The Final Photos of November

 

The last day of the month, and looking through the photo file on my computer I realised that I hadn't shared these canal walk photos on the blog at all.  They were taken about two weeks ago before the frosty and very windy weather turned up.

It was just a lovely peaceful walk along the canal first thing in the morning with Mavis.  Alan was working away so we got out nice and early when the world along the canal was still coming to life, but still calm and quiet.

The sun was still coming up, and although it was cold it was beautiful.

There was one boater starting his engine and untying his ropes, but apart from him and one other dog walker with a pair of Labradors we saw no-one at all.

Smoke streamed out of some of the boats as the occupants lit fires in their log burners, and there was the hum of water pumps as others had showers or washed pots.  It was just the daily morning rituals of life on the canal, and it was so peaceful.

Then we walked round the bend, climbed the old stone steps and headed for home.

I turned round for one last photo, but with Mavis eager to get home and have her 'after walk gravy bone' and my need of coffee, it was a brief glance and then we headed for home and the warmth of the house.

See you tomorrow for the first day of December and the start of Blogmas.

Sue xx

The Co-op's Got Bananas!

 

What a brilliant title, I had to use it for the blog post too.

The other day we were dropping off the books that we had sorted through at Mum's last weekend, and arranging them onto the Booths charity book table and bookcase ... it's expanded now ... and I somehow managed to buy myself yet another book while I was there. 😁

We were having a 'didn't we do well finding those books a good home' chat in the upstairs café over our cups of coffee, when I suddenly realised that in the bag had been about half a dozen books that were actually mine, and that I had meant to take out of the bag before we got to Booths. I couldn't even buy them back for myself with a donation as by the time we got downstairs they had gone!!

So someone got a signed Jamie Oliver cookbook for a pound, what a bargain. 💖

Ah well, it's all for the local Air Ambulance a brilliant cause and one that really needs supporting now that their shop on the High Street has had to close down.

This book really caught my eye as Hunter Davies' name jumped out at me, and you all know how much I love reading about the war years, and just after.  It was only last month that I was reading his wife's book 'My Life in Houses' where she mentioned briefly about her husband's childhood.

Aren't the photos adorable, and so of their time.  I think lots of us will have photos of our parents, or ourselves for that matter, that date to this period or thereabouts.

It's on the 'to be read next year' pile.  📚

Well you have to be careful to be well stocked don't you.  😄

Sue xx

Up to Date ... for a Little While

 

I went through the freezer drawers last week and carefully reorganised everything, putting like with like and checking exactly what I had ... there was a lot of food.  

There always is isn't there, those innocent little drawers are filled to within an inch of their lives, like the best game of Tetris I have ever played ... well I was the Tetris queen when Jason had his Gameboy all those many years ago. 😄

I obviously had all the foods that I have bought or made, and there was already some of the food that we picked up from Mum's and shared between us.

I made an inventory, writing down everything that I now had and which drawer things were in.

I wrote out a few meal suggestions in lieu of a proper menu plan making the best use of some of the things that I had.  Then I ordered the Waitrose food last week, we went to Mum's again and turned off the freezer bringing the last few bits home with us.

Yep, you've guessed everything was squeezed into any available gap the minute we got home so it wouldn't thaw out and now my list, although still quite helpful is not telling the whole story.

I think the first two weeks of December had better be the time for me to eat from the freezer in a bid to make some space and also save myself some money to try and help me keep on budget.  I am determined not to spend more than the cash and the Nectar points that I have left, even though the Christmas adverts are telling us we have to buy, buy. buy.

I don't, don't, don't ...  I want to end 2024 in the black as far as this year long Challenge is concerned.  😀

And talking of Challenges, are there any bloggers up for the Challenge of doing Blogmas this December?  Just one post everyday from the 1st to the 24th or 25th whichever suits how you do Christmas,  it can be about anything ... Christmas related or not.

  I have decided that I am.  🎄

Sue xx

She will never change ...

 

I only saved this recently, but already I have forgotten where I picked it up from.

It just rang so true.  

We are currently trying to pick out Mum's absolute 'treasures' from the chaos of papers and trinkets that fill her drawers and cupboards.  

