50p a day til christmas, healthily?!-Weezl's next challenge (part 2)

Confuzzled

boredofbeingathome wrote: »

Good grief, are you taking the wee on Weezles thread?:p:rotfl::rotfl:

The things you learn about.:rotfl:

aye indeed i am but at least i'm not taking the p*ss (as mentioned i'll leave that up to my ex) :rotfl:

Savvy_sewing

I have been away in Prague for 5 days, and DS was left sausages, and ham, cheese etc along with fruit. I thought it would all be demolished but he didnt eat anything here except a pot noodle!! So I have had to throw it all out as its gone off, mouldy, etc So much food wasted has really annoyed me. OH he ate all the jelly and biscuits!! What a thing to live on!. He hardly stayed in the cottage, he was at his friends or his sisters.
The benefits have messed up the girls and I have had to help with some food shopping again. This means that I cannot spend anything else on food, until the CSA get thier act together and get the money they owe me back. (Long story, but I am owed over £700 now).
So from today its work my way through what I could salvedge and the storecupboard.
I have been trying to catch up with this thread all evening. I am inspired by everyone and tomorrow I will be out in the garden checking whats grown while I was away. And weed a lot!. My garden is over run with weeds. I must ask the neighbours for help, as they are a Weed exterminating company!! Dont know them but I think I might try knocking on the door at the weekend and ask thier advise.
Even the greenhouse floor is now covered in creeper with purple flowers on it. And jpoppies behind it.! Land hadn't been used for a while before I came here, and I have only managed to get about a third of it dug over, for my onions, carrots and cabbages. Must try harder thats for sure.

Elfinwings

Morning all, I think the greay weather has made us all very quiet!
Thank you very much Confuzzled and Shaz for the info on composting, I have had a thorough read of both your suggested websites and now feel that I have some idea of what to do! I'm very glad of your help, because I think my compost would have turned out very slimy and smelly!!!

Confuzzled, I'm impressed by the very mature friendship you clearly have with your ex, and how you have found a way to make the best possible arrangements for your daughter. It's not everyone who can be so mature about things! I like the sound of your upstairs 'snug' living room too, it's only convention after all that dictates a living room must be on ground level!

I found myself quite green-eyed at your wonderful bargains, I usually time my shopping for the second round of yellow stickers, but very rarely find things marked down as much as they do in your supermarket! I did go to the market yesterday though and was quite pleased with my bargains, I got a big pack of bacon offcults, lettuce, spring onions, carrier bag of brown onions, savoy cabbage and cucumber for £3.58.

Mooloo - hope you had a lovely trip. Good luck with the weeds, it can be a real pain can't it! It's not very organically minded, but glysophate weedkiller could be the answer? especially for bindweed-type creepers as it sounds you have got.

Confuzzled

Elfinwings wrote: »

Thank you very much Confuzzled and Shaz for the info on composting,...

Confuzzled, I'm impressed by the very mature friendship you clearly have with your ex, and how you have found a way to make the best possible arrangements for your daughter.........

I found myself quite green-eyed at your wonderful bargains.

aww thanks elfinwings and np, always happy to help! where would i be without insatiable desire to learn (oh and google!) i've actually discovered that i am likely to get some funding to take an OU course so i'm going to hopefully take the course on environment, development and international studies. this should in theory constitute my access course which means i should then be able to start a new degree program at st andrews university Sustainable Development (first programme of it's type...in the entire WORLD!) so here's hoping!

thank you also for the comments about my relationship with the ex. i think the key thing here was realising and acting quickly on the fact that we make better friends than spouses. yes it dragged on longer than it should have but not to the point of bitterness. i have a tendacy to be friends with my exes with a few well deserved exceptions so perhaps for me it's not quite so unusual though i do understand what you mean. i think the real key to having a working civil relationship with an ex is timing!

