make do and mend for tougher times

fuddle

Good morning

There is a touch of the sunnies today... drum roll please as I'm about to put washing on the line!

Also got some weeding to do in the front garden and want to look on crocus website for fruit bushes/plants.

Chicken going in the slow cooker to make chicken curry later.

Also going to make rice pudding.

Thank you for the bread recipes. I'm going to try again and have it proving on the warm rice bag.

mardatha

I wish I could go to workshops like that - I'd love papermaking. Edinburgh probly has them that's the nearest, but its a bit of a knackering day for me.
Maybe I prep because I'm so far from shops, and get a lot of powercuts.. the record is 5 days once. We got compensation from Scottish Power for the freezer that time.
Does anybody know if you can use flour improver in a breadmaker?
Sorry about non-chatty post, I'm just up and haven't had my 9 cups of tea yet

GreyQueen

mardatha wrote: »

Its all about making us think. Thinking hurts, But it's good for you :D

:T Too right. Hope you get tea'd up and functioning soon. I'm on my first pint of tea and feeling lurgy. Got disturbed twice during the night by one of my druggie neighbours and his wastrel friends. They all tipped up at his at 10.45, then left at 12.45, then came back at just before 4 am......grrr!

SpikyHedgehog wrote: »

I'm hoping that as his home address will be here, I will be ok, & we've got 2 more years to find out as he starts 6th form in September - but it is so scary. And as you had, sometimes people don't have time to prepare. I would like to move as the neighbours here aren't great, so could look for 2 reception rooms instead of the sitting room & kitchen/diner we have here, & 2 bedrooms so we could use the dining room as a bedroom for DS1 when home... But it takes time to find the right house.

Hun, when young adults reach significant birthdays, the LA's computers will flag it up and they'll write out to you for clarification as to what he is doing i.e. working, continuing in education etc.

I had a fast shufti at the website above. Interesting. I only have the 1 bedroom and it is just about big enough to take a standard double, as long as you don't want to do anything extravagant like have a bedside table or indeed, any furniture at all.

Having read that the bedroom "tax" is only going to be applied to working age people, it seems to me that this is being used as a spiteful stick to beat people who are already struggling. Close to half of the LA's homes here are classified as "under-occupied" and the typical form of underoccupation is the widow or widower in their 70s or 80s in the 3 or 4 bed home which they've had for 50 or 60 years. Since the pensioners are exempt (but who knows for how long) the rules won't do much to save money nor will they free-up family sized homes for families.

Also, the rents on some of the flats here are greater than the rents on most of the houses. I have dreamed of moving to a bigger flat as even the smallest spare bedroom would be such a boon, but won't do that now in case I have to claim UC at some point in the future and get caught out.

What gets me about the Gov't is that they don't understand the realities of people's complex lives. Some of our houses have £30k of disability adaptions, paid for from Soc Serv budgets. Sometimes these were done to a house for a parent whose offspring are now grown and flown. So, are you gonna move that person to a 1 bed, assuming there's one free, and adapt it all over again? And rip out the wetroom etc from the house they left behind to make it have a family bathroom? Wetrooms cost £10k. My, that'd be a very sensible use of the Soc Serv budget. :mad:

But Westminster knows best, eh? They may well end up back-pedalling or modifying their plans, but probably not before they've ruined a lot of people's lives/hopes/ sanity.

Mustn't spend to long on t'interweb as (whisper so you don't frighten it away) the sun is shining. I need to wash up everything and clear the kitchen counters ready for the mass blanch-and-freeze when I come back from the lottie. Time is of the essence if you want to preserve maximum nutrition.

Laters, GQ x

mardatha

They can't think GQ, because they've never needed to and have nothing to think with ! And pensioners are right in the next firing line coming soon.
Sun is out here but its windy and very chilly, going to put a washing out and maybe an attempt on the triffids living in the back garden... Cover me and play loud music!

grandma247

I havent caught up yet and it will probably this evening before I do.

((((hugs)) for all that need them.
One thing that came to mind was having a very large pan or kettle stored away for heating water is a good idea. I have several stock pots and they came in very useful when the boiler went so we could still have a bath or wash down in the bath.

I make my own bread mixes using the buckets that had yoghurt in them from lidl. I just lay the packet of yeast on the top of the other ingredients unopened

GQ could you not put some luxury snail and slug hotels on the derilict sites?

Just put some slug pellets down and make a tent with something like a pot saucer resting on sticks to keep the rain off. You could stuff a bit of hay inside a plant pot and leave it raised a bit off the ground at one side so snails can get in and inspect it every day so you can catch and destroy them..

GreyQueen

grandma247 wrote: »

GQ could you not put some luxury snail and slug hotels on the derilict sites?

Just put some slug pellets down and make a tent with something like a pot saucer resting on sticks to keep the rain off. You could stuff a bit of hay inside a plant pot and leave it raised a bit off the ground at one side so snails can get in and inspect it every day so you can catch and destroy them..

That's EVIL, grandma247.

I like it. I like it a lot. Once I've got the accessible ones, I shall go for entrapment just like you've detailed above. They need to be thinned out or I shall have nothing left to eat myself and next year will be a horror, too.

