Living on next to nought - is that the key?

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Well, the morning has started off WUN DER FULL E

DP and I stepped out of the door this morning, as the sun was shining and it looked (weatherwise) as though it had the potential to be shaping up to a lovely day..... I looked up to the sky and said, 'still no swallows, it's all very odd'. Literally as DP was replying, and right on cue (I kid you not Dear Reader) - I spotted a bird - I think it was probably a swift, difficult to be certain, as it was just a little too high in the sky, against the bright backdrop, but it was either a swift or a swallow (I'm thinking swift because it looked really dark). We just stood there with our gobs open! :rotfl:

Fingers crossed that is an omen that things are going to go well from here on in..............

I've finished off most of the shopping this morning. I only need to buy things we'll consume later in the month now ie eggs (currently have 6 left, so no rush for more etc).

Right, well, I'd better shift a tail-feather as I'm going to start making some of the 'ready meal' items for freezing this morning. First up, Jack's 9p burgers

satchmo - yes, I did know about the toiletries for FB's - but you are absolutely right to mention it, as folk are unaware - mine's currently requesting shampoo, they asked for shower gel too at one point. A certain size of nappy is currently being requested too, as they have a client with needs. Thanks for the reminder satchmo

I always check the website of my local FB. It's not a TTrust one, but a quick google of 'Food Bank <insert where you live>' will bring up details of the FB's operating in your area - and trust me, there'll be one

Although 'independent' our FB has actually being operating for years (so much for the 'rich' neighbourhood I live in...) as a provider of basic needs. Their role and client base has expanded greatly in the past couple of years, and they only work with clients referred to them via the coupon system.

INOD - quite right. I think our FB has links with the women's refuge - again, due to its independent nature, it was doing things with volunteer groups/social agencies long before the formalisation of FB's as we know them today. So on that basis, it is worth asking of your local FB if they can take additional donations for refuges. Good point INOD

See y'all later.

Greying

little_sweetie

Good morning :wave:

Glad your day had a better start, Greying, long may it continue

Re FB's ours has a definite shortage of toiletries too so I buy something along those lines each week. Today I bought shower gel & baby wipes as well as a food item. Sainsbugs do Basics nappy sacks (16p for 100) which can be useful for ' feminine hygiene' products as well as nappies so I pop one of those in too sometimes.

satchmo, I heartily commend you both for volunteering. I'm sure they will be very grateful for any help you can offer. I would volunteer myself but I live in a small village & I might recognise some of the clients and don't want to embarrass anyone including myself I am happy to donate as much as I can though.....

INOD I hadn't thought of refuges, so thank you.

Changing the subject , I loved the look of the carrot salad and pizza last night, GP, truly yummy....a shame about the nose watering chilli....

Hope everyone has a bit of the sun I'm enjoying at the moment. I will shortly be off to DD's to lend her an electric heater as still no working boiler and the cold seems to be building up in the house My heater might take the edge off the chill in a morning. Hopefully a new boiler will be up and running by next Saturday

Pippilongstocking

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Aw Beans - have a :grouphug: (dodgy) hug love. Hope you're doing OK.

Greying

HUGS LADY.

OOps sorry about the shouting.



Hello dear gp and chums hope you all have lovley weekends with swifts/swallows galore.



I need to sit down and make my 'targets too'.

:eek:

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

little_sweetie I hope that your heater managed to bring your DD some household comfort

Pippi - the swift/swallow did stick around, but they're still not here in their 00's like they usually are. I wonder what has changed - one of their roosts disappeared??? Dunno.

Well, we've a day of chores galore here at Greying Towers. Team Greying needs to feel like we can make some progress, as at present, everything feels like it has ground to a halt.

It should be a NSD today. We're ok for milk. And if we immerse ourselves in hard work, then we've no need to venture near any shops

Dinner last night was a bit different to what was on the planner, but it was good to be able to have the ingredients to hand to make something relatively quickly. I achieved another one of my May *b's* by using up some frozen Broccoli (from the Ald* bag of mixed carrots/cauli & broc) and 3 veggie sausages. With those, I made Broccoli and Banger Pasta Photo here;



I chopped up the sausage to make it distribute through the pasta more evenly. Very tasty, and definitely fits into the 'frugal' and 'use-up' camps

I also made Jack's burgers and some lentil 'spherical objects' for the freezer yesterday, so I've 2 of my 'ready meals' made, plus there is a pot of casserole (mung bean) in the freezer from last month, so my RM total can go up to 3.

