Walks, Beds, Tractors and Cash

 

Last weekend we took a trip to our favourite local garden centre.  After a quick walk around their little doggy walking orchard, Mavis wasn't really in the mood as there were strimmer noises coming from nearby, we had a spot of lunch and then went into the open greenhouses to fulfil my mission.

I had pulled out the raspberry canes just before the fence was re-stained as they had been attacked by something and were looking dreadful, and to be honest I don't like raspberries very much anyway!!

I needed something nice to fill the gap and we both agreed perennial flowering plants would be much better there.

Mission accomplished.

I think it looks so much better now, and we can both enjoy the flowers from our respective  patio doors.

I am keeping this one raised bed near the shed as my only vegetable growing area, it's all I need and want for the moment.  The empty space was full of kale until the other week, then the cabbage white caterpillars decimated it over the course of two days.

Alan's pride and joy, his recent purchase from a food fair in Morecambe a couple of weeks ago and now fondly known as 'Tractor Man'.  I bought Alan the fuchsia that's in it from Sainsbury's (for the grand sum of one pence, they were selling off all the Summer plants) as he was gutted that the little pot of marigolds that it was displayed with was not part of the sale. 🚜

I must say it's a relief having the garden so low maintenance now, which is not something I thought I would ever say until very recently.

End of month figures:

This month I have spent a total of £139.40.  😮

Which, if you have been following along supersonically carefully, means that you know I now have only £6.38 in my carried forwards amount.  Am I worried by this, not at all, it is a brand new month tomorrow and I can visit the cashpoint and get my next £100 ... which this time I will try not to spend all of.

I hope you have a great weekend. 💖

Sue xx

'These are a few of my favourite things ... '

 I was pegging some washing on the line yesterday, and as I did it in my usual neat fashion with certain pegs used for certain things ... some don't leave marks on clothes, some hold fine things on sturdily and some I just like the best ... I realised that I had favourites in lots of my day to day things.

Here are my favourite pegs, with my favourite spatula, my favourite chopping knife and my favourite chopping board.  The little cat is 'Pepper' my favourite and only salt cellar.  He's called Pepper because he's identical to one of the cats I first had when I met Alan, strangely enough the other one was called Ginger, she was a real beauty with a mind of her own.  I accidently broke the Pepper that held pepper.  😄

 

I almost forgot my favourite teaspoons.

I took these from my Mum's cutlery drawer when I left home to get married at 18, they were the only ones we had for a long time.  They came with me once again when I divorced my first husband, he got all the furniture and I got my son, my books, a steamer and my teaspoons.

It's funny what comes to mind when you are pegging out your smalls isn't it.  😄

https://youtu.be/0IagRZBvLtw?si=qQ3-TvQAmkdVsgzI

What are your favourite things?

Sue xx

What Do You Do on a Wet Bank Holiday Monday?

 

What do you do on a wet Bank Holiday Monday ... well after a day of working up in his office for Alan, reading for me, and then a bit of television while my cake baked, when Alan said he was going shopping you just know I was going to say "yes, I'll come too" don't you.  

I told myself that I would only buy some fresh things and a loaf of bread ... I really have got to stop lying to myself.  😄

I'm only joking as those of you who know my wacky sense of humour will realise, I actually did quite well.  Somehow wine and chocolate biscuits have now fallen into my 'fresh foods' category, although the odds of them living here long enough to go even slightly 'off' are miniscule.

My receipt.

I bought a larger than usual bag of baking potatoes as Aldi were completely out of loose baking spuds and the packs of four were so light as to not be worth the 75p cost.  So for twice the price I have definitely got more than twice the potatoes.

I have now totally blown the August budget and used up most of my savings from previous months too.  😳

Earlier I had gotten all the ingredients out to make a cake.  Banana and walnut this time, using my trusty, never fails 'all one weight and virtually all in the bowl at once' method.

My egg weighed 60g ... so the flour, margarine and sugar were all weighed out to that weight too, then all mixed thoroughly together with a dash of vanilla extract, before adding the banana and mashing that in.  Finishing off with the chopped up nuts and a quick stir before baking at 180° for around 25 minutes in a lined 1lb loaf tin.