We have already filled the walls of her new room with her most treasured wall art, her clock, the portrait of my Dad with my youngest son at a couple of weeks old painted by the son in question a few years ago.  Family photos, all in multi-frames and labelled neatly with Children, Grand Children, and the final frame Great and Great-Great Grand Children.

Her bathroom is stocked with toiletries from home.  Twelve bars of Dove soap anyone ... at least she'll be nice and clean. 😄

Her clothes are all hanging freshly laundered and labelled in her new built-in wardrobe.

We ask her what she would like bringing from the bungalow regularly, but she can't remember what she has and what she loves.

Luckily I have a brilliant memory, although to be honest it is stretched to almost breaking point at the moment, but it means I can pick up most of Mum's things and know where they are from and what they mean to her.

There are my Dad's gardening and table tennis medals, the Derby and Joan garden gnomes, the silk flowers in a vase hand painted by my late Aunty Barbara.

And pride of place has gone to the cookery book that my Dad bought her way back in 1957 when they were first going out.  He obviously wanted the girl he was about to propose to, to know the foods that he liked as there is a piece of paper tucked inside with a list of his favourite foods and their page number.

These are all now in residence on one of her windowsills, she doesn't have many surfaces, but those that she does have are filling up with treasure.

I have to recognise that the bits of blank paper, the shopping lists from 2021 and the leaflets that Mum was 'saving' were also special to her, but in a care home room there is not the space to keep those sorts of 'treasures'.  Anyway it brought a smile to our faces when we arrived for a visit on Sunday after two full hours of sorting back at her bungalow, to find that my brother had taken the Radio Times and the Saturday newspaper for her the previous day, and someone had just given her a Sunday paper, so she already had a little stash of junk mail and the leaflets that fell from the newspapers and magazine to read through and pile up by her chair.  

She will never change ... but then she is my Mum. 💖

Sue xx

Pollen + Grace Chickpea Tikka Masala Review

I don't often have ready meals these days, but with the ingredients for the couple that I bought in my online order from Waitrose last week being pretty good I decided to have a little splurge.

This Chickpea Tikka Masala from Pollen + Grace  was the first one I decided to try, mostly because it was the shortest dated of them all.

My first thought on sliding it out of the cardboard sleeve was that they were being a bit stingy with the cauliflower, and perhaps even with the rice.

But after cooking to the instructions in the microwave I had to admit that the cauliflower had been buried deep in the sauce and they were nice big chunky bits that needed cutting into smaller pieces to eat ... and the rice was the perfect amount once I had added the water as instructed and it was cooked.

Although there were lots of ingredients, to my mind they are virtually all good ingredients and most of which I have in my cupboard and spice drawer.  I guess if I was to make something like this from scratch myself the spice list would be a lot smaller and the flavour profile a lot less complex.

I like the nutritional information and it was handy to have the '14 Plant Points' count for anyone that is trying to get their 30 plants a week, as instructed by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall recently.  Gosh if I was I would be almost halfway there in one meal!!

So what is my honest opinion?

I really enjoyed it, the flavour was really good, complex but not overly spicy or disappointingly mild. The amount of food was actually perfect for me, if I had been serving Alan he would have needed a naan bread or something to make him satisfied, but I liked the portion size.  

Would I buy it again was the question I asked myself immediately on finishing ... yes I think I would if I needed a ready meal, but I think I would actually rather try to recreate it for myself next time.  Though it's handy to know that this is a good meal to have in my back pocket, one that is flavourful, quick to cook and healthy to boot.

A processed meal but in my opinion not an ultra processed one.

For anyone that's interested in UPF and their effects on us, and that can get BBC2 on television or iPlayer, Dr Chris van Tulleken is on BBC2 at 9pm tonight in what sounds to be a very interesting programme.  Lots of us have read his book Ultra Processed People, so this could be a good refresher.  He's also doing the Royal Institutes Christmas Lectures this year, which will be broadcast on BBC4 and iPlayer in late December and which I am really looking forward to.

Sue xx

 

Bad Books and Brainwaves

 

I seem to be having a very slow reading month this November.

It got off to a bad start with a book that I just could not get into at all, I persevered for about a quarter of it's pages before deciding that life is just too short to read a book that you've been told is 'brilliant', that all the reviews say is the bees knees, but that just doesn't flow well for you.

