Shopping and Tidying

 

4th - Aldi - £24.13

It's been a bit of a manic end to the week.

We had seven viewings over the week, culminating in a second viewing on Saturday morning, one more first viewing at lunchtime and then three offers being put on the table all in the space of a couple of hours during Saturday afternoon.  Two of the offers are for the full asking price and one £5k lower.  Because all this was happening as the agents were getting ready to close for the weekend, we will find out tomorrow whether the one offer that we have accepted can move forward as quickly as the potential purchaser has said he could.

Anyway with all the comings and goings, last weeks shopping posts are slightly different.  I have the receipt for an Aldi shop that cost me £24.13, but no photo of the shopping.  It was all put away or taken around to Alan's before I realised, and I just did not have the will or the energy to get it all back out again.  So just the receipt for posterity.

7th  Booths £20.43

Then there is the Booths shopping from Friday which has no receipt, as I turned down the paper copy at the till and then accidentally deleted the email version off my phone.  I did this shopping after we had a coffee in the café there while we were out of the house for a viewing to go ahead.  It's just a few treaty bits which were all on offer with my Booths card.  I only actually needed bread and milk.  

At least I remembered both of them. 😄

It will be really good news if one of the full price offers works out, it means there will be no more tidying up every time we want to go out just in case there is a last minute viewing required.  No more wondering where I have hidden certain things to make everywhere looks super tidy and spacious when I get back, and now the things that usually live on the bench behind my front door, that have been living in the boot of my car can return to their rightful places.

Back to normal would be very good.

Sue xx

Quadruple Cooked Chips

It should imagine you've all heard of Triple Cooked Chips, available for quite a cost at lots of cafés and restaurants these days.  

Well, I had some a few weeks back when we went out for lunch to a local garden centre.  Alan was having a sandwich and side salad, he's a real salad man and always has been, and as I wasn't terribly hungry I decided to just have the side of chips to share with Alan along with some mayonnaise for dunking purposes.

The side of Triple Cooked Chips was £5.

Admittedly you did get a good sized portion, so much so that even with Alan having a few and me dunking away to my hearts desire, I couldn't finish them off.  Alan laughed when I fished a small poly bag out of my handbag and put the remaining 7 chips into it, I told him for that price ... for any price for that matter ... they were coming home with me.

They were popped straight into the freezer when we got home.

 

Then the other day I found a box in the freezer with just two fish fingers in it, not really enough for a fishfinger butty but then when I spied the chips in the same freezer drawer, my lunch idea materialised quickly.

My simple lunch a Quadruple Cooked Chip and Fish Finger Butty ... and very nice it was too.

Gosh those chips were really nice!! 😄

Sue xx

A Week of Breakfasts

 

Breakfast  1 - Yoghurt, Fruit and Granola

To lots of you this will probably be the most boring post you have ever looked at, but I did it with a purpose.  I wanted to photograph my breakfasts each day as a visual aid to remind me at a quick glance the variations that I am having in my current diet ... and by diet I mean way of eating ... I am not on a diet. I dislike that the word has been hijacked over the years to mean a weight-loss type way of eating.

It's not strictly chronological as I forgot on a couple of mornings to photograph what I ate, or remembered halfway though and realised that no one really wants to see a half eaten bowl of scrambled eggs, or a slice of toast and jam with two huge bites out of it.  But the things I forgot to photograph were not the end of the world, so as soon as I reached the magic seven days of photographed breakfasts I called it a day.

Breakfast  2 - Stewed Apple and Weetabix

Breakfast  3 - Strawberries and Weetabix 

Breakfast 4 -  Cheesy Scrambled Eggs on Toast

Breakfast 5 - Weetabix with Strawberries and Homegrown Blueberries

Breakfast 6 - Tomatoes and Red Onion on Toast

Breakfast 7 - Cheesy Scrambled Eggs with a Buttered Crust of Bread

I do eat other things occasionally and not always what is considered to be 'breakfast' food.  I have been known for instance to have dahl and rice, or soup and toast.  Breakfast doesn't have to mean cereals, fruits or something on toast.  In Winter porridge makes a regular appearance, but the weather has been far too warm for porridge this last few weeks.

