Living on next to nought - is that the key?

in_need_of_direction

Nearly half way there Greying. I continue to be impressed

muddywhitechicken

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

The actual recipe was for a Portobello mushroom, cooked in a paper bag with lentils and beetroot.

Good evening Greying

I'm going to dust off my copy of The Modern Vegetarian and find this recipe. We have portobello mushrooms, beetroot and lentils :T not sure about paper bags though... :rotfl:

MWCx

Karmacat

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Good Evening :hello::hello:

:j:wave: Hello!

The potato cakes were that Be-ro recipe again, with some sauted onions thrown in.

Slurp ...

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

for the workers on the ground trying to rectify storm and flood damage - if your day-glo ain't dirty, you're a tourist or a politician.........

for sunshine - I know it won't magic the water away, but it was nice to feel the benefit of its rays.....

that the heath-robinson repair we made to fence panels last night held..........

There was a lovely visual pootling about somewhere of "politicians staring at floods" - it was very good

Thank you so very much for continuing to read this diary. You continue to provide me with support and incentive to keep going. I'm so pleased with the progress I have made so far in February. Even though money saving activity seems somewhat insignificant with what is going on around us weather-wise .........

See y'all later.

Greying

I'm glad your diary's working for you, Greying, its a lovely focus to the dfw board.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Well, what a day and it's hardly started yet

DP and I are taking the day off together Originally, we had thought of doing some adventurising over to the big city, or heading out walking the wilderness trail or summat. However, I'm now quite glad that we didn't make arrangements that undoubtedly would of been affected in some way, shape or form by the weather.

So, instead, we've a list of 'itty bitty bits' as long as your arm to get sorted

But one thing has been sorted already. You may recall that I mentioned that DP's glasses had broken, and the opticians decided that they couldn't be repaired (I'm afraid I think that the 'trainee optician' who we dealt with didn't have a Scooby is nearer to the point......) Well, an email was sent to the manufacturers pondering why something still in production couldn't be fixed. They replied, 'send 'em to us, and we'll see what we can do and how much it'll cost'.

The glasses arrived back today - fixed and for nowt! :j How :money:is that?

So, that was a great start to the day. DP is currently gearing up to talk to the pension company He's already bombarding me with questions

I'll try and make sure that I take the last of the 'bits' to the charity shop today. That means that I've made the decision to declutter and decluttered in the same week - which feels like progress and I'm sure you'll agree - helps you to feel 'mentally on track' as Piquant phrased it

MWC - could you do me a favour? When you've dusted Maria down Could you let me know if the ginger vinaigrette was part of that Portobello/lentil/beetroot recipe originally? The way I noted it down in my notebook it was, but I may just of seen it elsewhere and thought 'ooh, that would work well with earthy flavours', (which it did). Ta Hun

Dinner this evening is was going to be a special avocado dish (made before on this thread), with a nice glass of red. However, given there is the potential for power outage I'm not sure whether to bother with a dish that needs cooking in the oven. Plus I'm willing to forgo a glass of red, I think keeping clear heads, 'just in case' may well be a better strategy.

Right, my yoghurt and 1/2 a banana (donated by DP :smileyhea) are waiting, so better get a wiggle on. I may well be able to sneek a NSD today too - I'll spend DP's money instead :rotfl:[JOKE]

Thanks for popping by, reading and commenting. You know I appreciate it.

See y'all later - keep safe today.

Greying

rtandon27

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

...Dinner this evening was kept simple - soup and ...... I'd normally say sandwich, but I'm experimenting with other things at the moment, so tonight's offering was Butternut squash and sweet potato soup with potato onion cakes...

Your last night's dinner looks just lush! Warming and sunny in a bowl - Yum Yum!

mizmir

Love the look of that soup - butternut squash is one of my favourite things - cheap, lush and seems to keep forever "unopened"!

Brilliant job on the glasses - but worrying that the optician would try to tell you otherwise - many people would take their word for it and spend a lot on a new pair. Very naughty of them. :mad:

Good luck getting to the charity shop - you remind me we have a load of clutter that I keep stepping around thinking I will get it on eBay or to a car boot - but I never get round to it. Think I should probably just get it down to the charity shop instead.

Anyway have a lovely day and keep dry if you can!

dreaming

It doesn't look like the recipe in the book, as I have made it into a warm salad (but wish I'd got it a little hotter to encourage the mozzarella to warm up), and I would need to work on presentation! However, it was a winner of a dish. Perhaps something that would work with different cheeses too?
Greying[/QUOTE]


Personally I think your presentation skills are very good - the picture looked good enough to eat (and no mushrooms):T
And the soup too, and especially those potato cakes, Hmm, I'm doing sausage and mash tonight so may do extra potatoes as the cakes would be great for lunch tomorrow.


