretched across it to keep the wretches from using it as a giant litter tray.
The other raised bed is also mainly breeze blocks.
I have 3 sorry looking cucumber plants floundering in that one.
The soil is topped with a 6 " deep layer of compost. Quite strawy looking but hopefully conducive to cuc growing.
I really must get around to sowing something else in there too.
On the harvesting front...
We have been eating Strawberries and Rhubarb.
Rasps are just turning.
Spinach is doing well.
Lettuce is cuttable about once a week (cut and come again).
There is some rocket beginning to thrive outdoors.
The indoor stuff is pathetic.
Spring onions are almost pull-able.
Japanese onions,red onions and shallots are very good this year.
Hopefully I wont have to buy any in all year.
This morning I took delivery of a huge roll of wed suppressing stuff.
We need to keep the side area next to the shed clear as it gets so overgrown that the plants grow into the shed and right up to the roof.
As we get older,that will be harder to keep down so it is worth future proofing.
For the same reason I have been more interested in gardening machines this year.
It is all very well crawling along on your hands and knees when you are 20, weeding, sowing etc, but once you get to the other end of the time-line, you want to get results without crippling yourself if you don't have to.
This would
- Allow me to sift earth into it to use exclusively for growing carrots.
- Utilize the area beside the Rhubarb which is going to waste
- Try out the little seeder again without stones to spoil things.
I first of all had to wrestle them free from the blackberry bramble that had them in its clutches.
Then carefully, so as not to get covered in mud, slugs and dirty rain water, carry them one by one to their new sunnier, flatter position.
The area was covered in corrugated cardboard and then each scratchy Grey stone was placed on top in a rectangle.
I was quite tired by the time they were all in position.
Next day ,I began to fill the bed with rotted compost.
I say fill but really, I managed to cover the bottom to about an inch.
The following day, day 3, I dragged the old dustbins off the
Then I sifted the weeds and stones,plastic and bits of metal out and filled the rest of the bed.
Day 4 was sowing day.
I had to wash the plastic seeder first to get rid of gritty little bits of seed left over from its last outing.
Then filled it from the new packet of Nantes carrot seed.
The seeder worked perfectly.
I did about a 3-4" spacing per row because that is how far it was between the right most wheel and each new furrow.
The whole bed was sown in around a minute and there was a half a packet of seed left.
Last of all, There was the great cat deterrent.
That is another name for the net that I stretched across it to keep the wretches from using it as a giant litter tray.
The other raised bed is also mainly breeze blocks.
I have 3 sorry looking cucumber plants floundering in that one.
The soil is topped with a 6 " deep layer of compost. Quite strawy looking but hopefully conducive to cuc growing.
I really must get around to sowing something else in there too.
On the harvesting front...
We have been eating Strawberries and Rhubarb.
Rasps are just turning.
Spinach is doing well.
Lettuce is cuttable about once a week (cut and come again).
There is some rocket beginning to thrive outdoors.
The indoor stuff is pathetic.
Spring onions are almost pull-able.
Japanese onions,red onions and shallots are very good this year.
Hopefully I wont have to buy any in all year.
This morning I took delivery of a huge roll of wed suppressing stuff.
We need to keep the side area next to the shed clear as it gets so overgrown that the plants grow into the shed and right up to the roof.
As we get older,that will be harder to keep down so it is worth future proofing.
For the same reason I have been more interested in gardening machines this year.
It is all very well crawling along on your hands and knees when you are 20, weeding, sowing etc, but once you get to the other end of the time-line, you want to get results without crippling yourself if you don't have to.
Tuesday, 1 May 2012
Free grub just lying there
Yesterday I discovered 2 big mushrooms growing in the compost.
One was about 4" across and the other a little smaller.
I picked them and brought them indoors,got out my mushroom and toadstool identifying book and found the ones that it looks like.
There were 4. One is not really edible but wont kill you, it goes yellow when you bruise it and smells of carbolic if you boil it,the worst thing it does is make you throw up.
I found the right one.
It is called abrupt bulb mushroom.
I nibbled a couple of little bits just to make double sure.
(I wouldn't have done if the 4th mushroom had been fatal,it would all have gone to the rubbish bin.)
We had them chopped up in our chicken stew.
The two mushrooms chopped up, were enough to fill a family sized christmas pudding bowl.
I also added a big bag of Molokhia which grows in our hedge and has done for all the years we have lived here.
I only recently discovered it is edible.
This morning the postman delivered some Russian Comfrey root cuttings.
I already have a couple of plants but didnt want to risk digging them up and dividing, until I had some more established.
A few years back, I bought the first lot, 10 cuttings from HDRA .
I planted them all in the shady bit under the trees and almost all of them disappeared for ever.
The three that emerged eventually,were moved before they too died.
Of course it is raining AGAIN so I have potted them up for now until I can get out long enough to get them a good site prepared.
The reason to use Russian Comfrey is, it doesn't seed itself.
It is only root dividable. Therefore,where you put it to grow,is where it remains.
Yesterday being only the 2nd sunny day this spring,I spent all afternoon chopping down a rambling rose that used to have a Trellis to hold it up.
The Trellis has sagged to nothing.
There was also an Elderberry tree growing up amongst it and some Sycamore.
The rose was hanging down into next doors garden as well as ours and is a nuisance so needed sorting.
It took me from 12.30 until 4pm to get it chopped down and then another hour and a half of shredding.
I have a huge pile still to shred but we wanted our tea and of course, it rained as soon as Tea was over.
With all this rain, the outdoor jobs just pile up and there isn't sufficient time to do everything when the sun dries it up enough to have a go.
One was about 4" across and the other a little smaller.
I picked them and brought them indoors,got out my mushroom and toadstool identifying book and found the ones that it looks like.
There were 4. One is not really edible but wont kill you, it goes yellow when you bruise it and smells of carbolic if you boil it,the worst thing it does is make you throw up.
I found the right one.
It is called abrupt bulb mushroom.
I nibbled a couple of little bits just to make double sure.
(I wouldn't have done if the 4th mushroom had been fatal,it would all have gone to the rubbish bin.)
We had them chopped up in our chicken stew.
The two mushrooms chopped up, were enough to fill a family sized christmas pudding bowl.
I also added a big bag of Molokhia which grows in our hedge and has done for all the years we have lived here.
I only recently discovered it is edible.
Comfrey
This morning the postman delivered some Russian Comfrey root cuttings.
