Reach for the stars...

niccatw

I gave it the taste test today. It was less runny :j. Still a little heavy on the cumin and could have done with more chick peas and a bit more seasoning, but yummy nonetheless! Only problmen with taking a recipe as a starting point is that I rarely make the same thing twice! :rotfl: (Apart from my banana loaf, which is a fabulous thing to put in the oven as your cleaning. When you're done, bingo! Feet up with a cuppa and warm banana loaf straight from the oven. )

Started my walking marathon training proper today. As in my walking partner and I did our first walk together and plotted what we can and can't do together. Tonight was a walk in the park. Literally. With her doglet. I will become adept at dodging the extended lead as doglet runs us round in circles and we try to avoid rope burns.

Pipped at the post for my NSD today by £1 parking for my dental check-up. On the plus side, I didn't need anthing done, not even a scale, just a wee polish. And I then give my parking ticket to some-one jangling in their pockets at the machine as I was leaving, so hopefully some-one else kept their NSD intact! :rotfl:

And since I'd lost my NSD, I figured I might as well do it in style! My money from the olympics was back in my account, so I bought my Wickerman ticket. :j

Though (Cheri, look away now, you won't like this!) my credit card also came off! :eek: This is the credit card amount I briefly mentioned a wee while back when I said I hadn't been brilliant with my new cashback card and hadn't kept it strictly to food shopping and deisel! So I'm paying the price! There is now no money in my account. And none of the £220 that was returned to me can go to RBS . However, second job money goes in on the 17th and everything else is budgeted for so it's not exactly a panic situation.

And, athough I still have an overdraft, I don't feel the need to go into it any more than the £2 it'll be when the ticket money comes out. Which is such a grown up me from the me of a few years ago. :A

This will probably cause me to pour over my bank accounts for the next few days as though I can change the amounts in them be sheer mental power! (Wouldn't that cause chaos! Suddenly every-one would be trying to master the art stilling the mind enough to concentrate on gowing their personal wealth!) But at least I know I do that now!

Right, need my beauty sleep. Getting a new staff ID card tomorrow. About bl00dy time. Mine expired in November. And I work in the community and go in to people's houses.

niccatw

I'm accidently ahead of the cooking game! I didn't sit down when I came in from work. I went straight to the kitchen and rolled out my pizza dough (which smelled a bit too yeastly and nearly put me right off). I went to find the jar of pizza topper that I had in the fridge and couldn't find it. :mad:

:idea: I have onions. I have garlic. I have tinned tomatoes. So I made my own tomato sauce! As it was reducing, I turned to get the mozarella and plum tomatoes from the fridge and what was right in fornt of my very eyes? Yup, you've guessed it; the pizza topper. I figured it'd need used up, so used that on the pizza and will use the homemade sauce for tangine or something.

_pale_ The invite all veggies dread... Tomorrow I have been invited to a BBQ. So theoretically my dinner should be covered and I won't need to cook.

In practice... that depends on the cook! My friend, though a hardened carnivore, is a keen cook and his partner has asked what type of veggies I'd like skewered and if I had a preference for a particular veggie sausage, so it's more promising than it usually is!

One day I shall have a garden and my very own BBQ and I will host a BBQ all of my own. And if I hear one word of complaint on a veggie only barby, I will have the person marched from the premises! Until that day, fingers crossed they don't cook the veggies next to the meat! :eek:

RBS now sitting at £3,543.03. £35.06 heading toward it from bills account and £9.14 from "spending" account.

NSD 10 today too. Spent .50p on parking but it was for a work visit so I can claim it back.

Off to empty the machine and then I'm off to cover second job. Looking forward to reading one of my books or yoga magazine while I'm there!

PS :j Did you see the sunshine today! I did a wee 20 minute walk at lunch-time. I even had to take my cardi off! :eek:

MrsMoo2U

Great news on the cooking, not sure where you find the energy for all that and a second job. I was working at a fair last year, went to get a veggie burger as advertised and they threw it onto the normal grill. They couldnt understand why I asked them to forget it. What is that all about?

Butti

Nic,
There's someone on Daily Chat who is called Nottoobadyet who has moved to Uganda. I said you were looking into VSO. You may want to speak to her.

B x

niccatw

Butti wrote: »

Nic,
There's someone on Daily Chat who is called Nottoobadyet who has moved to Uganda. I said you were looking into VSO. You may want to speak to her.

B x

I clear forgot to fill out my application form on dedicated Sunday! Clearly some of you forgot your pestering duties! :rotfl: Butti, have I spied nottoobadyet on the NSD thread? Did s/he move to Uganda as a result of VSO?

I lost my NSD today as a result of eventually finding fleecy waterproofs that you wear as actual trousers. And they were half price in the sale. I could only get the next size up from my size and they are ok, but the shop have ordered the smaller size for me, if there's any left in the warehouse. If I get them great. If not, then much better slightly baggy than slightly tight!!! And if I do get them, Mum will buy these oned from me (though I'll probably just give her them! She and Dad are part of the "other" list on my signature. Though, when I have that money to give them, they probably won't take it back. So a pair of decent waterproofs are the least I can do).

Those of you wondering why on earth I am buying fleecy waterproofs in "Summer"... welcome to Scotland! :rotfl: I've been keeping an eye out for a while (since mum got her first pair way back last year sometime) and in earnest since signing up to walking a marathon in the middle of the night in September in Glasgow!!!

So since I lost it, and H&B had buy one get one free, I also stocked up on flaxseed.

I haven't cooked my tagine tonight as I've only been in for the last hour. Instead I made wraps with cream cheese, rocket, avocado and tomato... they were lovely and I think I will have them for lunch tomorrow too. Except I have a thing about soggy sandwiches/wraps... so haven't made them yet. And I know what I'm like in the mornings!!!

