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

tessie_bear

gailey...i find hm burgers fall apart a lot....i shape them and put in fridge for an hour or so...i find they hold together a bit better...hth

lostinrates

Mrs_Veg_Plot wrote: »

whilst we were waiting for it to be ready to cook on it starts to thunder and the heavens have opened.
.

Oh, I hope it does here....everything is parched! I'm sory about your BBQ though.

Charis

GreyQueen wrote: »

Ceridwen I have just posted my two-pennorth on that website, thanks for the linkie. I'm horrified that I was unaware of this. Can these politicians not find something constructive to change rather than seeming to be hell-bent on destruction?! Grrrr, am cross!

I was going to put a comment on the form (how complicated they make it, and what has my job title got to do with anything?) but the consultation ends on Monday 25th April, or really yesterday since the Govt offices are no doubt closed for Easter. :mad:

If you are interested in the politics behind the creation of the allotment scheme ('to keep the working class out of the pubs') you might like to read this, which I found while I was looking for something completely unconnected, yesterday.

PS it's much easier to read if you can save it as a PDF.

kidcat

Thunder storms and heavy rain here which the garden really needs but am completely soaked after going to pick up DD16 and whoopsie picking at Asda!! Got some great bargains as they were closing early this evening. May well pop back tomorrow night at same time to see if there is anything worth picking up.

[Deleted User]

oh how I wish it would rain here, my face was covered in dust after working up on the allotment and it really is like a desert in the ploughed fields. The local farmers count on the april showers and last time it was like this the whole wheat crop failed so they`ll be praying for rain. It is so hard trying to keep all my hundreds of young seedlings alive and we are up and down by the minute with watering cans but only after the heat of the day

Still got flannel sheets on the bed and irt feels very comfortable at night. I am glad it hasn`t got to that horrible sticky heat of high summer

The allotment thing sickens me, it is just like them grabbing common land in the old days. How dare they!!

ceridwen

kittie wrote: »

The allotment thing sickens me, it is just like them grabbing common land in the old days. How dare they!!

Hmmm...is now pondering on Charis' comment that allotments were set up in the first place to "keep the working class out of the pubs" - but many peeps (from all backgrounds) are still "down the pubs" or busy regularly drinking in their own homes more to the point these days...so one woulda thought the same sorta "logic" would be applied these days as well. Unless its changed from "beer and circuses" to stop the masses from rioting to "booze at home and t.v." ditto.

Thought the reasoning behind the grabbing of the commonland a century or two previous was to "force the working classes" off the land and into the factories (ie to make sure they had the compliant workforce required to operate the factory owners' machinery). I may be misremembering my history there? - and after all "history is written by the victor" as they say...

This - when we know we cant rely on the "powers that be" to ensure we keep getting the money/food available in the shops that we need to ensure we can keep feeding ourselves - hence why many of us are trying to at least make a contribution to this ourselves - by growing it ourselves.

Allotments were set up at a point in history when this country wasnt overcrowded - but now that it is (vastly overcrowded) and access to public land is steadily getting worse all the time the possibility of an allotment is more necessary than ever. Just the feeling of having a bit of "space" is vital. I look round me at metre after metre of buildings and the fact that many homes have little (sometimes - if any) garden and feel very "hemmed in" by all this concrete and bricks (exacerbated by the fact of not even being able to get the visual amenity of looking at a lot of other peeps' front gardens any more - as so many people have concreted them over too for carparking...grrr). Peoples standards of how much garden they expect to have on their own homes are often very low - which is half the problem and why a lot of bungalows have been grabbed by developers and the land they are on redeveloped to cram more housing onto it. I must confess to being astonished when someone was reading house details by me the other day and commented "Thats a large garden" - cue astonishment by myself, because the garden was only very standard size - but I guess so many people have gotten used to pocket handkerchief gardens now and hence wrongly perceive standard size gardens as being large....Large is where a house is set in a 1 acre plot and I often sit and drool visibly at ones like that....(The way to find out what constitutes "small" is to check out only very slightly older books on "how to deal with a small garden" and they mean something rather bigger than most peeps' gardens round here. I soon realised books meant for those with small gardens expect that one will still have, say, at least 50' x 30' or somesuch amount of space).