I already have a couple of plants but didnt want to risk digging them up and dividing, until I had some more established.
A few years back, I bought the first lot, 10 cuttings from HDRA .
I planted them all in the shady bit under the trees and almost all of them disappeared for ever.
The three that emerged eventually,were moved before they too died.
Of course it is raining AGAIN so I have potted them up for now until I can get out long enough to get them a good site prepared.
The reason to use Russian Comfrey is, it doesn't seed itself.
It is only root dividable. Therefore,where you put it to grow,is where it remains.
Plant destruction
Yesterday being only the 2nd sunny day this spring,I spent all afternoon chopping down a rambling rose that used to have a Trellis to hold it up.
The Trellis has sagged to nothing.
There was also an Elderberry tree growing up amongst it and some Sycamore.
The rose was hanging down into next doors garden as well as ours and is a nuisance so needed sorting.
It took me from 12.30 until 4pm to get it chopped down and then another hour and a half of shredding.
I have a huge pile still to shred but we wanted our tea and of course, it rained as soon as Tea was over.
With all this rain, the outdoor jobs just pile up and there isn't sufficient time to do everything when the sun dries it up enough to have a go.
Friday, 27 April 2012
First sunny day for weeks!
It has been dry all day.
This morning I took all the failed pots from the cold frame.
There are still a good amount of plants remaining, except for the Kale so that will be replaced from my resowings which are coming along. Always sow and pot on more than you are going to use because the slugs and weather will soon deplete them .
I kept my fingers crossed for a dry afternoon as the lawn desperately needed cutting.
Our lawn is very big, around 45 feet wide and maybe 90 feet long.
Anyway I got it all cut and composted.
The old strimmer tidied up the edges.
Then I fiddled about with a flymo strimmer that we had inherited from OH's dad and got that working again.
It can flip around to edge the lawn apparently but I had had enough grass cutting for one day so that will have to wait.
No veg garden work today as I was too busy with the lawn.
It was about 12.30 when I started and 4pm when I finished.
We have Molokhia growing in our garden.
We have always had it but I have only just discovered that it is edible.
Another name for it is Jews Mallow.
It is a bush and gets little yellow pom pom flowers in the spring.
Anyway having discovered its edibility, I picked a good bunch and we had it with rice,chicken,mushrooms and onions for tea yesterday.
It was yummy.
OH who didn't know it was an new experiment , said tea tasted very 'clean' today.
That IS a compliment LOL
This morning I took all the failed pots from the cold frame.
There are still a good amount of plants remaining, except for the Kale so that will be replaced from my resowings which are coming along. Always sow and pot on more than you are going to use because the slugs and weather will soon deplete them .
I kept my fingers crossed for a dry afternoon as the lawn desperately needed cutting.
Our lawn is very big, around 45 feet wide and maybe 90 feet long.
Anyway I got it all cut and composted.
The old strimmer tidied up the edges.
Then I fiddled about with a flymo strimmer that we had inherited from OH's dad and got that working again.
It can flip around to edge the lawn apparently but I had had enough grass cutting for one day so that will have to wait.
No veg garden work today as I was too busy with the lawn.
It was about 12.30 when I started and 4pm when I finished.
Molokhia
We have Molokhia growing in our garden.
We have always had it but I have only just discovered that it is edible.
Another name for it is Jews Mallow.
It is a bush and gets little yellow pom pom flowers in the spring.
Anyway having discovered its edibility, I picked a good bunch and we had it with rice,chicken,mushrooms and onions for tea yesterday.
It was yummy.
OH who didn't know it was an new experiment , said tea tasted very 'clean' today.
That IS a compliment LOL
Monday, 2 April 2012
Muck spreading
Well mulch spreading really !
I took a large amount of rotted grass clippings and daubed them all over the fruit part of the veg garden.
My strawberries stand out now and the Rhubarb looks a bit more lively.
My neighbour inadvertently mentioned how well my Raspberries do considering I pretty much ignore them once they have finished fruiting.
It's true *Shrug*. They rarely get cut down after they are finished.
The new canes just grow and the old ones die and snap off.
No point fussing about trying to 'help' them, they know what they are doing.
I bought two full 2.5 kg bags of very small potatoes on Sunday. They were reduced to 76p and I am guessing it was because they are unwashed and golf ball sized.
No-one wants to fuss about cleaning such small veg.
I wont. They are going to be planted as they are ideal as seed potatoes.
This enterprise will happen next week I think once I am finished preparing their resting place.
Hopefully ,all those potatoes will see us through the year from about July onwards.
Cheap grub
Yesterday we had fish pie made with fish and chip shop scraps(boneless cod bits),left over bread made into crumbs and some reduced cheese blended in.
Todays dinner was home made fish and chips with the better bits from the fish and chip shops bag of scraps.
The bag costs £1 and does 2 meals for 3 people.
The chips are almost always home made.
I have a metal chip cutter bought in a boot fair for 50p years ago.
I never bother peeling potatoes,the skin is good for you.
I use a basic deep fat fryer, the kind you sit on the hob and watch till you see the smoke rising.
It really doesn't take very long (25 minutes ?)and no having to go out and get them.
I took a large amount of rotted grass clippings and daubed them all over the fruit part of the veg garden.
My strawberries stand out now and the Rhubarb looks a bit more lively.
My neighbour inadvertently mentioned how well my Raspberries do considering I pretty much ignore them once they have finished fruiting.
It's true *Shrug*. They rarely get cut down after they are finished.
The new canes just grow and the old ones die and snap off.
No point fussing about trying to 'help' them, they know what they are doing.
I bought two full 2.5 kg bags of very small potatoes on Sunday. They were reduced to 76p and I am guessing it was because they are unwashed and golf ball sized.
No-one wants to fuss about cleaning such small veg.
I wont. They are going to be planted as they are ideal as seed potatoes.
This enterprise will happen next week I think once I am finished preparing their resting place.
Hopefully ,all those potatoes will see us through the year from about July onwards.
Cheap grub
Yesterday we had fish pie made with fish and chip shop scraps(boneless cod bits),left over bread made into crumbs and some reduced cheese blended in.
Todays dinner was home made fish and chips with the better bits from the fish and chip shops bag of scraps.
The bag costs £1 and does 2 meals for 3 people.
The chips are almost always home made.
I have a metal chip cutter bought in a boot fair for 50p years ago.
I never bother peeling potatoes,the skin is good for you.
I use a basic deep fat fryer, the kind you sit on the hob and watch till you see the smoke rising.