as for the living room /bedroom swap, my place is actually a semiterraced bungalow however i can understand your conclusion about it being upstairs as most people tend to live on two floors these days and the bedrooms would normally be up top. and yes it's just about convention that the living room is downstairs (well normally that's more convenient too). i watched an interesting 'the home show' a few weeks ago where george (the yummy looking architect! ) moved the kitchen living room upstairs to take advantage of the space and roof terrace. most would have balked at that but it made sense and actually i'd told my daughter before he announced his plan that that was the only sensible thing to do

our house is slightly odd the way it's set up, it is in a row of 3 terraced bungalows then attached to the 3rd (mine) are some normal 2 floor terrraced houses set back about half the depth of the bungalows (sorry i can't remember the british term for those kind of homes) so basically i have one shared wall in the current living room with old people next door so that might help with the heat. but the larger bedroom has the entire north side and half the sidewall exposed to the elements. the neighbours in the house that adjoins to the small bedroom are in their 50's i'd say so not quite at the 'ooh i can benefit from their excessively warm house' stage just yet!

on the clearance front it sounds like you've done well! believe me most places don't have prices that good anymore these days, the ex even commented to that effect when i showed him the goodies! i suspect our morrisons manager is keen on waste management and realises that a small amount paid on the goods is better than none, makes them look better at inventory management AND costs less in waste removal as well as being more ecologically friendly. it may also be partly to do with the council as our council is now releasing figures of 40% recycling in our area which i do believe. the facilities we have are excellent and put larger cities to shame (tsk tsk glasgow! edinburgh gets only 1tsk they're not too bad) i could be wrong here but in my experience from talking to the yellow sticker employees (and from ex having worked at an asda for a few years) it sounds like a lot of store policy about clearance/reductions pricing is very much down to the manager so i think i just got lucky

when i was in the hospital awaiting the birth of my wee one the ex found an amazing tesco near the hospital. every night he was in their collecting goodies for a pittance which was good as we were so skint at the time. i still remember that fondly, a week of delecacies (well to us!) and much tastier than hospital food. he made sure to time our departure for clearance time so we could take some home with us too :rotfl:

ohhh i got my second foraging book (free with amazon vouchers from taking surveys) it's the 5th river cottage handbook 'edible seashore' and i love it already, the author john wright has a hilarious writing style! it's actually a sturdy but comfortably sized hardback with superb photos so i'm looking forward to using it. i have one more foraging book i want to get soon (supposed to be better than foods for free!) and after that i shall resume collecting amazon vouchers to go towards a wii and wii fit for me and the wee one for christmas (fun AND exercise on dreary wet winter days) but i figured these are worth spending the vouchers on now as they are already helping to lower our food budget!

anyway i'm off to do a spot of breakfast making, hope everyone has a lovely (despite the weather) day

Savvy_sewing

Just before I moved to the cottage I ordered a pocket sized Food for Free, book, and looked at it avidly. Since I actually moved in I havent looked at it once!! I am off to find it!.:o

Confuzzled

today has been a bit of a lazy day, the weather is grim and has made me feel soooo tired. however i did make another very tasty 'brunch' (i use that term mostly when i get off to a late start and miss breakfast!)

it consisted of the remains of last nights salad. it was slightly wilted as there wasn't enough room in the fridge for it. the salad contained clover flowers, rose petals, nasturtium leaves and flowers, red pepper, tomato, carrot and rocket.

i threw half a chopped onion into the frying pan with some butter and let it soften a bit then added the remains of my salad. i cooked this til it was reasonably soft then added in a bit of garlic puree and 2 tsps of some tapenade i have in the fridge.

then i cracked 4 eggs over the top. i'd intended to cook it up a bit like an uitsmijter (the dutch often cook up bacon and maybe onions then fry an egg over the top and sprinkle with cheese) but the veggies were starting to burn so i just loosely scrambled the eggs in.

this made a nice brunch sized portion (ie cheap way of covering 2 meals all in one!) of what the ex referred to as 'restaurant quality' nosh. i must admit the slightly carmelised veggies and the hint of sweetness from the peppers was lovely in juxtaposition form the slight saltiness of the tapenade.