Then I forgot to take a photo of the finished loaf ... this is a very similar looking one that I made in January 2023 and shared on my old blog, just to give you an idea of the finished article. It was very tasty and we had half each over the course of the evening.

Now the Bank Holiday over and we have  a long wait until the next one, which of course will be Christmas Day ... I bet it's still raining then!!

Sue xx

 

I've Gained Sixteen Inches ...

 

I've gained sixteen inches ... of worktop space that is not me personally.  

I couldn't resist that title, sorry.  😄

I decided on the spur of the moment the other day to put the air fryer away and claim back my worktop and my double hob.  I realised that I have been cooking in a completely different way since I have had it, and I want to go back to how I used to cook. 

This is how it looked on the worktop with the air fryer in situ, and the top picture shows that the toaster and kettle now fit back in their old places taking up much less space widthways too, and I get to use the back ring of the hob without having to move the kettle out of the way.

With such a small worktop space in my kitchen every inch matters and sixteen inches is a lot to lose, especially when it's something that only gets used every couple of days.  Obviously I have no space in my tiny kitchen for the air fryer to live in any of the cupboards, so it is temporarily living in the bottom of my wardrobe while I decide if it is something that I want to keep.

It feels completely different in the kitchen now with so much more of the worktop showing, I have to admit to really liking it again.  We'll see how it goes and I'll report back.

It made me think more about my breakfast this morning.  

I used the last of those Mediterranean veggies, I thought I better had before their birthday came around, and had them on a toasted oven bottom roll.  Normally I would have put the hummus spread, veggie topped rolls into the air fryer to melt the cheese,  but I just sprinkled less cheese and left them as they were. 

It was even more delicious than usual.  💚

Sue xx

A Lazy Girl Post

 

Just to show that I do eat the foods that you see me buying, here's a few of my meals from this week.

A lazy girl tea of spicy potato wedges ... I didn't use the pouch of extra spicy sauce that came with them swapping it for some mayo instead, I'm a bit of a spice wuss these days. 😄

They were delicious, but I'll try and be good and make my own next time, it would be a lot cheaper.  These wedges and their sauce, cost me around £2, if I work it out with the '2 for 3 offer' that they were on.  I could get a bag of potatoes for that!!

Breakfast on Wednesday before we set off for Mum's.

Two hash browns topped with 'ham' and eggs, filling and very necessary as by the time we had done some jobs for Mum as soon as we arrived, we were both very hungry and ready for lunch, so a couple of slices of toast just would not have 'cut the mustard'.

I bought these fishcakes a couple of weeks ago and froze them, so I decided to use the last of the lettuce from the fridge as a nice simple base for them.  Nothing else was needed as they were very filling.  I daren't scroll back and see how old the lettuce was, but it was very edible, if probably lacking in any nutrient value whatsoever.  

My fridge is excellent at keeping foods fresh ... for a long time.  😄

A simple lunch yesterday straight from the freezer, three of the chunky fish fingers that I bought a couple of weeks ago, served on a mayo spread oven bottom roll bought ages ago ... I could look it up, but this is a 'lazy girl' post. 😁

My tea last night was a large portion of the Mediterranean veggies with the salmon that was leftover from making our sandwiches on Wednesday and a pouch of rice.  Definitely lazy, but very tasty and healthy.

I think ... as you can tell from these meals ... that I have been in a bit of a kitchen slump recently.  I need to read through a couple of recipe books and try and get my cooking mojo back and use some of the tinned foods and freezer vegetables to make up some nice healthy meals.  

It is a busy time at the moment with Mum so unwell, Alan having hospital appointments and an operation coming up, which means he's needing to get through as much of the work that he thought he had until November to do, before the end of September.  I need to eat well, or maybe just slightly better, and try and get my health up to scratch too. 

 Oh well, we can but try.

Sue xx 

Homegrown Vegetables

There have not been many homegrown vegetables this year.  The weather has been the main enemy ... well that and the pesky little caterpillars that descended on and ate all my kale in the space of a couple of days.  