It really doesn't take very long (25 minutes ?)and no having to go out and get them.
Friday, 17 February 2012
Success!
The DS has passed his driving test YAY
He took it yesterday.
Maintenance on the remote dwelling
OH finally found a plumber to sort out the water at the flat where DD is living while she is at uni.
It is our flat ,DS lived there for 3 years while he did his studies too and the water always took an age to heat.
The plumber said the cylinder and thermostat are at least 40 years old.
He fitted a new shower but couldn't get the electric to run to it so OH will need to get a sparks to sort that out.
DD broke it when she slipped in the bath and grabbed the shower to stop herself falling.
Good thing it didn't electrocute her!
Smooth surfing
We are now running on Sky LOL
The swap over from BT internet was smooth.
BT was running till 3pm on Monday and then cut out so we unplugged the modem and plugged in the new Sky modem.
It was all up and running in moments.
I have a new wifi dongle that I bought for my laptop as my wifi signal was not brilliant, the new dongle is wifi n which can take the faster speed sent by the modem.
It is running through at 144mbps instead of the 54 it previously ran at.
Left overs Friday
Today is Left overs day as usual.
When we have Bolognaise, I make the usual 4 portions just as though DD were here, then put one aside for DS to have today.
I generally have left overs curried with a baked spud or rice.
OH is back tonight instead of going to Police and we will have curried liver and bacon left over from Wednesday.
No Poo
I have gone back to washing my hair with bicarb.
It was too much bother last year when I was working from home but now I have time to faff about with it again.
It is quite easy and my hair has more body because of not being stripped of all oils every couple of days.
You put about 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate into a bowl, mix in some hot water and swirl it round, it goes cloudy and when you cant feel the granules(almost at once) you wet your hair with water and then work in the mixture.
Give it a good massage and wash it out.
He took it yesterday.
Maintenance on the remote dwelling
OH finally found a plumber to sort out the water at the flat where DD is living while she is at uni.
It is our flat ,DS lived there for 3 years while he did his studies too and the water always took an age to heat.
The plumber said the cylinder and thermostat are at least 40 years old.
He fitted a new shower but couldn't get the electric to run to it so OH will need to get a sparks to sort that out.
DD broke it when she slipped in the bath and grabbed the shower to stop herself falling.
Good thing it didn't electrocute her!
Smooth surfing
We are now running on Sky LOL
The swap over from BT internet was smooth.
BT was running till 3pm on Monday and then cut out so we unplugged the modem and plugged in the new Sky modem.
It was all up and running in moments.
I have a new wifi dongle that I bought for my laptop as my wifi signal was not brilliant, the new dongle is wifi n which can take the faster speed sent by the modem.
It is running through at 144mbps instead of the 54 it previously ran at.
Left overs Friday
Today is Left overs day as usual.
When we have Bolognaise, I make the usual 4 portions just as though DD were here, then put one aside for DS to have today.
I generally have left overs curried with a baked spud or rice.
OH is back tonight instead of going to Police and we will have curried liver and bacon left over from Wednesday.
No Poo
I have gone back to washing my hair with bicarb.
It was too much bother last year when I was working from home but now I have time to faff about with it again.
It is quite easy and my hair has more body because of not being stripped of all oils every couple of days.
You put about 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate into a bowl, mix in some hot water and swirl it round, it goes cloudy and when you cant feel the granules(almost at once) you wet your hair with water and then work in the mixture.
Give it a good massage and wash it out.
Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Tablets
Whinge Alert!!
OH really liked my e-reader when he saw me using it.
He looked on Ebay and couldn't find one as good for the money (no shit sherlock) .
So he bought an Android tablet second hand(70 odd pounds).
It didn't work properly so he sent it back and was refunded.
Then yesterday, the new replacement turned up.
This one is brand new and was over £100.
Needless to say, I am not impressed.
I mean I love it, it is small and neat and clever and can do lots of things but why?
He has a Netbook ,a laptop and an android phone.
There is no reasoning with him,he just doesn't bother to answer if he cant justify an expense, he will look on silently until I shut up.
I thought about it for a bit and wondered if I could say the same about my having bought an e-reader.
Was I just being silly and impulsive?
But I honestly can justify my reader.
For a start it was cheap because I mended it myself.
The money to buy it was entirely from surveys.
I already had lots and lots of free books that were on my laptop but were awkward to read because I
couldn't have the laptop on in the bedroom at night in bed. (It is one I got from DD and I mended by wiring through the battery connection so it cant work without being plugged in).
OH of course shares the room and has to sleep in the bed too and a 17" laptop is in the way however you position it.
It can display PDF which is handy as recipes are often put online and I can print to PDF then take it into the kitchen to follow the instructions which is awkward with a laptop and takes up loads less room.
I have used it every night since Christmas Eve.
Hobsons Choice
Anyway , it makes me reluctant to spend my squirreled pennies on anything in which I don't have full choice .
I had planned on buying a new front door from ebay with survey money but when I mentioned it to OH a couple of weeks ago, he went browsing ebay and as usual looks to the absolute top end of what we could afford and then thinks about adding on extras like finishing ,then looks at me as though I am going to say ,okay I will save £ 600 so that we can get the one you choose . Well that is NOT happening.
It would take me more than a month to accrue enough just to get a door sealed for *****s sake,what is wrong with buying the door and sealing it ourselves?
We could buy a new hardwood glazed door for under £200 but shrug, that ain't going to happen.
I give up.
My survey money is going to reestablish itself as mums pin money and that is that.
That doesn't include money saved from the housekeeping of course, that is family money and gets used for unexpected bills and saving.
Always look on The Bright side of Life
Good things that have come from stopping the self employment.
I now have pin money that is considered to be mine,it is trickle pennies but I don't care .
Earnings from self employment were not mine and the choice as to what to spend it on was mysteriously lacking too.
I can stay in bed till 8 am instead of getting up at 6 am.
I get breakfast away from the computer.
I get a lunch break and eat away from the computer.
I have time to cook from scratch every day.
I can sit in the living room and watch TV in the evening.
I get a Saturday and Sunday and if DS wants company into town during the week, I can go.
I am back to bargain hunting when Grocery shopping.
It is cheaper when I go shopping for food! A lot cheaper, less than half the cost of sending OH.
The Garden can get back into production and we will have cheap,organic,fresh fruit and veg.
I have time to exercise every day.