I gave up and took it shopping with me, leaving it on the charity book table when I called into Booths for a coffee with Alan one day.

I had a brainwave the other day, when I used this voucher ...

... to pay for these Kyivs in the M&S near Mum's new home, we don't have an M&S near us. 😞

They would have cost me £3.75 with real money, but with my little voucher they were free.  I let Alan have the left over 25p off the cost of his bottle of milk.

After the last post when I worked out that I have just £49.92 to last me until the end of year, including buying any Christmas food that I decide I have to have, I have been pondering over trying to stay within my self-imposed budget restriction or throwing caution to the Christmas wind.  I had almost decided on the latter before realising yesterday that I have Nectar points that I have not cashed in for ages, a quick check on my Nectar App showed me that I have over £35 available.  

Result!!

Now £84. 92 sounds like a very good shopping amount for a big Christmas shop for little old me ... I'm happy. 😁 

Sue xx

Fishing in the Recycling Bin

 

When you find this in the paper recycling wheelie bin, you've just got to act haven't you ... well I did.  Alan might not have been tempted but I sure was.

To be honest I didn't know if I would be able to get the offer as it said 'new online delivery customers only', but I thought it was worth a go.  The offer is not quite as brilliant as it looks at first glance, as what you actually get is £20 off a first order over £80 and then £10 each off your next two orders over £80.  Now there's no way I would be spending that much, but I thought for the £20 off the first order I would give it a go.

My order went through with no problem and I got the discount, perhaps it was because it's been over a year since my last order, I don't really know, but anyway it worked.  😀

So here's what I got.  

I went for things that I have been struggling to buy elsewhere, and some quite treaty foods, but those that are still relative healthy and as free from nasties as possible.  There's absolutely no need for me to rush into eating all these up before Christmas as everything has really good dates on.  The only thing short-dated was the Chickpea Tikka Masala, and that did come with a note telling me I could refuse it if I wanted to.

I did have a moment this morning, the day after my delivery, when I thought 'What have I done to the budget?'  But after doing the maths it's nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be.  

In total this month and with only one week left of November, I have spent a grand total of £126.54,  which added to last months overspend means I am overspent on my self-imposed yearly target of £100 per month for shopping by only £50.08.

Looking at what I now have in the fridge and with the freezer now being packed to the gunnels thanks to food from Mum's and two of these pizzas (the other two I have put into Alan's freezer as I had no more space), I will definitely not be shopping next week!!

Now all I have to do is get all my December shopping for the grand total of £49.92.  😄

Sue xx

Coffee, Cake and Warm Sloths

 Just perfect, coffee and cake for breakfast ...

... I don't mind if I do.

A homemade Banana Bread Muffin is suitably breakfasty in my opinion ... I may have gone back to the tin for a second one!!

Oh, and I made it one step better with my latest book.  Nigel does write well, and this one is in nice short, sharp bursts of foody bliss that can be picked up as and when I have the urge to read.

Yes ... I have a sloth sat on my little stool.  

Our new neighbours/tenants opened a new shop in town and we called in to have a chat and have a look around.  Alan, always keen to support a small business, saw me looking at the sloths and bought me one before I could say anything.  

Happily he's microwaveable, so any sloth cuddles are usually warm ones.  😄

A bit of a 'heads up' for anyone that has previously bought and downloaded the Jacquie Lawson advent calendar, the big yearly reset has just been done, so clicking onto your already purchased calendars will mean that if you don't want to buy a new one this year, you can use any of your previous purchases as a 'new' advent calendar for this December.

I've bought this years, which this time is Paris based and looks really good, but I still prefer to play the Solitaire game in 2022, so I have all the old calendars saved on my computer.

Sue xx

The Weekend ... and Thank You

 

It was a good weekend.

Ginger and Mavis learned how to assemble a shelf unit thanks to Midwest Magic Cleaning's YouTube channel, while I had a shower first thing on Saturday morning, they were absolutely fascinated so I left them to it.  I hope they don't put their new skills into practice when I'm out and about. 😁

We took Mavis for a walk along the promenade in Morecambe on Sunday morning, gosh it was cold but we did just about miss the rain.  Obviously as the dark clouds rolled in we retreated to our favourite café there for a coffee each and a bacon bun shared between Alan and Mavis.