Two lots of potatoes are still to be harvested and I am still eating the tiny little courgettes as and when they are ready.  If I leave them to get too big they rot and fall off, so up to now every courgette I have cooked with has been about four inches long and not much fatter than a chipolata sausage!!

But the garlic and the onions have both done quite well.  The onions are all quiet small really, but the garlic was the star of the show.  After a couple of weeks of letting them all dry off outside whenever there was a sunny day, I got round to separating the cloves of garlic at the start of this week, the onions were done last week and have already been divided equally between me and Alan.

The total weight of the garlic, which now lives in our respective freezers.

I double bagged mine for longevity as I found I still had this garlic bought much earlier this year and also frozen.  I do like to store my garlic this way as none goes to waste.  You can use it straight from the freezer, and if you use a very sharp knife to top and tail each clove the skin just slips off.  By the time you have prepped the rest of your ingredients the garlic clove is thawed enough to slice or crush.

The only photo I've got that shows the homegrown onions.

I was adding some of the smallest ones to the Mediterranean vegetables that I bought from Morrisons the other day, along with a couple of squishy tomatoes from the fridge.  Oh, and there's a couple of my miniscule courgettes.  😄

I made enough from the Mediterranean veggies with the extra additions added, for a good few meals.

The first meal was this, using some of the hummus and a couple of the little veggie samosas, I ate one before I took the photo.

The next night, to use up the rest of the cooked rice I had a Kyiv with some more of the vegetables.  I would say there is enough for a couple more different meals, one of which I can pretty much guarantee with be a pizza.  🍕

Sue xx

 

Not Really Shopping ...

 

I went into Booths yesterday after seeing online that they were honouring last week's free Italian Pesto.  Which hadn't turned up in most, if not all of their stores last week much to a lot of people's dismay on the Booths Facebook group, alongside this week's freebie which was to be a Bertolli oil.

It's not really shopping if you don't spend any money is it. 😀 

I walked in, picked up the freebies and joined the queue at the till, bravely not being tempted by guilt to pick up anything else that I didn't really need.  As you can see from the receipt they were freebies worth having. 

When I got home and had a closer look at the ingredients I found that although they were worth having ... I can't have them.  😔

I knew the pesto would have cheese in it and I was going to pass this on to Alan as he loves pesto pasta, but I had no idea that there would be whey powder and skimmed milk powder in the oil.  

WHY?

I'm guessing to help the other ingredients mix together better, and also to pad it out a bit with a very cheap product, thereby saving the manufacturer a lot of money.

Alan has now got both products and is very happy.  Me, I'll stick to my olive oil, the only ingredient listed on the bottle is oil made from olives.

Sue xx

This Will Be the Last Shopping of August

 

We went to Morecambe for a doggy walk with Mavis along the prom, and so Alan could treat himself to a bacon butty in the café there, I make sure I eat before we go out and just have a coffee while he has this.  Going to Morecambe was dangerous as he also wanted to go into Morrisons for more of their ready prepared mix and match salad boxes.

And of course I was tempted into going in too.

I bought lots of things that I didn't really need, but really, really fancied ... maybe I should have had something to eat in the café!!

I spent £25.80.

When we got home Alan got back to work in the garden.  He had been working really hard all weekend, taking all the fence panels out and re-staining them while we have access to next doors garden.  At last we have all our fences matching rather than the three different colours it has been since we moved in.

I knew he had drunk all his Port, so I nipped out to Aldi to buy him a new bottle and some lemonade to go with it.  Two days heavy lifting and shifting deserved a treat.

Of course I didn't just come back with Port and lemonade. 😄

That's another £19.83 spent then!!

I seem to be having a stocking up of certain foods bonanza at the moment, hence the rice, tinned fish and mayo.  The crackers were bought to go with my hummus bought from Morrisons, and the tin of mandarins are all Bovey Belle's fault ... her Mandarin Orange Cake just sounded so delicious that I had to get some in, luckily I have all the other ingredients in already.