Answering the phone or the front door do not have me doing mental sums to work out how much time/money it is costing .
We have our dining room back and can eat like civilized people without dropping food down ourselves and being bombarded by the bloody Television. Absolute Bliss!
OH really liked my e-reader when he saw me using it.
He looked on Ebay and couldn't find one as good for the money (no shit sherlock) .
So he bought an Android tablet second hand(70 odd pounds).
It didn't work properly so he sent it back and was refunded.
Then yesterday, the new replacement turned up.
This one is brand new and was over £100.
Needless to say, I am not impressed.
I mean I love it, it is small and neat and clever and can do lots of things but why?
He has a Netbook ,a laptop and an android phone.
There is no reasoning with him,he just doesn't bother to answer if he cant justify an expense, he will look on silently until I shut up.
I thought about it for a bit and wondered if I could say the same about my having bought an e-reader.
Was I just being silly and impulsive?
But I honestly can justify my reader.
For a start it was cheap because I mended it myself.
The money to buy it was entirely from surveys.
I already had lots and lots of free books that were on my laptop but were awkward to read because I
couldn't have the laptop on in the bedroom at night in bed. (It is one I got from DD and I mended by wiring through the battery connection so it cant work without being plugged in).
OH of course shares the room and has to sleep in the bed too and a 17" laptop is in the way however you position it.
It can display PDF which is handy as recipes are often put online and I can print to PDF then take it into the kitchen to follow the instructions which is awkward with a laptop and takes up loads less room.
I have used it every night since Christmas Eve.
Hobsons Choice
Anyway , it makes me reluctant to spend my squirreled pennies on anything in which I don't have full choice .
I had planned on buying a new front door from ebay with survey money but when I mentioned it to OH a couple of weeks ago, he went browsing ebay and as usual looks to the absolute top end of what we could afford and then thinks about adding on extras like finishing ,then looks at me as though I am going to say ,okay I will save £ 600 so that we can get the one you choose . Well that is NOT happening.
It would take me more than a month to accrue enough just to get a door sealed for *****s sake,what is wrong with buying the door and sealing it ourselves?
We could buy a new hardwood glazed door for under £200 but shrug, that ain't going to happen.
I give up.
My survey money is going to reestablish itself as mums pin money and that is that.
That doesn't include money saved from the housekeeping of course, that is family money and gets used for unexpected bills and saving.
Always look on The Bright side of Life
Good things that have come from stopping the self employment.
I now have pin money that is considered to be mine,it is trickle pennies but I don't care .
Earnings from self employment were not mine and the choice as to what to spend it on was mysteriously lacking too.
I can stay in bed till 8 am instead of getting up at 6 am.
I get breakfast away from the computer.
I get a lunch break and eat away from the computer.
I have time to cook from scratch every day.
I can sit in the living room and watch TV in the evening.
I get a Saturday and Sunday and if DS wants company into town during the week, I can go.
I am back to bargain hunting when Grocery shopping.
It is cheaper when I go shopping for food! A lot cheaper, less than half the cost of sending OH.
The Garden can get back into production and we will have cheap,organic,fresh fruit and veg.
I have time to exercise every day.
Answering the phone or the front door do not have me doing mental sums to work out how much time/money it is costing .
We have our dining room back and can eat like civilized people without dropping food down ourselves and being bombarded by the bloody Television. Absolute Bliss!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Getting ready for the new year of growing
I went into town yesterday to post off OH's Ebay parcel, he wasn't selling, he had bought a not quite working tablet and wanted to return it.
Easy ,since I have no paid work now, I can always get down to the post office.
Anyway, on the way there, I thought I would pop in to the pound shop and see what seeds they had.
I already have 10 new packets but no Brussels or leeks, so I checked the shelves.
They had leeks in a combination pack but no Brussels.
After posting off the parcel (over £5 without extra insurance!!), I went to the 99p shop and they had different packs of seeds.
I bought 1 pack with Leeks included amongst others and 1 pack with 3 types of Beans.
As I was passing the pound stretcher store I thought I would just pop in and check on their seeds.
They didn't have much of interest but then I saw the fruit trees.
These are about 4 ft tall and they had apple,pear,cherry and plum so I selected a cherry and a plum and parted with the money.
I got a few interested glances as I walked back through town with a tree in each hand.
We have 4 fruit trees already, 1 pear and 3 apples.
2 of the apple trees were from woolworths
The other 2 trees were from wilkos and were about 18" high when we bought them,they had a good crop last year.
The new cherry tree is a Morello cherry, they are quite bitter but you can cook them and they make excellent jam and pies.
The plum will replace the one we cut down about 8 years ago . That was a heavy cropper but was over 25 years old and got very heavily damaged in a storm.
Superscrimpers
This is a program on Channel 4.
It is supposed to outline different ways of saving money or at least, not spending unnecessarily.
The family featured , spent £200 a WEEK! on food for a family of 5(one child,the youngest looked about 9).
They were challenged to spend only £50 for a week and they went off to Tesco and spent almost all of it.
Their bill showed they had made a saving of about £1.80 so they probably did spend all of it but incorporated a multi buy of some sort which brought it down.
Their dinners were planned out on paper and seemed to be chosen absolutely randomly based on how nice it sounded.
Their Sunday Dinner (they called it lunch) was beef and all the trimmings.
OH and I watched it with disbelief.
According to the presenter, they had 'managed' to produce dinner on Sunday for £16 !
What a Laugh!
Apparently the £50 was to cover only dinners or so I have heard.
That probably means school dinners and maybe breakfast club for 3 kids and the adults both eat bought food for work.
Our Sunday Dinner this week was Chicken,potatoes,greens and carrots with gravy.
Mondays Dinner was 1/2 a bag of cod pieces from the fish and chip shop (50pence) made into a pie with a cheesy breadcrumb topping, rice and vegetables.
Tuesdays was Chicken stew with Barley
Todays will be Chicken bolognaise and tomorrows will be chicken and ham and pineapple pizza.
Fridays will be left over bolognaise for 1 person and curried left over chicken stew for the others.
There is left over cooked rice or cous cous for the curry eaters.
Saturday will be home made fish and chips using the other half of the bag of fish and chip fish bits(50p) and home made chips with whats left of a bag of mixed vegetables and baked beans.