I haven't given any thought to tonight's dinner, but I have a feeling that it won't be what is on the planner - unless DP gives me free rein to faff about whilst he does all the grunt work (kidding - I'll need to be there to supervise for heavens sake! :rotfl:)

Well, best go and make DP a cuppa and get the day started.

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

See y'all later.

Greying

Memory_Girl

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Actually, I've just been reading what Memorygirl has been *up to* - in comparison my day was fine, blessed, a breeze, super, smashing, great, no complaints....... :rotfl:

Greying:D

* pulling ya leg :D:D:D

"Pooh!!" - was nothing!!! :rotfl:

But I still love my lodger

MG

mrsinvisible

Good for the weather, and great for the ready meals. That is an area which I fail miserably. (but I LIKE beans on toast!)
Back from London, but didn't get any polenta as we just didn't seem to have time, what with bloomin' shows and pesky afternoon teas getting in the way. But, back on the frugal saving wagon now. Freezer and storecupboard indicate that I shouldn't need to spend anything on food at all this week. Hmmm we shall see. Greying, you never fail to make me realise how 'rich' I am, in things that are beautiful, and cost nothing.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

ooh, I've had a lovely night's sleep for a change. It was getting on by the time we sat down to dinner last night, and we watched an episode of 'Endeavour'. Thank goodness you can scroll through the adverts on tape! Then we got watching some prog on BBC4 about the Easter Islands - gosh, that was fascinating. Especially the bit where they demonstrated how the huge maoi (stone heads) were moved around the island. Still, I was watching more of the inside of my eyelids by the time the credits rolled, so I decamped straight to Bedfordshire

Hey MG :wave: ace to see ya, but thanks for leaving your waders, rubber gloves and plunger outside _pale_ :rotfl:

mrsinvisible - hope you had a fab time on your break - wot, no polenta in Londontown??? - Travesty! Ah yes, we can all be millionaires in things that are beautiful and cost nowt, and thank you for the lovely compliment

As it ended up, I got loads more cooking and food prep done yesterday, as DP got on with a job, which aside from checking a couple of things from the start, was a bit of a one-man op. Hence I now have 5 of my ready meal items and some more beans cooked and frozen and the burgers and lentil balloons are now packed up - having been individually frozen first.

The freezer is starting to look full to bursting

I can claim a NSD as we both didn't leave the homestead.

Dinner was really nice - a new recipe that I would make again, and again. It was based on the Broad Bean Kuku recipe out of Yotam & Sami's Jerusalem cookbook. And yes, Dear Reader, as the Broad beans were left over in the freezer from April, I'm claiming another May *b* A Kuku is an Iranian version of 'frittata' or substantial omelette.

However, I have to say based because I deviated from the recipe, a) to make it perhaps a more substantial dish and b) to make it so that I wouldn't be the laughing stock of MSE by using the phrase, 'immerse saffron threads in the double jersey cream......'

A picture is here;



So I followed the spirit of the recipe, but I put in 100g (uncooked weight) of cooked rice into the mix to make it more substantial. I used about 200g of Broad beans, I used turmeric for flavour and for colour - rather than saffron and I used cranberries, as I don't routinely have dried barberries in the house. Yotam suggests sour cherries instead of barberries, if they are difficult to find, but the cranberries did the same thing and we like cranberries, and can find them easily. I used 6 eggs (7 in the recipe). The recipe makes at least 4 'dinner' portions or 6 lunch portions. I loved the taste of the dish (I did add in some other spices; cumin, parsley, ground coriander seed) and will be making this dish again

I served the dish with the broccoli and a bit of the cauli in the mrS basiks frozen veg bag - I kid you not, there ain't a lot of broccoli in that selection! Sliced cucumber, celery sliced, dressed and topped with chopped walnuts, minted Potato salad and a tomato.