My total spend this week is already at £45.63, so I think it's about time to call it a day for this month's shopping, at least these little sugar sachets were free.  😄

Sue xx

Falling Down a Blogging Rabbit Hole

I got back from shopping yesterday (I'll show you what I bought on the next post), and while Alan was re-staining the fence panels outside, I decided to sort through one of the drawers in the living room, where I found my old Ration Challenge notebook.  It contains most of the photos that I used on the blog posts that I published while I was doing it for the last time.  I'm glad that I have kept it, it made for interesting reading and there are lots of nice simple recipes in there from the challenge days.

Then I fell down a blogging rabbit hole because I wanted to check which year the final Refugee Ration Challenge actually was, so I fired up the laptop and found the posts on my old blog 'A Smaller Life' ... it was 2022.

And HERE I am showing the contents of the ration pack when it arrived, after I had finalised my menu plans for the week.

There's not been a Refugee Ration Challenge since then, in a strange way I miss it as it did forge a good online community as well as raising a lot of money for refugees.

Looking at the meals I had that week really got me thinking.

Mostly about how much unnecessary and over-processed foods we buy and consume.

Which I am very guilty of!!

As you will see on my next post, when I show you the shopping that I had just bought.

I need to STOP IT and really simplify my purchases.

Gosh ... just look at the splurge shop I did at the end of the challenge, that was obviously a big kick back after a week of such simplicity.  Looking at it now really surprises me, it's a real case of from simplicity to excess, from needs to wants!

But it's good when you can make your self stop in your tracks and reassess things.  

Sue xx

It's Been Amazing ...

 

It's been amazing this year how long my stash of toiletries has lasted me, and continues to last me.

At the start of this year in a bid to cut shopping and save myself money, and also to monitor how long things last me, I decided to stop buying anything new and instead use up all the toiletries that were laying around in various places around the lodge.  They were everywhere initially, in the bedroom drawers, the basket in the wardrobe, in various make-up bags etc etc. as well as in the obvious place ... the bathroom.

I had lots of the freebies that Alan picks up when he stays in hotels on business trips, tiny shampoos, shower gels etc, I had stacks of things I had bought when they were on offer last year, toilet wipes, tissues and soaps,  and gifts from from family to me from the last two Christmases.

My first priority was to get rid of all the little bitty bits, and try and make what I had more logical.  In some ways I was saving the best for last, as I used up the sort of things that I wouldn't have dreamed of buying myself and all the annoying half full packs and containers of things.

Now I am down to the last little bar of hotel soap.

 The final bottle of Dove shower body wash.

(I don't clean my teeth in the shower, that's my old 'cleaning in small spaces' toothbrush that I use on the grout lines etc. 😄)

The last container of the body lotion from the Christmas gift pack two years ago.

Now things are starting to get much more logical and the stash is greatly reduced.  Everything fits in the two small baskets in my little bathroom shelf unit, one of which is in the top picture next to the contents of the other.  It was good going through everything this morning as I found a hand-cream that I didn't know I had, so that's another couple of weeks without having to buy a tube of hand-cream then. 😀

The only other things that I have are in the bathroom cabinet, including my stash of face creams, which were all bought in the week between Christmas and New Year last year when they were on a good offer, saving me over £5 a pack ... I'm glad I stocked up.

 It's good to be on the journey to just have in stock the few items that I use and need, and to be slowly getting through all of the things that I don't particularly like.  For instance I don't like shower gels or liquid soaps in plastic bottles, I'm a bar soap girl through and through and always have been.  I like one sort of body lotion that comes in a tub not a squeezy bottle, that way there's no fighting to get every last little bit out and I can remember what it smells like, unlike things that people have bought me that I have no idea about, and I don't like lots of choices ... I like the things that I like, and if they work for me I don't really see the need to experiment with others.  So I tend to want to have one bar of soap, one tube of toothpaste, one face-cream, one hand-cream, one deodorant, one shampoo etc etc.

I've been thinking about next years finances a lot this weekend, and getting right back to basics is going to be very necessary next year when I retire a year early and yet have no state pension coming in.  It's not scary in the least, in fact it's somehow strangely invigorating the thought of it all.

Sue xx