I've found that the way to get advice on how to deal with a "matchbox" size garden is to get ones written specifically for balcony or patio gardeners - as otherwise even gardening books for small gardens are an exercise in frustration at trying to "scale down" the ideas they have expressed and I have decided to follow - and then realised I cant.....

silvermaid

Sorrees - will stop swearing now....as "developers" is a swearword on a par with "bankers" chez ceridwen.

Same here at Silver Spires! Developers seem to have no regulation and an inexhaustible supply of brown envelopes to pass on to the appropriate council officers.

When I make burgers I pulse half the meat in the food processor, then mix that with the un-pulsed half. I then put the appropriate quantity of mixture into a little plastic gadget (comprising 3 parts) and press down quite firmly. I don't use any egg. Just chill until needed. I find that by processing half the meat it keeps the burger together, but mixing with unprocessed stops the burger being too heavy.

We have tough slugs round here - copper strips, crushed egg shells, sand - no bother:(

7_week_wonder

silvermaid wrote: »

We have tough slugs round here - copper strips, crushed egg shells, sand - no bother:(

Have you tried beer traps? A small amount of beer (Mr T's value beer used to be cheapest - you get some strange looks when you tell the checkout assistant "It's for the slugs!!") in a shallowish container (the sort hummus comes in) sunk into the ground. You can then take it to the real extreme like my old dad: sieve the slugs out each morning and reuse the same beer!

Today has not got off to be best start - overnight one of our hens has keeled over . Oh well, she'd had a good life - and on the plus side it means an excuse to go and see the farmer to get a couple of youngsters.

elona

Signed the petition and tried to leave a comment but not sure if it worked.

Got my DD home from Oxford so have all my family together for once.:j

DH has taken another daughter to garage in York to get spare car key and then wants to see if he can get more laurel to make a hedge so we are going round all the Lidls we can as it is a really good price.

Youngest wanting brekkie and tuning her nose up at cereal so oldest is cooking her something (at 17, youngest could not possibly wait ten minutes for me to have my cup of tea and thyroid meds )

Took yellow stickered turkey breast fillets out of freezer and will use with mange tout, thinly sliced onions and bits and bobs to make a green chicken curry with rice tonight. Found our new Lidl has Thai green curry sauce and also fajita sauce jars at half the price of supermarket.

DH shocked at how fast food is disappearing now there are six of us at home again and all are now adults.

Hoping my new bin arrives for kitchen today as the plastic one I have had for years is manky, disgraceful and falling to bits. I found a 30 litre Brabantia steel one on offer at £40 instead of £80 at Tesco online so grabbed it. Can't believe I am getting thrilled at the thought of a bin!!!

Decided to keep well out of the way as I can hear frantic activity downstairs so I will go down to clear up later.

Hug to all and see you later

dollydaydream07

it's been a lovely couple of weeks here, have hardly spent any money doing stuff with DD, in fact the only thing we have spent on is taking her to a softplay at the start of the holidays
we have spent most of our time out in the garden with her slide, trampoline and barbie dolls, having our lunch on the grass, like a picnic
been for a couple of walks down to the river to feed the ducks all in all, a nice OS easter holidays here

since wednesday i have been trying the no spend week well i only have to go and bl**dy spend today - forgot that easter bunny is mean t to be coming tomorrow so need to go and buy a couple of eggs for DD, monday is our anniversary so need a card for DH(i could make one but i haven't got anything suitable for it) and a small token gift for him - most probably a box of ferrero rochers - which he will end up sharing with DD as she loves them!!!!!!! :rotfl:
infact i might just make us all a lemon cake instead
also need to go to netto as they are selling Mellow Birds coffee 200g for £1.64 - a bargain as i normally buy a 100g jar from B&M for £1.39
before i go i'm going to double check whether we need anything else and get it all today so then i can have a NSW from tomorrow

finally got our 0% CC through so have transferred the balance to that, now just waiting to see what our minimum payments will be on it - i think they'll be around £28 but once i have looked at the budget for the next few months i am hoping we can pay off around £150 per month - before we could only affford £50 a month which wasn't paying any of it off but our mortgage payments are going to go down by £120 a month so the will cover the CC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!