I had a bit of a declutter of cd's to Music Magpie. You don't get loadsamoney but for a rainy hour spent entering barcodes and packing them up into a box I have made 25 quid, and I get an empty drawer. Most of the music I have downloaded and I hardly ever listen to more than about 5 cd's anyway. I am going to use the money made for gardening supplies for the rice paddy field/veg patch. Also finally got round to getting set up on the library service access again so I can browse/reserve/renew books. I had the access before but when they upgraded their system last year it got deleted, but will be able to reserve the books and "nip-in" so I don't have to pay parking charges. It's free parking for under an hour in town but that doesn't give you much time if you are browsing.
Have a great weekend all.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good late afternnon/early evening :rotfl::hello:

Visitors how luverly.

rtandon, I'd not thought about it, but yes, I agree, 'sunshine in a bowl' indeed. And all that vit c in the squash and sweet pots - tis a wonder I'm not doing this :j all over the place :rotfl:

mizmir - aren't the keeping qualities of squash good? Hence why we can have squash dishes a couple of weeks after the ald* S6 offer has finished :T

Yes, we're mildly miffed about the opticians too. The gal was on the phone to the 'suppliers' allegedly, I saw her with my own eyes. But I'm a bit suspicious too......

i'm afraid we timed it very wrong and got drenched on our way back from the High Street. But I got treated to 'lunch' and we achieved some stuff, so no complaints

dreaming - I'm trying to convince DP to 'MM' the CD's, but as yet I am hitting a brick wall - to the point that we were looking at storage boxes in W1lkinsons today!!!

Love your description of your garden/rice paddy. Will ya grow me some? :rotfl:And absolutely bravo for renewing your library online access - you know it makes sense :T

So, all in all today has been a lovely day so far. 'Lunch' constituted a chip butty and cup of coffee in our favourite 'greasy spoon', but it's cheap, cheerful and you know what you're getting. Plus by going today, we avoided the Saturday gal, who must - at all of age 17 or something - be a MSE wannabee, as you get the chips lined up (single storey) on the butty - I swear the same number per butty. Today the owners were in and we got a scoop of chips dumped on the bread with another slice plonked on top :T :rotfl:

We sorted out some financial stuff :T

I didn't take the stuff to the charity shop, as the weather deteriorated, but I will take it in ASAP.

I'm not going to claim a NSD, as although I did spend DP's money, I got some bargainacious YS'd chestnut mushrooms from mrW and some v v posh 'H D' ice-cream for.......wait for it....44 pennies for a 500ml tub in our local freezer centre type shop :T 75% off, you can't 'not' at that can you. DP may yet pick up the tab for that as he insisted we bought two once I'd worked out what 75% of £1.75 was :rotfl:So dessert for dinner sorted!

We're going to have our special meal and a glass of red as planned. The weather - thus far - seems to be reasonably OK. We've had rain (and I'm not bitter, but it did fall the heaviest all day when we were out in it :rotfl:). So DP wants us to have a nice dinner together as the day has been so good.

So I'll post pics and details about dinner (nothing else, have no fear :rotfl:) tomorrow, as we'll eat our meal in front of the woodstove and watch a (hopefully good) film off the many that we have stored on the hard drive.

So, before I sign off, my 3 gratefuls for today are;

for big companies, that do small things, that make a huge difference for the average Joe - THANK YOU

for the male sparrowhawk who, during a brief bright spell this afternoon came to visit our garden - and DP got to see the wonderful sight too.

for progress and its recording - it isn't until you look back, you see how far you have come.

Thank you so much for popping in, reading and commenting. I continue to appreciate it.

Whatever you are doing tonight, stay safe and warm - 'coz I need you to come back tomorrow so I can bore you with *pictures of me tea* :rotfl:

See y'all later.

Greying

Karmacat

Aw, you sound really :j:j:j mind you, I'm not surprised with a good chip butty from a greasy spoon caff inside you - excellent! And posh ice cream to come - yummy, yummy, yummy is all I have to say to that

I decluttered once to MM, must do some again - last time I experimented, I fell about laughing at the things their rejection page says - ooh no, sorry, we don't like that. Do you have anything else? Can you try again? All that sort of stuff :rotfl:

Have a lovely evening, a film, a glass of red, your woodstove, your HM meal with discounted ice cream :beer:

muddywhitechicken

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

MWC - could you do me a favour? When you've dusted Maria down Could you let me know if the ginger vinaigrette was part of that Portobello/lentil/beetroot recipe originally? The way I noted it down in my notebook it was, but I may just of seen it elsewhere and thought 'ooh, that would work well with earthy flavours', (which it did). Ta Hun

Yes, it is Greying

BTW - have you tried the Afghan carrot hotpot from Veggiestan?

MWCx