Rather than walk any further along the prom, after our drinks we called into the charity shop.  I turned round from browsing the books to see Alan grinning at me ... he's a plonker!!

No he didn't buy the hat, thank goodness. 😄

But I did buy a book.  💖

I couldn't resist, it's been added to my little pile of books to try and read in December.

When I got home I realised that the illustrations have been done by Shirley Hughes, what a coincidence!!  I only mentioned Shirley Hughes books the other day when Angela over on Tracing Rainbows was writing about children's authors and about the books our children read as youngsters. 

It should be a nice little read for December.

On our way home we stopped at Morrisons as Alan wanted some of their 'pick and mix' fresh salad for his lunch, he asked me if there was anything I fancied and this Tiger Bloomer caught my eye.  That's what happens when I only have a coffee in the café and sit and watch Alan chomping away, the old tummy starts to rumble.  It was very nice to have a couple of slices with butter and cheese when I got home.

But ... 

I looked at the label this morning while two more slices were toasting.

I'm not impressed, when will I remember this long list of ingredients that supermarket bread has?  For all it's long list of ingredients it was still stale this morning, so I have been busy toasting and re-toasting it and will put out a little bit each day finely crumbed up for the visiting pigeons.

Finally, thank you so much to all of you who left comments yesterday.  

It was a really worthwhile blog post, and I think most of us learnt something from it.  I have decided that my blog will remain with exactly the same access format as now for the foreseeable future, especially as the Follower numbers has now risen above a hundred and this would make it more complicated to change to being a private blog ... as far as I understand it. 

Again ... thank you.  

Sue xx

I'm Already Thinking of Next Year

 

This year has been such a shit-fest, sorry no other way to describe it, that I am not surprising myself that I am already thinking about next year.  

Usually I hold on to each year until the last possible moment, but this year I have my two new calendars ready to go, I have plans to buy a non-officey desk diary .. hey next year is retirement year for us both, four months in the office do not need a diary.  Instead of officey I am thinking bloggy, there you go ... spellcheck hates me!!  😄

At the moment I am thinking of moving away from Challenges on the blog, moving towards day to day simple living as it used to be on my Smaller Life blog.  A little bit more homey, days outey, but still booky and foody.  Continuing to annoy spellcheck with a gleam in my eye.  😎

I was looking at the stats on the blog the other day and over the course of the past couple of weeks have watched the Follower numbers going up and down with gay abandon.  What is it about the numbers 87, 88 and 89 that leaves the little total going up and down like a lift with a mind of its own.  I have no problem at all with fewer Followers, but being under the magic 100 does mean that I have the option of making the blog open only to those Followers, it's something that I am seriously thinking about the way the internet is going these days.

After all with over sixteen years of regularly posting on my various blogs under my belt, I have a beautifully, wonderful core of regular readers, blogging buddies and Followers that have put up with my comings and goings, my blog hopping and life changing ways and still for reasons best known only to themselves stay with me.

Brooke seems to know her tribe ... and I think I know mine.

Sue xx

A Shopping Catch-Up

 

I think I need a bit of a shopping catch up so that I have my records straight on here, so here we go.  😀

At the start of the first week of November I did the shopping for the Challenge that didn't actually happen spending £13.94.  Then at the start of the following week I spent the £16.49 that I posted about HERE.  I called that post The First Shopping of November ... confused?  Join the club.  😄

At the end of that same week we went to Booths for a coffee and did some more shopping, I spent £10.65 at Booths, then £1 for the book on the charity table in there, and then I spent a further £3.16 in Aldi.  A total of £14.81.

Tuesday of this week I called to Sainsbury's for a few fresh things.  I did the worst thing possible and went out hungry, hence the 'Giraffe Baton' purchase, which was very tasty actually.

I spent £10.45 on food.

And then just before I left I spotted this, another £3.95 spent.  So a grand total of £14.40 for this week.

A total spend up to now for this month of £ 59.64.

I fancied the magazine partly because I don't buy many Christmas magazines these days and partly for the calendar.  Gosh I used to buy a real stack of them many moons ago, now it's just something like this with a free calendar, and then happily this year I still have a couple of issues left of my gift Country Living subscription.