Bread for lunches is home made at 30 pence a loaf and fillings are typically sardines,baked beans,spreads
we drink tea mainly with milk
Chicken was £5
Greens around 80p
Carrots around 78p
Barley (half pack)40p
Pasta 25p
Cous cous 1/3rd pack around 30p
rice 1/2 pack 20p
Small amount of frozen veg 30p
baked beans 60p
Sardines 50p
Cheese £2.50/ half kilo
puree 25p
tin of tomatoes 38p
Reduced ham 80p
Marg about 1/3rd tub 33p
tea 90p a packet (lasts about 2 weeks)
Milk carton of uht is about 50p so around £1
Oats for breakfast about 80p
Raisins for breakfast 25p at the moment
Bananas around 1.20
Fish bits from fish and chip shop(easily enough for 8 portions but we made it into 6)£1
£18.09......our whole weeks food comes to only a little bit more than their one sunday meal
But be fair OSD
....I will divide it by person
we are only 3 at the moment as DD is away at Uni so it comes to £6.03 per person
They have 5 people so 6.03 multiplied by 5 is £30.15
They should be eating like kings on £50 a week for only dinners but they weren't given a lot of guidance about actually cooking from scratch or choosing less expensive brands.
Rip off UK again
There was also an article about extended warranty on electrical goods.
The presenter stood under a market awning with a collection of goods ,the price and the extended warranty price,alongside each other.
She pointed out that there are insurance companies that will cover your pricey electrics for less than these , however, she didn't once mention inbuilt obsolescence which the electrical industry is guilty of in this country.
The dirty truth is that in the rip off UK ,your washing machine is built to last 5 years and no more.
Once the parts are unavailable,you are screwed because how will it be mended?
Extended warranties are offered for .......oh yeah 5 years but the price tallies quite closely with the cost of a new machine .
It is like paying for a lottery.
Your machine goes wrong within the time and they will mend it or replace it, mending it isn't going to give you a new machine, it is the same machine with one less 5 year life-span part. If it doesn't go wrong within the 5 years, you get nothing at all even though you have paid enough for a new machine.
If they replace it ,you won the lottery and we know how likely that is.
We stopped buying these warranties when our last washing machine but 2, died exactly at the 5 year and 3 days mark.
The warranty was useless and we had to scrap the machine because you could no longer get parts.
Our last bought one , died as expected and we replaced it with a free-cycled machine for free,the person who gave us the machine was getting a new one as the part for her one was going to cost almost a new machine, funnily enough, our machine was the same make but a lesser spec so we could remove the part needed to mend hers,scrap the rest and have a higher spec working machine .
I thought I would sign up to the super scrimpers challenge.
So far it is only day two.
Yesterdays challenge was ..have a no spend day.
I didn't,I had 5 no spend days last week.
Todays was...find somewhere where you can get your hair cut as a model, free or cheap.
Hmm, I cut my own, I use mirrors and scissors and for the last year I have been using a Robocut but I can do it without too. I haven't had my hair cut outside our home for about 3 years and then it was a free cut using a voucher from a newspaper.
Previously to that it was around 12 years ago and my kids said it looked just the same as when I did it myself.
OH is the same. I bought him a phillips self cut type hair clipper about 3 years ago and he cuts his hair about every 6 weeks.
Easy ,since I have no paid work now, I can always get down to the post office.
Anyway, on the way there, I thought I would pop in to the pound shop and see what seeds they had.
I already have 10 new packets but no Brussels or leeks, so I checked the shelves.
They had leeks in a combination pack but no Brussels.
After posting off the parcel (over £5 without extra insurance!!), I went to the 99p shop and they had different packs of seeds.
I bought 1 pack with Leeks included amongst others and 1 pack with 3 types of Beans.
As I was passing the pound stretcher store I thought I would just pop in and check on their seeds.
They didn't have much of interest but then I saw the fruit trees.
These are about 4 ft tall and they had apple,pear,cherry and plum so I selected a cherry and a plum and parted with the money.
I got a few interested glances as I walked back through town with a tree in each hand.
We have 4 fruit trees already, 1 pear and 3 apples.
2 of the apple trees were from woolworths
The other 2 trees were from wilkos and were about 18" high when we bought them,they had a good crop last year.
The new cherry tree is a Morello cherry, they are quite bitter but you can cook them and they make excellent jam and pies.
The plum will replace the one we cut down about 8 years ago . That was a heavy cropper but was over 25 years old and got very heavily damaged in a storm.
Superscrimpers
This is a program on Channel 4.
It is supposed to outline different ways of saving money or at least, not spending unnecessarily.
The family featured , spent £200 a WEEK! on food for a family of 5(one child,the youngest looked about 9).
They were challenged to spend only £50 for a week and they went off to Tesco and spent almost all of it.
Their bill showed they had made a saving of about £1.80 so they probably did spend all of it but incorporated a multi buy of some sort which brought it down.
Their dinners were planned out on paper and seemed to be chosen absolutely randomly based on how nice it sounded.
Their Sunday Dinner (they called it lunch) was beef and all the trimmings.
OH and I watched it with disbelief.
According to the presenter, they had 'managed' to produce dinner on Sunday for £16 !
What a Laugh!
Apparently the £50 was to cover only dinners or so I have heard.
That probably means school dinners and maybe breakfast club for 3 kids and the adults both eat bought food for work.
Our Sunday Dinner this week was Chicken,potatoes,greens and carrots with gravy.
Mondays Dinner was 1/2 a bag of cod pieces from the fish and chip shop (50pence) made into a pie with a cheesy breadcrumb topping, rice and vegetables.
Tuesdays was Chicken stew with Barley
Todays will be Chicken bolognaise and tomorrows will be chicken and ham and pineapple pizza.
Fridays will be left over bolognaise for 1 person and curried left over chicken stew for the others.
There is left over cooked rice or cous cous for the curry eaters.
Saturday will be home made fish and chips using the other half of the bag of fish and chip fish bits(50p) and home made chips with whats left of a bag of mixed vegetables and baked beans.