Someone who has a lottie on the other side of the city told me he doesn't have a slug problem as he has a lot of grass snakes which live on the adjacent marsh. He told me that they hoover up slugs.

I am soooo tempted to go kidnap some of them. Wouldn't dream of interferring with wildlife but why does he have loads and I only get slacking frogs and toads........? s'not fair.

Evie74_2

Good morning all

It's actually sunny here today so I'm going to try and tackle Mt. Washmore - I have such a queue of laundry it's moved into overflow piles on the floor as the basket is brimming! I'd never win any prizes for housekeeping.

DH has gone fishing, as predicted, it's just me and the girls until lunchtime when we'll be joining him for a picnic.

In the meantime I have to try and do some cleaning, make up the vat of bolognaise that I should have made yesterday (too tired, and CBA after a glass of wine ) and inspect the slug damage in the garden :mad:. I'm guessing that won't be very pretty :mad:.

The whole business about the "bedroom tax" makes me very cross indeed. As GQ says, the majority of "underoccupied" houses are lived in by elderly widowed folk whose children have flown the nest. If they are exempt from the tax (and I sincerely hope they will be) then there won't actually be that many homes to pick on and many of those affected will be living in specially (expensively) adapted homes catering for disabilities etc. :mad: I can't see the sense in moving people whose homes have been adapted for their needs when the new homes will just need to be adapted for them (at great cost) and the old homes will be full of unnecessary, and perhaps even unwanted adaptations for the new families who move in. Madness :mad:

As a society we should have evolved sufficiently to ensure that we collectively look after those with the greatest needs, not penalise them further for circumstances beyond their control .

I realise that the Govt isn't a bottomless pit but surely we should be able to make savings elsewhere before picking on society's most vulnerable people to pick up the tab? Perhaps start by disallowing all those MPs' "expenses" for second homes etc. Why don't MPs have a sort of hostel arrangement in central London where they can stay (like a kind of University Hall of Residence) with study/bedrooms etc. Then they wouldn't need second homes in the capital. That would save a fortune for a start.

Oh dear. Soapbox fever seems to have come over me already and I've only had one coffee!

Evie xx

[Deleted User]

I am in for a quickie. Potatoes (again) and have come to a couple of conclusions. Am dehydrating another 9 trays and in process of prior steaming have noticed, after the steam that some potatoes have dense white circle shapes inside and I noticed a couple last week. Nothing wrong on the surface and not noticed before steaming. My guess was that this was blight in the early unseen stages. Then on slicing and when raw, I actually found one with a small dense white area, surrounded by a going black area. That is definitely blight and it cannot be seen from outside

On researching, those dense white areas are perfectly ok to eat so no worries about that. My spuds were all dried on that windy sunny day and carefully handled, now I have to do a double take re all my potatoes. Last year I made potato boats and froze and they were lovely and so handy, I also made and froze lots of roast potatoes and they were also good. I am on a mission now and have to clear all bread, cakes, butter and ice cubes out of the freezer to make room for potatoes in any guise whatsoever, including mashed

My advice is to not commit to buying lots of fresh potatoes all at once, unless you can process them sooner rather than later

Mrs_Chip

You need ducks GQ - ducks hoover up slugs and snails with relish and at a prodigious rate.

Lady across the road has a runner bean problem - they are dying off leaf by leaf - leaf just wilts and wither, but other bits of the plan remain ok. When all the leaves are gone the whole thing turns turns brown. I guess it could be snail damage, but seems they are just attacking where the leaf joins the stem, as all the affected leaves have collapsed at that joint. Very odd.

We have a rather peculiar phenomenon this morning - sun!!!

So not playing with chocolate today, I'm off to start rescuing a garden that has been neglected for too long. Will be like hacking through the rain forest, but there may be buried treasures as the garden was once loved and is full of fruit bushes and trees.

Hope everyone has a great day and plenty of sunshine!

SpikyHedgehog

Popperwell wrote: »

Spiky and Byatt,
It is frightening and lots of information there that started to confuse/worry more as I see there is a link of a new assesment that has been done on July 4th and lots of tables...I'll try not to get too worried at this time...

I suspect I will be having lots of chats with the CAB and HA in coming months. They have admitted originally they were leaving tenants alone who had occupied a property for years and years and only new tenants were affected. Now it's everyone...and there may be some of us where the cutbacks are tight but perhaps we could manage to pay if we don't spend money somewhere else. But until it comes in or it is nearer the time figures may be difficult to work out...

http://www.dwp.gov.uk/docs/social-sector-housing-under-occupation-wr2011-ia.pdf

The thing I must most frustrating about the bedroom tax is that it is not supported by those who will be administering/enforcing it. The link I put was from the National Housing Federation, who represent housing associations, & do not want it. My HA have long done an offer where if you are under occupying, they'll do all they can to find you somewhere smaller that meets your needs - but, as Grey Queen said, this mainly affects older people who's children have left home.