also on the cooking side of things today i've had a pot of ham and yellow split pea soup on the go. i put a gammon hough (quite a large one i got reduced to 89p) in the slow cooker with 2 chopped limp carrots, 3 potatoes with more eyes than your average fly (eyes removed of course!) 3 small onions, 250g of yellow split peas, 100g of scotch broth mix, a good amount of garlic granules, some sage, cumin (i know sage and cumin sound an odd combination but try them sooooo perfect for soup!) and some mixed herbs.

i also chucked in 2 mushroom stock cubes that i got from AF, i have so many now that i use them in a LOT of things

i let that cook on high in the slow cooker for a few hours then i removed the hough and removed most of the meat. the remaining bone fat and shreds of meat will be used to make stock with for another pot of ham and pea soup in the future.

i'm really looking forward to this, the smell through the house is almost torture and i've tasted the broth and it's heaven, can't wait! we have a lot of reduced bread i couldn't squeeze in the freezer so i can even afford to have my much loved bread and butter (heavy on the butter) with the soup :T

aside from cooking i've been chuckling my way through the edible seashore book i mentioned earlier. if you're into foraging and have access to a relatively clean area (i fear how much the oceans in general are dirty) then you might enjoy the book, i certainly am!

i thought about having a nap but my wee one is so excited right now i don't stand a chance so i'm on the computer instead rambling on as i do

anyway just thought i'd pop on and share some frugal doings with you all, i quite enjoy reading about others thrifty activities as i find they motivate me to get off my backside and do it myself!

have fun all, i promise to enjoy the soup even more so for each and every one of you

ceridwen

Confuzzled wrote: »

aww thanks elfinwings and np, always happy to help! where would i be without insatiable desire to learn (oh and google!) i've actually discovered that i am likely to get some funding to take an OU course so i'm going to hopefully take the course on environment, development and international studies. this should in theory constitute my access course which means i should then be able to start a new degree program at st andrews university Sustainable Development (first programme of it's type...in the entire WORLD!) so here's hoping!

Ah....now that confirms that I'm getting better at "peering through my computer screen" and having "conversations" with people....I knew it....I knew it.....I can spot another like mind when I see it...:D

I had vaguely registered that its now possible at last to study this sorta thing at University. I never went to Uni myself...L..OOO...N...G STORY and loadsa regrets ....

One leetle part of why I didnt....though theres a whole package of reasons....is because back in my day there simply wasnt any courses I wanted to study. I was looking for courses like this some decades before they were even thought of....so of course they werent there. I'm surprised its taken THIS long before they've even started producing courses like this - I knew I was ahead of my time - but I didnt think it was by THAT much. So -very pleased to hear that they have at long long last started this up - and that you will be doing this. I've often cherished a little daydream that in a different (future) Society that I would have done a course like this and then had a career helping to clear up the mess made of the Planet in the 20th Century and/or do some "planning" type stuff for the future. OOOh....envious...moi.....o' course not (much).

This type of course is the future and there is going to be more of them. This is just the start. There is also going to be courses where people learn how to clear up the seas/earth/etc that have been so blighted by people in the 20th Century - I dont know whether these have started yet...I dont know if they are even on the "drawing board" yet. I know there WILL be courses like this in the future though and I think they might start up pretty soon now. OOOOH....OOOH...OOOH....leaps up and down a bit with excitement.....:T. Its too late for me now - these sort of courses will only be pretty much the norm in about 10 years time I anticipate - and I am now very near retirement - but hey...you go gal...:T

I wish you luck with this.

AudreyHepburn_2

Guapa1 wrote: »

Half a cup of lemon and lime juice (fresh lemon, bottle lime juice)

Hi Guapal!

Sorry is that half a cup of lemon juice AND half a cup of lime juice?

Confuzzled

ceridwen wrote: »

I had vaguely registered that its now possible at last to study this sorta thing at University. I never went to Uni myself...L..OOO...N...G STORY and loadsa regrets ....

