As The Workhouse Approaches....How To Do Everything To Avoid It, the Old Style Way

bluebag

To all the girlies dieting, try using more pulses and beans, filling, high fibre and cheap.

Tinned and frozen veg are just as good too, the value brands are quite cheap, remember to drain all the syrup off first though.

EstherH

Yes, I do use the value fruit sometimes, we also use mostly frozen veg for adding to meals.

I also make veg soup up with onion, carrot, and some frozen veg. At the moment I have some peppers and mushrooms which I bought reduced and put in the freezer. I have been adding them to soup with a small potato. It's not too bad when I can do this but the reduced bargains are few and far between these days.

I find that I buy loads of fruit like strawberries, melons and grapes but then can't afford to keep it up. Must try harder. I did make bolognaise yesterday with a mix of mince and soya mince and a handful of oats and lots of finely chopped carrots, onions, mushrooms and peppers.

bluebag

EstherH wrote: »

Yes, I do use the value fruit sometimes, we also use mostly frozen veg for adding to meals.

I also make veg soup up with onion, carrot, and some frozen veg. At the moment I have some peppers and mushrooms which I bought reduced and put in the freezer. I have been adding them to soup with a small potato. It's not too bad when I can do this but the reduced bargains are few and far between these days.

I find that I buy loads of fruit like strawberries, melons and grapes but then can't afford to keep it up. Must try harder. I did make bolognaise yesterday with a mix of mince and soya mince and a handful of oats and lots of finely chopped carrots, onions, mushrooms and peppers.

I use frozen peppers, onions and mushrooms, no waste, no preparation, no short use by date, easy to add to many dishes. I use red lentils in any dish that uses mince.

Frozen fruits are good too, use in low fat cobblers with yogurt, or in muffins, defrost friut slightly and whizz into yogurt or low fat custard.

valentina

Totally agree with the frozen veg & fruit - in addition I prepare and freeze surplus stuff that we grow, like kohl rabi, leeks, squash, gooseberries then add them to stews etc (not the gooseberries!)

GreyQueen

Morning all, I have caught up with you and decided that it others can do it, so can I; see the shameful admission of excessive piggydom in the sig (I'm fatter than you, nyah nyah ) I am on the 4th day of chocolateness, close to a personal best already and, when I weigh myself on Saturday,I better have lost at least 1 lb or I shall be dead cross.

sammy_kaye what a little sweetheart!

laineyc the milk bottles in the garden esp for the courgettes (not yet planted out) are 4 pinters. For the courgettes and broad beans I have them upright and half-buried with lots of little holes made with the tip of a kitchen knife, in the base and sides. The idea is to deliver a large quantity of water straight to the roots with no chance of evaporation. Did it last year with the courgettes and they loved it and I have started a bit of a fashion for it among lottie neighbours. The variant I did last week for the peas is reflecting their much shallower roots and is 2 pinters with lids on, laying on their sides, with an oblong porthole cut into the top side and lots of little holes in the buried side. It's best to plant the milk bottles when you plant the stuff to avoid root disturbance. HTH.

Well, due to the manic evening I had yesterday I dodn't get to the plot until 8 pm and started wrapping those potatoes which had burst out of their existing fleeces in more. What I've got up there at the moment reminds me a bit of the artist Christo (?) who was famous for wrapping giant things like bridges and islands. Looks a bit mental but hopefully will save the day. My lottie is up a hill and even when it is windless in the city centre where I live and work, there is a breeze up there. We have a breeze, they have a gale. Last night was airless, had been flawlessly sunny all day and ruddy cold. Perfect frost weather. Thank goodness the squash are in the greenhouse still and that I've only just sown the beans under cover.

Mole Update. No sign of the little !!!!!! in the area which is now the strawberry beds/ pea and bean patch so I thought he'd been brambled off the premises, only to find 5 new hills at the far end in the potatoes. To get there, he's tunnelled completely under a freshly dug area which is rough clods still and where he could've made molehills to his heart's content. Grrr!!