Of course all these breakfasts were served with the obligatory cup of black coffee. I like at least two cups to start each and every day.  First I have just a cup of coffee, and then an hour later coffee and breakfast.  It's the civilised way to do things. 😄

Now I am in the process of doing the same thing for my lunches, but in the meantime ... what's your favourite breakfast?

Sue xx

Whiter Than White

 

Ginger snapped while getting ready to drink out of one of his drinking stations around the garden.

Caught mid-drink.

Just three of his choices of dish at this end of the garden, he also has the dish I have out for bees and insects ... which the little birds also seem to love ... the larger bird drinking pot and when he's in the mood the watering can, which is really funny to watch when there's only an inch of water in the bottom of it.

It's not that any of the water is fresher in one pot than any other container, as I fill them all up at the same time.  Maybe the different containers offer up a slightly different flavour or drinking experience, anyway it's funny to watch him going from place one to the other, and occasionally repeating it all over again.

https://youtu.be/dUI9DIXBCKc?si=Knk0_0mlYI0UutEL

Here is our latest bungalow walk-through for anyone that is interested in a bit of Whiter Than White. 😁

Sue xx

Reading BIG Books

For one reason and another I have not done a booky post for ages, so I thought it was about time to recitfy this and get back to my Monthly Reading lists. 

My reading mojo left me completely for a while, then it returned in a slow motion fashion and I took ages to plough my way through the books that I was reading. It didn't help that for some reason I was determined to read books that I didn't think I really wanted to keep, purely in a bid to reduce numbers by the time we move home.

Now as any reasonably normal person will tell you, reading books that you don't think you are going to like reading is not a sure-fire way of encouraging any sort of reading mojo to return, so she hid away and my reading almost came to a standstill ... although it did mean that numerous books were donated to the charity book table in Booths mostly half read and not worth writing about.

So, in a bid to keep me on track I have switched to a new way to choose my reading material.  I am now having a few weeks of reading mostly fiction books and BIG books.  If they are fiction and BIG then even better.  I rarely keep fiction books once I have read them, it's easy for me to part with them as usually they have cost less than a pound to buy and they have to be really special to warrant a second reading.

And if they are BIG books they will take up more space in the boxes when I come to pack away all my treasured books, so they will really have to earn their keep.

So here are the books that I read in July.

One Good Thing by Alexandra Potter

I really enjoyed this book, a good story line that all made perfect sense and not too formulaic. 

  Fiction - Donated

 The Mysterious Bakery on the Rue de Paris

I took this book on our weekend away in July and enjoyed every page, it was a really good story.

 Fiction - Donated

Going Dutch by Katie Fforde

I really enjoyed this one, living right beside the canal as we do reading about boats, both narrow, wide-beam or Dutch barges is nearly always going to be interesting.  I'll miss the canal when we move.

 Fiction and Big - Donated

Simplicious Flow by Sarah Wilson

This was a really good book, but one that I read thoroughly when I bought it in 2019 and then again this month, but one that I really don't need to keep going forward.

Big - Donated

Now I know who to blame for making me take all my extra napkins home every time that we eat out.  😄

That's it for last month, lets see what August brings for my reading mojo, and I will definitely be concentrating on BIG books.  

Sue xx

I would like to point out, that although I provide links to Amazon for the books that I read each month, not all my books are bought from Amazon.  If they are, some of them were bought from the Used section rather than at full price.  You do not need to spend a fortune to read good books. 💖

I share the links so that you can learn more about the books that I write about for yourself, or read reviews from others that have read them.  Of course most of the books I talk about would also be available from your local library, and if you are very lucky you might even find them in charity or thrift shops. 

There are so many ways to bring books into your home if you love reading. 📚