Then by a weird twist of coincidence while I was looking at and deleting old photos from the computer I came across this from November 2013.  The same magazine, the same free calendar (well the 2013 version of it), and a couple of other freebies.  Just look at the price difference in the last eleven years, which is only to be expected I suppose.

There we are, all caught up ... and only slightly confused.  😄

Sue xx

The £2 Challenge That Never Was

I had plans in place to do another £2 Challenge, following on from the first one, albeit a couple of months after.  Whereas the first challenge saw me going out each day armed with a £2 coin to spend on that days food, this time I had decided that I would go out with all £14 for the coming week and do the shopping all at once.

I thought that doing this, as well as challenging me, would also help lower this months budget, which thanks to last months overspend is over where it should be at the moment.

My plan was to use the same basic pantry items as last time, but swapping out the red chilli flakes for cumin.

I planned out the purchases carefully on the Sainsbury's online shopping website, chopping and changing the basket until I had what seemed like a good meal plan in place.

Then I went out armed with a shopping list, complete with the prices copied from the online shopping basket, and as you can see from the crossings out and price alterations ... filled in when I got back, some of the prices had changed before I even got to the shop and some of the items I decided to pick up from Aldi as they were cheaper.

My plan had been to call to Aldi on the way to Sainsbury's to pick up the things that I knew were cheaper there ... the sliced brown bread for example.  The cheapest bread at Sainsbury's was 75p, whereas the same loaf at Aldi was 47p, and when you are dealing with such a tight budget that seems like a huge difference.

Anyway once I was in Aldi I thought it made sense to also pick up anything on my list that was the same price or cheaper than in Sainsbury's as well.  After all our branch of Sainsbury's is pretty small and you are never guaranteed to get everything you want on any visit.  The apples were on the Aldi Super Six that week, so that saved me some money the minute I walked in the door.

Therefore, the Aldi shopping turned out to provide most of what I needed.

Aldi Receipt - £10.21 

Amazingly the peanut butter in Aldi had gone up to £1.49, and I knew from my online check that I could get it much cheaper in Sainsbury's.  I went for the own label version rather than the budget line as it had a higher percentage of nuts, 96% and a couple less additives.

Because of the eggs, apples and bread being cheaper than I had originally thought they would be, I managed to add a lemon and a carrot to my shopping.

Sainsbury Receipt - £3.73

A total spend of £13.94 for the week.

The store cupboard foods.

The fridge foods.

As I always do I counted out the things that I had bought, so that I could work out how many to allocate to each particular meal on the menu plan ... 18 potatoes. 🥔

It makes meal planning much easier if you know exactly what you have, when you have to make things last for a full week.

I got six slices out of the lemon, so I squeezed the twos ends into my cup of hot water on day one.  The slices as usual went into the freezer to be used one a day all week.

My first breakfast was a simple one of peanut butter on toast as I wanted to see what the peanut butter tasted like.  I don't know why I bought smooth, I've been preferring crunchy just recently, and they were both the same price.

The main reason for buying the peanut butter was to make some hummus, it's much cheaper than Tahini, and I've been finding I'm a bit sensitive to sesame seeds these days so it's good to avoid them when I can.

My first lunch was a couple of egg sandwiches, I allowed myself one of my mayonnaise sachets picked up for my freebie stash to bind the egg together slightly.

They were very tasty.

And that's where with one phone call the wheels fell off the Challenge wagon. 😐

It couldn't be helped and sometimes you just have to change your plans ... or indeed scrap them altogether ... at the last minute.  There's no need to whinge or complain when things like this happen, it's just a case of smile through gritted teeth and carry on along a different path.

I did sit down the other day and write out a neater version of the meal plan that I had come up with, to show you in case you were interested.  The only thing I forgot to add on there were the additional apples and bananas that were going to be available as snacks or additions to the breakfasts.

So, that was the £2 Challenge that never was.  

I've been incorporating the shopping into meals that I've grabbing here and there, and I will set too and make the Shepherdess Pie one day as I still have most of the ingredients for that.  It's not the end of world ... just the end of a challenge that never was.  😄

Sue xx

For information:

Exchange Rates

British Pound  £13.94

US Dollar  $17.78

Canadian Dollar  $24.79

Australian Dollar  27.19

Euro  €16.76

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