I had to grin yesterday evening when I realised that everything on my plate was a whoopsie; salmon steak (down to 70 p) served with whoopsied carrots and broccoli and garnished with the juice of a whoopsied lemon. For dessert, I'd made a rice pudding with a 2 pinter of full fat milk reduced yesterday to 35p, 5 ounces of basics rice and a level tablespoon of sugar as I don't like it too sweet. Reckon I ate like royalty for about £1.20 and more pud for 2 more days.

Incidentally, I have been experimenting with ordinary old long grain rice (Sainsbugs Basics) and found that it makes a perfectly good rice pud which is great as they now want about £1 for a small bag of round-grained "pudding rice". (They can want what they like but they ain't getting it from me).:rotfl:

alec_eiffel

EstherH wrote: »

I find dieting expensive too. I try to eat my five portions of fruit and veg but it doesn't fill me up and too keep eating more and more of it is beyond my budget. The thing is that as soon as I know I am trying to diet, I feel hungry and crave stodgy fattening stuff.

Fruit and veg isn't what will fill you up, protein will help you feel fuller - pulses, beans, meat, fish, eggs, all the usual stuff should do the trick.

the_cat

For all of you who are dieting or attempting to.... I read a book recently from the library which has changed my outlook (and shape!) completely. It is not a diet, rather a self help book to overcome overeating/bingeing and an 'addiction' to food. By following it I have lost weight without changing what I eat, just the quantities so it was actually cheaper than my normal food. It is well worth a read. More info in the reviews on the link for those interested
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eating-Less-Say-Goodbye-Overeating/dp/0091902479/ref=pd_sim_b_1

scottishminnie

GreyQueen wrote: »

Mole Update. No sign of the little !!!!!! in the area which is now the strawberry beds/ pea and bean patch so I thought he'd been brambled off the premises, only to find 5 new hills at the far end in the potatoes. To get there, he's tunnelled completely under a freshly dug area which is rough clods still and where he could've made molehills to his heart's content. Grrr!!

We also have a mole (or several I suspect) problem. My husband has 3 traps set at the moment and now and again has a catch but mostly the mole outwits him by filling the trap with earth and setting it off.

Hubby and I arrived home one afternoon and he went off to check his traps. Just as he was checking one of them he spotted movement in the ground along from the trap. The next thing I know he was stabbing my lawn with his pocket knife like a maniac. It was absolutely hilarious, looked like a scene from Psycho (sp).

Anyway after some frantic stabbing and absolutely foul language he cut up the turf and produced one very dead mole. I've never seen him quite so satisfied with anything he caught in the trap as he was with that!

I'm just glad we live in the country and we have no immediate neighbours to witness what goes on or I'm sure we would be locked away in a secure unit.

At the moment we are back to the traps but no success recently so I think I'll try the bramble idea to see how it goes. I did like the mothball suggestion but I have no idea where to get them. We did have an old fashioned ironmongers nearby but it closed down recently so I wouldn't know where else to try.

GreyQueen

the_cat wrote: »

For all of you who are dieting or attempting to.... I read a book recently from the library which has changed my outlook (and shape!) completely. It is not a diet, rather a self help book to overcome overeating/bingeing and an 'addiction' to food. By following it I have lost weight without changing what I eat, just the quantities so it was actually cheaper than my normal food. It is well worth a read. More info in the reviews on the link for those interested
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Eating-Less-Say-Goodbye-Overeating/dp/0091902479/ref=pd_sim_b_1

thanks for that, the_cat I will check it out. I'm nearly 6 feet tall so I can carry quite a bit of weight without anyone but me noticing but I have got too heavy now for comfort or self-respect. I have ME so am very limited in what I can do re exercise so I need to be more careful of what goes in, IYSWIM. Baby steps, baby steps.

PS Look for a profit warning posted by the chocolate-peddlars next financial quarter and remember, it was us wot did it.

valentina

scottishminnie wrote: »

I did like the mothball suggestion but I have no idea where to get them. We did have an old fashioned ironmongers nearby but it closed down recently so I wouldn't know where else to try.

You can get them from ebay