How to Get Through The Tough Times The Old Style Way.

kitschy

EstherH wrote: »

Hi ChocClaire, everyone seems to like your recipe but we don't drink alcohol and I wouldnt buy it even though I know cooking it gets rid of the alcohol. My question is do you (or anyone) know of a substitute in a recipe when it says wine that isn't alcoholic? I really would like to try it if there was something else I could put in.

Hi Esther

I found this website, which offers substitutes for alcoholic liquids in cooking. I hope it helps! Can't wait to try ChocClaire's recipe here either!

kitschy

Mrs_Veg_Plot wrote: »

Evening all

Got up this morning and decided to empty the freezer and re-list the contents. I also got out pastry, biscuit dough, mince etc to make pasties and things for lunches for next week, then I caught up on a weeks worth of posts and just as I was constructing my post got a phone call from the care home to say nan is ill so had to rush off and have spent the day there. Anyway she seems a little better this evening. Got back tonight to a kitchen full of defrosted stuff that needed sorting out. Pasties are now done but are stuck to the greased proof paper so I'm waiting for then to go completely cold to see if I can peel them off.

I had written a shopping list this morning so OH went and got it for me. Luckily he has been with me a few times recently so he knew the drill and went to all of the right shops instead of just going to one of the big supermarkets, he got it in at £60 which was good going. I laughed when he sent me a text saying shopping done and hardly went off plan at all, he is comming on well with my OS lessons.

It's difficult to comment on a weeks worth of posts as I am sure to forget something or someone so I won't comment today but I'm glad every one is more or less OK and that annie56 has re-appeared.

Still have not tried the charity shop for new work trousers, will do this at some point soon as the trouser situation is getting desperate, I'm having to resort to wearing a skirt some days :eek: .

Gaily glad to hear you chilled a bit today. Get your feet up.

Hope you all enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Mrs VP

Hope your Nanna is better soon, Mrs VP.

We're opposites - my colleagues know I'm not well or I haven't done any laundry if I rock up in trousers! :rotfl:

EstherH

Thanks kitschy, I just had a quick look and will have a proper look again. It looks really helpful.

charlies-aunt

Is insomnia another side effect of the menopause? Yet again prowling round in the small hours wide awake.....

Spent the last hour sorting through all my OS sewing projects to get started again this eveing - I have a lovely floral mans shirt that I want to remodel to fit me but its slightly too big so will need tapering, sleeves shortening and the buttons changing to t'other side - which I find a bit daunting - any tips anyone?? Have basic sewing skills and a machine . . . . going to really try to do this as I could do with a stash of long sleeved cotton shirts as casual cover ups and local CS sell them for 50p-£1 . . . much cheaper than the equilivent ladies blouses

silvermaid

Got the lawn cut yesterday and bedding dried on line:)
Will be having roast chicken and boiled bacon for dinner with roasted veg. Then intend to make chicken & lo veg soup using carcass and lentil soup using bacon water. Lo bacon will become Ham and Butternut squash gratin and lo chicken will become another meal. If there is any soup left later in the week I will turn it into chicken, veg & lentil lasagne.

I think I must buy some chicken thighs so that I can make ChocClaire chicken. Will try this on Tuesday I think. Thanks ChocClare:)

GreyQueen

Good morning charlies-aunt, I'm up and pottering quietly about with a pot of tea and cherry pie for breakfast (it needed eating up, honest ). Plus Idiot Boy came in at 5.41 am. Can't say he woke me up as I was lying in bed with the brain going 1000 m.p.h. and wide awake for some reason.....

Re changing the way a shirt buttons, I think you'd have a bit of a job as the buttonstands (the strips which hold the buttonholes or the place where the buttons are sewn) would need to be switched. I don't bother myself as the odd "blouse" of mine is actually a man's shirt. In 30-odd years of this, not a single person has ever remarked on it!

I'm very tired but enthused by my allotment. Mum and I got the h.m wooden greenhouse re-plasticked (it's done with large flat poly bags) and Dad was pointed at a bit of rough ground that was a vegetable bed last year. My lottie was unculitvated for several years before I had it in March 2008 and had reverted to lumpy meadow so I have an unbelievable problem with couch grass and all the worst weeds imaginable....horsetail, curled docks, common mallow, fat hen, creeping thistle, hairy bittercress and the others. The plots on either side were derelict until this year, too, so they were both shedding weed seeds and actually infiltrating their roots into my cleared ground...grr.

Anyway, I feel that I've turned the corner from omigawdi'llnevermanageit to seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. After a bit of playing on the web I'm heading up there for a few more hours of sun and fresh air.

Got the last little bit of the potato-patch-to-be to fork thru then take the wheelbarrow 200 yards across the site to this guy's plot. He works for a small organic brewery-pub and brings the spent barley grains come down to our site and it's help yourself. I've forked tonnes of the blessed stuff into my soil, which is silty over pure yellow sand, and doesn't hold the water very well.