One leetle part of why I didnt....though theres a whole package of reasons....is because back in my day there simply wasnt any courses I wanted to study. I was looking for courses like this some decades before they were even thought of....so of course they werent there. I'm surprised its taken THIS long before they've even started producing courses like this - I knew I was ahead of my time - but I didnt think it was by THAT much. So -very pleased to hear that they have at long long last started this up - and that you will be doing this. I've often cherished a little daydream that in a different (future) Society that I would have done a course like this and then had a career helping to clear up the mess made of the Planet in the 20th Century and/or do some "planning" type stuff for the future. OOOh....envious...moi.....o' course not (much).

This type of course is the future and there is going to be more of them. This is just the start. There is also going to be courses where people learn how to clear up the seas/earth/etc that have been so blighted by people in the 20th Century - I dont know whether these have started yet...I dont know if they are even on the "drawing board" yet. I know there WILL be courses like this in the future though and I think they might start up pretty soon now. OOOOH....OOOH...OOOH....leaps up and down a bit with excitement.....:T. Its too late for me now - these sort of courses will only be pretty much the norm in about 10 years time I anticipate - and I am now very near retirement - but hey...you go gal...:T

I wish you luck with this.

well thank you ceridwen *takes a wee bow with a cheeky grin on her face*

appearantly they had their first graduate of this course in 2008 so it's new indeed and such a shame it took them so long. i suspect the interest has been there for some time (at least since the 80's when recycling started to come into it's own...slowly) but with big industry and fuel providers wielding soooo much power it wasn't really in the governments interest to push for REAL environmental change. however now that it's truly obvious what a mess we're in (the shocking rate of the poles melting is the most definitive of this proof) they can't really ignore it anymore, couple that with all those people who have been sorta wondering about it since the 80's when we were all allowed to learn a bit more about our destructive approach to the earth and the power of the internet for sharing information they can no longer feed the public a line of bs so the big companies will now have to move on, find newer better ways and we can just get on with fixing things! :T

perhaps it's not too late for you though... if all goes to plan (timewise) i'd be 43 when i graduate from st andrews! i fully understand where you're coming from. i had gone to uni and was 2/3rds through a degree but it was more for a subject i wanted to use to help myself and then real life happened and that went by the wayside.

over the years i've flirted with returning to uni but the only thing that grabbed my fancy enough to bother is graphic design and so far i've not found a uni that will allow me to do that without the ability to provide a hand drawn and painted portfolio which i simply can't do my abilities with a computer are pretty good the ideas are there but i can't get my hands to cooperate. even courses where i'd be producing 100% computer generated work require the portfolio of hand drawn work so that really had me down for some years as nothing else grabbed my attention.

but lately i've been bored and unsatisfied with life and i've been looking again at uni. this time i thought i couldn't get funding but i finally found something i think might work and then i found that course at the OU i'd gone through 4 other degree programmes on their website all equally meh! and was feeling down then there it was, THE ONE! then when i found the sustainable development course in st andrews (where i live already!) i thought, 'right, that's it, that's definitely the one'

so, like i said i can empathsise with you. no point in going to uni these days if you can't study something that you're truly interested in. since you can't be guaranteed a job when you graduate anymore why bother with something you don't love?!

given that all but the first few years of my adult life i've lived a more and more frugal lifestyle both by choice and sometimes necessity i think this will fit in so easily. who knows, maybe i'll even get my dream some day of setting up a self sufficient community!

i think i'd like to focus on sustainable/self sufficient building practices (particularly for residential) , conversion of current communties to more self sufficient energy at least and the creation of new developments that are self sufficient for power and a lot of their food ok that one's a long shot but it's at least a noble goal!

ok i'm rambling on again...

ceridwen

I have some nascent plans confuzzled - twinkle in eye type - but we'll see how things pan out over the next coupla years or so. I'm on a learning path anyways - someone commented years and years ago about how much I had taught myself/learnt on my own. I didnt actually agree with them - though was pleased at the compliment. Maybe at some point that comment will actually be a true reflection of things - a work in progress here on that front...