BBQ last night was fun. And they made veggie skewers and veggie lincolnshire sauages in the grill away from the meat. :T :T And Mr Keen Cook told me all about his plans for stuffed peppers in foil for his next barby! So I'm very impressed!

There were swingballs wars on par with a Federer/Nadal Wimbledon final, with William's sisteresque grunt. Not from me, I might add. The boys were way too competitive for me and I would have run from the swinging ball each time I saw it hurtling toward me. I was however rolling about laughing. A bunch of grown men (apparently) have a serious competition over a kids swingball game. And my friend suddenly being all concerned about the state of his lawn! (This is their forst house with a garden. They've only had their lawn for about a month and a half! :rotfl:)

Walking training has begun. Been walking for at least 40 minutes every day for the last three days. I think my pace is about 4 miles an hour... but having only walked for an 4-60 minutes so far, I don't know how sustainable that is! The training schedule suggests we do this for the next three weeks before beginning to up the mileage.

I need to really work hard to think ahead to fit in all this walking and make sure I keep cooking and eating properly and healthily!

"You won't realize the distance you've walked until you take a look around and realize how far you've been." I don't know who said this one.

MatyMoo

Oooh, those wraps sound yummy

The walking sounds like it is going well and, hopefully, will help you work up an appetite which sort of forces you to eat better.

I get a bit competitive over swingball too

niccatw

Looks like I bought those fleecy waterproofs right on time. It has been chucking it down all day here! Though very clammy with it! Saying that, no walking so far today, though will be taking doggy for a half hour walk at second job.

Made my moroccan tangine today. It was rather yummy. If a little les spicy than I'd like (possibly over compensating for too much cumin in the beetroot hummus! ) I've been looking into veggie cookery courses, but there doesn't seem to be any in the Glasgow area. Stands to reason given the health of the nation!!!

I also still need to get the balance right. I've still a load of food in the fridge, becoming less and less fresh moment by moment! I think I need to have less dishes in my meal plan. Inevitably there will be at least one night where I can't be bothered. And most of the recipes, even when I half the amounts, are way more than I can eat in one sitting.

I know I could freeze stuff. But realistically, anything home-cooked that enters my freezers never sees the light of day again! Invariably, at some point during my working day, I'll remember I've forgotten to take my dinner out of the freezer and will need to revert to plan B. There's never a plan B in place!

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.

From Warning, Jenny Joseph.

Erm, I don't think I'll have a pension if the government keep making changes to public sector pensions. I really won't have money for butter. But I will have plenty of purple to wear!

niccatw

Uhm just realising the quote above will appear completely random... I was watching the channel 4 news (+1) and they were talking about public sector pensions as I was typing.

I'm not a memebr of the union (yet). But we're basically being asking to double our contibutions while our employers half theirs. About two years after we (reluctantly) agreed we'd work an extra 5-6 years so they could change the retirement age. (I'll have dementia by them, I won't know where my work is!)

And we've already taken a three year pay freeze. My maths is rubbish, but I'm sure that makes for a fairly substantial pay cut when the price of everything else is going up! Pah!

Anyway, didn't come on to rant! Honest! I came on to say RBS is sitting at £3,493.65 with £164.06 heading to it from "spending" account and £50.00 heading to it from bills account. Which will take it to £3,279.59 when they clear. Which means when the next direct debit comes off on 2nd July it will be sitting at just under the 2k mark. It's getting there!

Things I need to buy
* deisel
* battery for laptop
* about 5 jars for various grains and pulses that are scattered across the kitchen cupboard
* borax
* 2 frames for the art prints I bought

I don't know that I'll do this today. If I walk to the framing shop, it'll take me about two hours, which will be good for the walking training and eans I can leave the deisel to another day. I won't need to pay for the frames until I collect them, so I could potentially have an NSD.

Unless I find a shop selling borax! Not sure where you get it and I know there's a very good organic, natural products shop not too far away from the framing shop (relatively; when you've already walked two hours to get there!)

Now just to drink my cuppa and work up the motivation to go walking on such a dreich day!

niccatw

Walked form home to the framing shop, 3.67 miles. It took me an hour and a half, stopping for a while to watch the bridges open on the Clyde to let a boat through. I was on what's affectionately known as "The Squinty Bridge" and I could see the Bells Bridge swinging open and behind that I could see the bridge at the Science centre rising. But it's so far away and and I could see little dots of people too. The seemed to still be on the rising and falling bridge. I can't remeber how that bridge works so I don't know if my eyes were playing tricks on me!

I then walked through the Westend to the underground and back home again, total mileage 6.29. Though I stopped pacing going throught the Westend as I was mooching about the shops.

Here's a picture of me when I got home:



My waterproof trousers leak at the left knee seam! I don't think I can take them back to the shop as I have now worn them, I think I'll have to get in touch with the manufacturer. Does any-one know about these things?

Feet and legs feeling very heavy!

Prints will be framed in the next week. I love that wee shop, it's very good value for money and they are brilliant at picking out the colours in the photo and finding the perfect frame! I guess that's their job! They had lovely little cartoon golf prints too for £32, so I'm wondering whether to get Papa one for christmas. I always, always get him a golfing calendar. But he gets a calendar from his sister too usually!

I have eventually ordered a new battery for my laptop so it won't die on me when the powere leads falls out! I even remebered to go via Quidco!

So if I get deisel on way to second job and put money aside today for frames, I should be ok for future NSDs...

Not really relishing having to leave the house again tonight:

MatyMoo

Took me a minute or two to get the cats and dogs - been like that here today too

I would try the shop with the trousers first and mention the sale of goods act and not fit for purpose. You wouldn't know if they were going to leak until you wore them