Cunning plan for this year involves a variation on what I did last year alongside the courgette plants; I bury plastic bottles up to their necks in the ground alongside the plants. The ones I use are 4 pint plastic milk containers and have lots of small holes poked in the bottom and sides. The idea being that you can deliver a quantity of water right to the roots and have it slowly seep out rather than be lost in evaporation. I'm intending the bury some in the broad bean and runner bean rows as I plant them as in about 2 months time they'll need all the help then can get. Very OS ; re-using stuff, saving resources and gardening all in one go.....:rotfl:

Got my broad bean seeds soaking now (hope I don't need my big Pyrex jug for anything urgent today) and I look to plant them tomorrow. I've found this trick shaves a lot off time off the germination and they'll probably poke thru a week after planting. Now that the greenhouse is intact again, I'll sow the peas undercover in toilet-roll tubes (pre-soaked ((the peas not the tubes!))) in batches at 2 week intervals. If if sow then outside the mice steal them and I don't fancy swilling the germplasm of my foodstuffs in parafin, which is the old remedy.....

Going to sow courgettes and butternut squash undercover; don't soak them but do slightly abrade the seeds to help the water penetrate. I'm an old hand with courgettes but this will be the first time with any kind of squash; any recommendations from the gang will be gratefully received.

Hardup_Hester

Hi Charlies_aunt, 3 suggestions re the shirt, either swap the whole band over if the buttons & button holes are on a seperate band, if not, cut the buttons off, sew the shirt front shut (making sure you can still get it on & then resew the buttons, or, sew the buttonholes shut, attatch press-studs ontop of the button holes & & under the button row. HTH.
Hester

shegar

Yes im up early as well this morn, its nice again outside, just had a wander round the garden to see whats grown since yesterday afternoon....:D:D..

Birds are singing away happily early this morning, ive got 2 wrens in a rose and ivy arch that are going in and out of a very small nest box, I hope they decide to get a mortgage and get their furniture in and then have young.......:j:j...they are so small and cute........:D
I love this time of year so much and feel its the best time of year, so much happening in the garden:)....

Im on my fourth mug of tea I cant function without it, soon I will get my husband up and dressed and then get some breakfast done, probaly egg and bacon with toast sounds good to me:D:D....enjoy your day all of you , and catch you later.......

ceridwen

GreyQueen wrote: »

Good morning charlies-aunt, I'm up and pottering quietly about with a pot of tea and cherry pie for breakfast (it needed eating up, honest ). Plus Idiot Boy came in at 5.41 am. Can't say he woke me up as I was lying in bed with the brain going 1000 m.p.h. and wide awake for some reason.....

Re changing the way a shirt buttons, I think you'd have a bit of a job as the buttonstands (the strips which hold the buttonholes or the place where the buttons are sewn) would need to be switched. I don't bother myself as the odd "blouse" of mine is actually a man's shirt. In 30-odd years of this, not a single person has ever remarked on it!

I'm very tired but enthused by my allotment. Mum and I got the h.m wooden greenhouse re-plasticked (it's done with large flat poly bags) and Dad was pointed at a bit of rough ground that was a vegetable bed last year. My lottie was unculitvated for several years before I had it in March 2008 and had reverted to lumpy meadow so I have an unbelievable problem with couch grass and all the worst weeds imaginable....horsetail, curled docks, common mallow, fat hen, creeping thistle, hairy bittercress and the others. The plots on either side were derelict until this year, too, so they were both shedding weed seeds and actually infiltrating their roots into my cleared ground...grr.

.

- Guess the mind going at 1000mph is adrenalin (perhaps at the thought/hope of Idiot Boy moving out soon all being well)?

- My thoughts were that I dont bother which side jeans do up - so I likely wouldnt bother about my "blouses" doing up the "wrong" side either....

- Now about those "weeds" - a lot of them are edible GreyQueen:eek:. Its called the "ceridwen - try and see any positive there is to see in a situation" approach. From memory - without checking my books:
- Fat Hen = definitely edible
- Hairy bittercress = edible
- Curled dock = think its edible in moderation
- Creeping thistle = think thats one of the edible thistles
- Common mallow = edible I believe
- horsetail = not edible, but I believe there might be other uses for it that I cant recall at present (? was it as a scouring implement in cleaning?)

Waste not, want not my lass:)

Mrs_Veg_Plot

Greyqueen we have the opposite problem with our soil as its good old Cheshire clay hence the raised bed. I lost count of the tonnes of top soil we bought when we moved here 11 years ago but it has all turned into clay. I have kept the side borders in good condition but the bottom order that has trees in it is quite poor and has so many roots from the trees and shrubsnothing I do seems to make a difference.