EH - please look away now - but for everyone else, the potato salad was made by chopping up some smartieprice tinned potatoes, adding in seasoning, mayonnaise and freshly chopped mint. I have to say, Dear Reader, it made a nice salad

EH - you can come back now

A nice filling dish, that - with amendment - can definitely fit into the frugal category A version of the recipe can be found HERE - please note, the blogger used edaname beans (I know that you know that they are soy beans) and they also did 'half recipe'. It's best to work out quantities according to the pan you have available to cook it in, and how many you are feeding. Oh, and I cooked mine in the oven, as I haven't the right 'skillet' to do this on the stove-top.

Right, DP is up and about so I guess the 'day has begun'. We've a chore fest lined up again today, so I think that I'll be busy! Thing is, I'll have to come up with something for lunch and dinner, in addition to doing the grunt work!

Potential for another NSD, though

Not too sure what will be for dinner yet - according to the planner, it would have been the broccoli and bangers, but we had those on Saturday

Have a wonderful day - what ever you are up to.

Thanks for popping by, reading and joining in.

I greatly appreciate it.

Greying

muddywhitechicken

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

b) to make it so that I wouldn't be the laughing stock of MSE by using the phrase, 'immerse saffron threads in the double jersey cream......'

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Good morning Greying - you do make me chuckle!

MWCx

little_sweetie

Good afternoon, Greying & friends,

The frittata type thingy looks great. I would never have thought to add rice to bulk it up and I have to admit the shhh TINNED potato salad looks lush...right up my street. I'm definitely going to give that a go 'cos DD and her hubby love potato salad which is quite expensive to buy ready made. On occasions I have paid over £1 for a small tub just for them. Once made up do you think it would keep for a few days in the fridge, GP? Or will it freeze? Thanks so much for sharing your expertise once again
BTW that's a stunning photo too, full of life and colour. Get you with the star shaped tomato! You might have another undiscovered vocation as a cookery book illustrator to add to your repertoire...beautiful!

Changing the subject completely, the Endeavor series has really grown on me and we tend to record it and watch later just so that we can whizz through the ads. We do the same with Vera too. I usually find I only watch TV for about an hour each evening (whatever is on at 9pm) and if there's something on both sides, well, a bonus. We can record the addy prog and watch another time

DD and family are coming round later for showers and tea. Thanks for commenting on the heating situation, dear GP. To coin one of your own phrases they were mucho, mucho grateful for the early morning warmth of the borrowed heater. The 6 yr old commented that it was so much quicker to go to sleep in a warm bedroom too...aw poor scrap Anyway, I'm feeding them hot dogs with onions and HM cake. Funds are pretty tight at the mo.

Have a great holiday afternoon x

Greying_Pilgrim

Ay up little_sweetie Lovely to *see* ya

With the tattie salad, I would quite happily make it and store it in the fridge - if you were using fresh mint, that would darken over time, but you could always 'pep' it up with a bit more fresh stuff at the point of serving. I should imagine it would keep for a couple of days quite nicely, covered in the fridge. I wouldn't freeze, simply because the mayo would likely 'split' and whilst normally you can 'whip' things like that back on defrosting, with the tatties in it, you'll end up with gloop. However, if you've a tin of tatties and a jar of mayo (either in the cupboard unopened or in the fridge) then you've always got access to a tattie salad. I simply drained/rinsed the tatties, so it took moments to prepare - HTH

Ha! We've Vera on tape too! Goodness knows when we'll watch all this stuff - too much to do!

Aw, for the grandchild who's having trouble sleeping in the cold. Oooh, remember my childhood home, one open fire (other side of the house) and metal framed windows....... brrr! Thank goodness for grandmas and cake! :T

We've just had our lunch and had the rest of the Kuku cold (equally good as warm, just like any frittata ) with the last of the cucumber diced up with the last tomato diced up. Then I did carrot 'ribbons' and dressed them in oil and lemon juice and sprinkled them with sesame, sunflower and pumpkin seeds. The ribbons either needed to be thinner (used a veg peeler) or needed more time for the lemon juice to 'cure' them (like cerviche) as they were a bit boingy and resisted stabbing with the fork Making them a little difficult to eat. The carrot itself was a lovely sweet one though. And we're both stuffed, so mostly a 'win' I'd say

Greying