Bread for lunches is home made at 30 pence a loaf and fillings are typically sardines,baked beans,spreads
we drink tea mainly with milk
Chicken was £5
Greens around 80p
Carrots around 78p
Barley (half pack)40p
Pasta 25p
Cous cous 1/3rd pack around 30p
rice 1/2 pack 20p
Small amount of frozen veg 30p
baked beans 60p
Sardines 50p
Cheese £2.50/ half kilo
puree 25p
tin of tomatoes 38p
Reduced ham 80p
Marg about 1/3rd tub 33p
tea 90p a packet (lasts about 2 weeks)
Milk carton of uht is about 50p so around £1
Oats for breakfast about 80p
Raisins for breakfast 25p at the moment
Bananas around 1.20
Fish bits from fish and chip shop(easily enough for 8 portions but we made it into 6)£1
£18.09......our whole weeks food comes to only a little bit more than their one sunday meal
But be fair OSD
....I will divide it by person
we are only 3 at the moment as DD is away at Uni so it comes to £6.03 per person
They have 5 people so 6.03 multiplied by 5 is £30.15
They should be eating like kings on £50 a week for only dinners but they weren't given a lot of guidance about actually cooking from scratch or choosing less expensive brands.
Rip off UK again
There was also an article about extended warranty on electrical goods.
The presenter stood under a market awning with a collection of goods ,the price and the extended warranty price,alongside each other.
She pointed out that there are insurance companies that will cover your pricey electrics for less than these , however, she didn't once mention inbuilt obsolescence which the electrical industry is guilty of in this country.
The dirty truth is that in the rip off UK ,your washing machine is built to last 5 years and no more.
Once the parts are unavailable,you are screwed because how will it be mended?
Extended warranties are offered for .......oh yeah 5 years but the price tallies quite closely with the cost of a new machine .
It is like paying for a lottery.
Your machine goes wrong within the time and they will mend it or replace it, mending it isn't going to give you a new machine, it is the same machine with one less 5 year life-span part. If it doesn't go wrong within the 5 years, you get nothing at all even though you have paid enough for a new machine.
If they replace it ,you won the lottery and we know how likely that is.
We stopped buying these warranties when our last washing machine but 2, died exactly at the 5 year and 3 days mark.
The warranty was useless and we had to scrap the machine because you could no longer get parts.
Our last bought one , died as expected and we replaced it with a free-cycled machine for free,the person who gave us the machine was getting a new one as the part for her one was going to cost almost a new machine, funnily enough, our machine was the same make but a lesser spec so we could remove the part needed to mend hers,scrap the rest and have a higher spec working machine .
I thought I would sign up to the super scrimpers challenge.
So far it is only day two.
Yesterdays challenge was ..have a no spend day.
I didn't,I had 5 no spend days last week.
Todays was...find somewhere where you can get your hair cut as a model, free or cheap.
Hmm, I cut my own, I use mirrors and scissors and for the last year I have been using a Robocut but I can do it without too. I haven't had my hair cut outside our home for about 3 years and then it was a free cut using a voucher from a newspaper.
Previously to that it was around 12 years ago and my kids said it looked just the same as when I did it myself.
OH is the same. I bought him a phillips self cut type hair clipper about 3 years ago and he cuts his hair about every 6 weeks.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
A rare trip to London
We hopped on the Motorbike today and zoomed to London.
Then parked up and changed from our leathers into jeans and jumped on a bus to Charing Cross.
We were up there to see the Da Vinci Milan Exhibition.
It was well worth it.
There were sketches on the most fragile looking pieces of paper some belong to the Queen and are on loan.
I love Leonardo's style of drawing because he shades with fine cross hatching and some of his light and shadow drawings are beautiful.
Of course there were paintings too including the 'new' discovery which is a painting of Jesus holding a glass globe.
For me the best exhibit is the copy of the Last supper which was hanging in the upstairs Gallery.
There was a huge life size print of the original painting which of course cant be transported because it is painted on a plaster wall. This is fading and flaking and sadly the worse for wear but hurray for the artist,he had a copy which he made on canvas and that was there in beautiful clear colours and completely intact.
There were also his preparatory sketches of various aspects of the painting.
I expect he did a lot more but the ones we saw were maybe all that survived.
I love art and especially Da vinci who's drawings were particularly realistic in an age where many painters will still making quite crude artwork.
There were not many mechanical drawings sadly but I suppose these were not particular to Milan.
Afterwards, we went to Pizza hut (another very rare treat) and had what was reportedly a Hawaiian(for me) and a farmhouse(OH) deep pan pizza of regular size.
Mine had absolutely no pineapple and the OH ended up with a chicken supreme.
We were hungry so we ate them anyway.
I think the waitress was Scandinavian and maybe misunderstood us, either that or we got someone else's order.
The base which was meant to be deep pan, seemed very light and bicarbonate of soda tasting.
Dear me, for nearly £9 each, we wont be hurrying back.
I can make a far more substantial pizza at home,twice the size with a real bread base for around £1.
Then parked up and changed from our leathers into jeans and jumped on a bus to Charing Cross.
We were up there to see the Da Vinci Milan Exhibition.
It was well worth it.
There were sketches on the most fragile looking pieces of paper some belong to the Queen and are on loan.
I love Leonardo's style of drawing because he shades with fine cross hatching and some of his light and shadow drawings are beautiful.
Of course there were paintings too including the 'new' discovery which is a painting of Jesus holding a glass globe.
For me the best exhibit is the copy of the Last supper which was hanging in the upstairs Gallery.
There was a huge life size print of the original painting which of course cant be transported because it is painted on a plaster wall. This is fading and flaking and sadly the worse for wear but hurray for the artist,he had a copy which he made on canvas and that was there in beautiful clear colours and completely intact.
There were also his preparatory sketches of various aspects of the painting.
I expect he did a lot more but the ones we saw were maybe all that survived.
I love art and especially Da vinci who's drawings were particularly realistic in an age where many painters will still making quite crude artwork.
There were not many mechanical drawings sadly but I suppose these were not particular to Milan.
Afterwards, we went to Pizza hut (another very rare treat) and had what was reportedly a Hawaiian(for me) and a farmhouse(OH) deep pan pizza of regular size.
Mine had absolutely no pineapple and the OH ended up with a chicken supreme.
We were hungry so we ate them anyway.
I think the waitress was Scandinavian and maybe misunderstood us, either that or we got someone else's order.
The base which was meant to be deep pan, seemed very light and bicarbonate of soda tasting.
Dear me, for nearly £9 each, we wont be hurrying back.
I can make a far more substantial pizza at home,twice the size with a real bread base for around £1.
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Blood from a stone
Last mights meals was one of those miraculous, nothing in the fridge jobs.
I took the chicken carcass from the previous weekend, and a frozen wing of turkey and bunged them in the slow cooker in the morning.
They bubbled away in water all day.
Then at tea time, I stuck 1 and a half cups of rice in a bowl,covered it with stock from the slow cooker and put the bowl in a knotted carrier bag, then zapped it on full in the microwave for 15 minutes.