I can't remember, Pops, if you're in a council or HA house, but I bet the staff there are looking at you & saying 'Oh crumbs, this bedroom tax is going to affect that nice Mr Popperwell, & he's just lost his lovely mum. This is ridiculous! We don't want him to have to move out of his family home, & we've got 2 bedroom properties coming out of our ears, it's the bigger houses we actually need to meet the needs of people on the books waiting for a home/bigger home. But if we don't implement this ill-thought out tax, we'll be loosing our jobs...'

fuddle wrote: »

Good morning

There is a touch of the sunnies today... drum roll please as I'm about to put washing on the line!

Also got some weeding to do in the front garden and want to look on crocus website for fruit bushes/plants.

Chicken going in the slow cooker to make chicken curry later.

Also going to make rice pudding.

Thank you for the bread recipes. I'm going to try again and have it proving on the warm rice bag.

Ooh, that was another thing I meant to say, bread does need warmth for the yeast to grow & we don't have warm this 'summer' - I noticed yesterday the 2 loaves I had rising, didn't do much till I went to do dinner & had 2 rings on on the hob - the loaves were next to the hob.

I have 1 load of washing on the line & another in the machine as I type. Put the clothes horse outside with yesterdays load on, as the new line's too small to get 3 loads on really.

DS2 gets back from Cub camp later & will be filthy as the camp site will have been a wee bit soggy. I did discuss the contingency plans with Akela & they were taking a marquee so the kids could be under cover, but they'll have been sleeping in the tents, so running back & forth in the mud. She assured me that flood warnings for the place were being looked at (& were by me too). Let's hope the sun stays out to dry it out a bit as the District Beavers sports day is there this afternoon (Cubs was cancelled for last Wed, school sports day postponed & they're going to try again for this Wed.).

GreyQueen wrote: »

:T Too right. Hope you get tea'd up and functioning soon. I'm on my first pint of tea and feeling lurgy. Got disturbed twice during the night by one of my druggie neighbours and his wastrel friends. They all tipped up at his at 10.45, then left at 12.45, then came back at just before 4 am......grrr!

Hun, when young adults reach significant birthdays, the LA's computers will flag it up and they'll write out to you for clarification as to what he is doing i.e. working, continuing in education etc.

I had a fast shufti at the website above. Interesting. I only have the 1 bedroom and it is just about big enough to take a standard double, as long as you don't want to do anything extravagant like have a bedside table or indeed, any furniture at all.

Having read that the bedroom "tax" is only going to be applied to working age people, it seems to me that this is being used as a spiteful stick to beat people who are already struggling. Close to half of the LA's homes here are classified as "under-occupied" and the typical form of underoccupation is the widow or widower in their 70s or 80s in the 3 or 4 bed home which they've had for 50 or 60 years. Since the pensioners are exempt (but who knows for how long) the rules won't do much to save money nor will they free-up family sized homes for families.

Also, the rents on some of the flats here are greater than the rents on most of the houses. I have dreamed of moving to a bigger flat as even the smallest spare bedroom would be such a boon, but won't do that now in case I have to claim UC at some point in the future and get caught out.

What gets me about the Gov't is that they don't understand the realities of people's complex lives. Some of our houses have £30k of disability adaptions, paid for from Soc Serv budgets. Sometimes these were done to a house for a parent whose offspring are now grown and flown. So, are you gonna move that person to a 1 bed, assuming there's one free, and adapt it all over again? And rip out the wetroom etc from the house they left behind to make it have a family bathroom? Wetrooms cost £10k. My, that'd be a very sensible use of the Soc Serv budget. :mad:

But Westminster knows best, eh? They may well end up back-pedalling or modifying their plans, but probably not before they've ruined a lot of people's lives/hopes/ sanity.

Mustn't spend to long on t'interweb as (whisper so you don't frighten it away) the sun is shining. I need to wash up everything and clear the kitchen counters ready for the mass blanch-and-freeze when I come back from the lottie. Time is of the essence if you want to preserve maximum nutrition.

Laters, GQ x

I know that one - they wrote to me when he turned 16 in Nov, to ask what he was doing & to prove I was still getting CB for him. Fair enough, but not as easy as it seemed, as I don't have a book for CB, it's all paid straight into my bank a/c. So, I looked at the letter & the deadline I had, checked the dates the CB would be going in (as it's every 4 weeks, not monthly), & realised I could wait till I got me December bank statement, just put it in a safe place to deal with then.

We then had an awful time at work as our boss & my friend of 13 years, didn't come into work the next day, very unexpectedly, was then rushed to hospital, weren't allowed by the family to say where she was, then could say but not how ill she was, then could say how serious it was, then had to say 'She's gone.' Work's a preschool, so we had to tell all the parents & the children. Then work out the logistics of who could be acting manager, which ended up being me.

So I didn't give the letter from the council another thought till the beginning of Feb, when I got a letter to say they were (quite rightly) reducing my HB & CTB as I'd not told then what if anything DS1 was doing. They were fantastic when I phoned up, & told me what I didn't know & doesn't appear to be advertised, that the drop in place you can go & see them, is open till 7 at night. So I dashed down there with all the info needed, & they did reinstate it.

But, & this is important, someone had input DS1 on their system as now being 18, not 16 - so this totally changed what I'd have been allowed with DS1 not in full time education anyway. All sorted! For now...