The meat bits that came off the bones (a good 2 cups full) were added to 2 cups full of mixed frozen veg and heated through thoroughly with a stock cube added.
The cooked rice and meat and veg were then combined in the pan that the meat and veg were heated in .
It made a big bowl of chicken and turkey risotto.
Not wasting Bread.
We tend to cook a loaf in the bread maker then cut off an end. The end is put aside and we cut enough for lunch time sandwiches.
If it is just DS and me, we can make a loaf last 3 days.
IF OH gets there, he can polish it off in one day.
The end bits and end holey bits get left,so I collect them and put them in a bag in the freezer.
When certain people are on the hunt for toasting bread, they are much less fussy about end bits and holes and so the bits get eaten after all.
The thick end bits are nice for eating with stew or soup.
Thickening soups ,sauces and stews .
A grinder is a handy Gadget.
I use mine to grind lentils into powder.
This powder is excellent for fast thickening.
You can add it to most savoury things where you might thicken them with cornflour or even gravy powder. It has nothing added to it as gravy powder does and isn't as finnicky as cornflour or flour, you just sprinkle it on and stir it in when the food is hot.
A couple of minutes and it is done.
Our grinder also makes rice flour from rice which is handy for shortbread.
It grinds down porridge oats to give a more instant 'ready brek' effect when you add hot milk or water.
You can grind sugar to caster or icing sugar fineness.
You can of course grind coffee beans.
If you dehydrate veg or fruit,you can make powders from them too.
I took the chicken carcass from the previous weekend, and a frozen wing of turkey and bunged them in the slow cooker in the morning.
They bubbled away in water all day.
Then at tea time, I stuck 1 and a half cups of rice in a bowl,covered it with stock from the slow cooker and put the bowl in a knotted carrier bag, then zapped it on full in the microwave for 15 minutes.
The meat bits that came off the bones (a good 2 cups full) were added to 2 cups full of mixed frozen veg and heated through thoroughly with a stock cube added.
The cooked rice and meat and veg were then combined in the pan that the meat and veg were heated in .
It made a big bowl of chicken and turkey risotto.
Not wasting Bread.
We tend to cook a loaf in the bread maker then cut off an end. The end is put aside and we cut enough for lunch time sandwiches.
If it is just DS and me, we can make a loaf last 3 days.
IF OH gets there, he can polish it off in one day.
The end bits and end holey bits get left,so I collect them and put them in a bag in the freezer.
When certain people are on the hunt for toasting bread, they are much less fussy about end bits and holes and so the bits get eaten after all.
The thick end bits are nice for eating with stew or soup.
Thickening soups ,sauces and stews .
A grinder is a handy Gadget.
I use mine to grind lentils into powder.
This powder is excellent for fast thickening.
You can add it to most savoury things where you might thicken them with cornflour or even gravy powder. It has nothing added to it as gravy powder does and isn't as finnicky as cornflour or flour, you just sprinkle it on and stir it in when the food is hot.
A couple of minutes and it is done.
Our grinder also makes rice flour from rice which is handy for shortbread.
It grinds down porridge oats to give a more instant 'ready brek' effect when you add hot milk or water.
You can grind sugar to caster or icing sugar fineness.
You can of course grind coffee beans.
If you dehydrate veg or fruit,you can make powders from them too.
Monday, 16 January 2012
Good grief a week has whizzed by!
I have been avidly survey filling in and working hard to keep the spending down.
So far the tally is 66.58 over the 3 weekends of this year.
Yesterday, we drove to Asda and I bought 10 packets of raisins.
They were 24 pence each. Since last Septemberish, raisins have been beyond our spending limit and we have bought mixed fruit instead at 64 pence.
I don't care why they have reduced the raisins, I only know that as long as they are 24 pence, we will be buying a fair few when we go there.
Yesterdays raisin bounty saved me £4.10 because we would buy them anyway and that would have been the difference in price of buying 10 mixed fruit packs.
If I had stuck to raisins (hehe) they would have been around 86 pence and so the saving would have been £6.20.
Baked beans are now 30 pence a tin minimum in Asda and Tinned Tomatoes are 38 pence.
Not so long ago I could buy 5 tins of tomatoes for £1 and 4 tins of Baked beans for £1.
No wonder people are struggling.
Today I have a chicken carcass in the slow cooker along with a meaty Turkey wing.
They will make risotto with a big bowl of rice, an onion and some mixed vegetables.
Bookish Monday
I have just finished reading
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsay.
It is rather like a modern Version of the Richest Man in Babylon.
Dave advises getting rid of your credit cards.
(We never had any).
(I did this about 12 years ago in secret).
So far the tally is 66.58 over the 3 weekends of this year.
Yesterday, we drove to Asda and I bought 10 packets of raisins.
They were 24 pence each. Since last Septemberish, raisins have been beyond our spending limit and we have bought mixed fruit instead at 64 pence.
I don't care why they have reduced the raisins, I only know that as long as they are 24 pence, we will be buying a fair few when we go there.
Yesterdays raisin bounty saved me £4.10 because we would buy them anyway and that would have been the difference in price of buying 10 mixed fruit packs.
If I had stuck to raisins (hehe) they would have been around 86 pence and so the saving would have been £6.20.
Baked beans are now 30 pence a tin minimum in Asda and Tinned Tomatoes are 38 pence.
Not so long ago I could buy 5 tins of tomatoes for £1 and 4 tins of Baked beans for £1.
No wonder people are struggling.
Today I have a chicken carcass in the slow cooker along with a meaty Turkey wing.
They will make risotto with a big bowl of rice, an onion and some mixed vegetables.
Bookish Monday
I have just finished reading
The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsay.
It is rather like a modern Version of the Richest Man in Babylon.
Dave advises getting rid of your credit cards.
(We never had any).
Saving 1000 as an emergency fund by selling stuff or doing something extra to earn it...
(I did this about 12 years ago in secret).
Paying your debts as fast as you can manage it..
Luckily we just about got ours under control about 6 years ago when the car was paid off.
Saving 6 months living expenses.
We managed this last winter.
Paying off your mortgage as hard as you can..
Here we were very lucky because OH inherited enough to do that.
Investing any savings you can make above the 6 month expense fund
(This is the one I am going to work on this year although investing may just have to be banking it what with the economy absolutely frying the interest rate for savers)
OH pays into a pension pot at work so part of that is already done anyway.
His main mantra seems to be
'Live like no other so that you can live like no other'.
In other words,
Live as frugally as you can and the good times will come.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Tis the first day of the new year!
Happy new year to anyone who reads this.
At the moment I am watching swagbucks TV and writing this at the same time.
I have Opera as my web browser and when there are 2 tabs open, I click Tile and can have the pages side by side.
So the SBTV can play in one window and I can go to the next video as each one reaches the progress bar point , and still do something else at the same time.
My resolution this year is to get back to frugal earning and veg growing.
I shall also continue with my fitness through exercising and running.
This Christmas my weight has not risen much despite the lack of running.
We were much more sensible about what we ate.
I bought 1 tin of chocolates before Christmas and we received another as a present.
Last year we had 2 tins,received another and also had chocolate oranges.
Today we will have a turkey dinner rather like our Christmas Day meal, with a home made Christmas pud to follow.
Lunch time was home made bread,crackers, cheese and pate.
Coffee to follow.
The coffee was a free gift from Taylors or Harrowgate.
It is Christmas Blend and is actually very mild which I prefer.
My ebook reader has been busy this week.
So far it has only needed to be recharged once despite daily use for over a week.
I charged it on boxing day and it isnt even 1/4 used yet.
The men have gone for a driving lesson .
At the moment I am watching swagbucks TV and writing this at the same time.
I have Opera as my web browser and when there are 2 tabs open, I click Tile and can have the pages side by side.
So the SBTV can play in one window and I can go to the next video as each one reaches the progress bar point , and still do something else at the same time.
My resolution this year is to get back to frugal earning and veg growing.
I shall also continue with my fitness through exercising and running.
This Christmas my weight has not risen much despite the lack of running.
We were much more sensible about what we ate.
I bought 1 tin of chocolates before Christmas and we received another as a present.
Last year we had 2 tins,received another and also had chocolate oranges.
Today we will have a turkey dinner rather like our Christmas Day meal, with a home made Christmas pud to follow.
Lunch time was home made bread,crackers, cheese and pate.
Coffee to follow.
The coffee was a free gift from Taylors or Harrowgate.
It is Christmas Blend and is actually very mild which I prefer.
My ebook reader has been busy this week.
So far it has only needed to be recharged once despite daily use for over a week.
I charged it on boxing day and it isnt even 1/4 used yet.
The men have gone for a driving lesson .
Thursday, 24 November 2011
Thors day
Yesterday I had to return an Ebay purchase !
It was something I was quite looking forward to using but when it came, it was faulty.
The vendor arranged to pick up through city link and they were to come in the morning.
I was fuming by the time they turned up, 3.45, because I had to say no when my son suggested we went to town together.
The courier seemed oblivious to his lateness
Then he prepared to leave with the parcel and I said
wasn't he going to give me a receipt?
Apparently they never give receipts so I had him hand write one.
I shall expect my refund to be in paypal tomorrow or there will be text flying through the ether!
I like buying through Ebay because you can pay with paypal.
A couple of times I have used their resolution center and each time it has got me my money back.
Ebay's feedback is useful too.
Once I waited 6 weeks for an expensive item and I left neutral to say good item pity about the wait,to which the vendor responded by phone refunding my post costs(£50), I didn't think I was unreasonable to leave a neutral as I had contacted them from about week 3,every week till the item materialized, it wasn't like they didn't hear from me. It was the feedback that got the result eventually.
I bought an embroidery machine once a few years back and it came without the feet or part of the free arm. I wrote to the seller who insisted it was all there.
I think I spent about a week writing to her ,explaining that there was a free arm with it but that it had a second one which was the embroidery bit with all the feet stored in it.
She didn't realise she had forgotten to include it in the parcel until I priced up the cost of the missing feet and sent her links to where I would have to buy them and then said I would see her in the resolution center via paypal to negotiate the extra it would cost and how she could pay me!
Next day she phoned me saying she had found the other free arm complete with feet and it was in the post!
I think it was a genuine mistake but it is amazing what a little bit of help from a bigger corporation(with legal beagles) can do .
Today has been mainly spent in completing surveys and reading.
We had risotto for tea using the left over chicken from Monday,carrot,onion and the remains of a bag of Broccoli.
I thicken things with ground lentils now because it works rather like gravy powder but is less salty.
Im on the next Terry Pratchet book.
This one is called men at arms and follows straight on from 'Guards,Guards'.
That man has a fantastic sense of irony.
Seems a shame that he has Alzheimer's.
It was something I was quite looking forward to using but when it came, it was faulty.
The vendor arranged to pick up through city link and they were to come in the morning.
I was fuming by the time they turned up, 3.45, because I had to say no when my son suggested we went to town together.
The courier seemed oblivious to his lateness
Then he prepared to leave with the parcel and I said
wasn't he going to give me a receipt?
Apparently they never give receipts so I had him hand write one.
I shall expect my refund to be in paypal tomorrow or there will be text flying through the ether!
I like buying through Ebay because you can pay with paypal.
A couple of times I have used their resolution center and each time it has got me my money back.
Ebay's feedback is useful too.
Once I waited 6 weeks for an expensive item and I left neutral to say good item pity about the wait,to which the vendor responded by phone refunding my post costs(£50), I didn't think I was unreasonable to leave a neutral as I had contacted them from about week 3,every week till the item materialized, it wasn't like they didn't hear from me. It was the feedback that got the result eventually.
I bought an embroidery machine once a few years back and it came without the feet or part of the free arm. I wrote to the seller who insisted it was all there.
I think I spent about a week writing to her ,explaining that there was a free arm with it but that it had a second one which was the embroidery bit with all the feet stored in it.
She didn't realise she had forgotten to include it in the parcel until I priced up the cost of the missing feet and sent her links to where I would have to buy them and then said I would see her in the resolution center via paypal to negotiate the extra it would cost and how she could pay me!
Next day she phoned me saying she had found the other free arm complete with feet and it was in the post!
I think it was a genuine mistake but it is amazing what a little bit of help from a bigger corporation(with legal beagles) can do .
Today has been mainly spent in completing surveys and reading.
We had risotto for tea using the left over chicken from Monday,carrot,onion and the remains of a bag of Broccoli.
I thicken things with ground lentils now because it works rather like gravy powder but is less salty.
Im on the next Terry Pratchet book.
This one is called men at arms and follows straight on from 'Guards,Guards'.
That man has a fantastic sense of irony.
Seems a shame that he has Alzheimer's.
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