Living richly; simply and debt-freely

Greying_Pilgrim

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Do you mind if I join in tonight? ........

Thanks I feel better now :kisses3:

Of course not Cheery - and the fact that you feel better for it is the icing on the cake!

I do not envy your journey on public transport and then walking - any day, but today of all days But I do know what you mean about the impact of sunshine - we do need our bones warming - there's been alot of damp weather! and it is *supposed* to be summer

Hurrah for interesting work - particularly when your work environment is good too And for supportive fellas

Thanks for posting Cheery

Greying X

Verbatim

Oh it IS good to have your lovely meal photos back GP. I did miss them!
Glad you're coping with the heat and taking care.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

Verbatim - lovely to *see* you. Yes indeed, I always take care in the sun, it and I can fall out very easily And having a small brings a whole new dimension to the matter. I am, however, glad I am not currently pregnant - how I feel for gals who are, particularly those getting to term.

Well, we've done alot of huffing, puffing and [STRIKE]sweating [/STRIKE] perspiring Thankfully it is now a little cooler - but we still have the sun, which is nice

I must chase the electrickery company today. They requested a meter reading a while ago, but have not produced a bill. Given that they reduced our DD - on the basis of previous use, I suspect that we owe them money. The washing machine is on constantly for a start! I'd rather we were straight, and then I can compare to see if we are on the best deal :money:

I'm still getting frustrated with food shopping - which is silly, a waste of energy and I must stop! Better to direct the energy to try to find a solution. :cool: I was pondering yesterday about weekly meal planning. I've not done it before, but it may well be the only way I can start to get DH to *look* in the supermercados and spot deals or seasonal stuff. You know, sort of we're having salad on Thursday, what price are the cherry tomatoes in X I paid 48p for a cucmber from mrW yesterday. Normally this would be an OKish price, but I can't help thinking it would probably be 29p at one of the German discounters 10p here, 35p there is adding up and my budget is constantly busted YS shopping - of the mega-barginacious variety - is more or less a non-starter for us, we just can't be in the right place at the right time regularly. So have to settle for 'acceptable' priced YS or none at all.

I'm delighted that mrW is continuing with its cold-dron foods promo. I bought some more tofu. We had some for tea last night.

I decided to do a buddha bowl, I was going to do one inspired by a vegan pub/cafe located in Portland, Oregon. But then found I hadn't got one of the key ingredients (doh!) so I'll save that for another time. Instead, I did a bit of a hodge podge, but it was basically a riff on middle eastern cuisine. I boiled up some brown long-grain rice (I do like it, but it does take forever to cook, I can see why people don't bother with it!). Then I made Yotam Ottolenghi's Carrot & Mung Bean salad - omitting the feta. The mung beans i have got are eons old - I got them YS'd in mrT yonks ago - and i've just checked, BB Jan 2016 - ho hum! They are fine though I grated the carrot, rather than batonning it, as it was an accompaniment, rather than the main attraction. It was a good dish though - definitely a keeper, and the warm/hot mung beans do soak up the flavours wonderfully.

Inspired by Laura, over at The First Mess, I made dukkah* crusted tofu, which chimed in with the spices in the salad. I didn't follow the recipe that Laura gave, just improvised on the theme I then made a version of red pepper and walnut sauce - Turkish Muhammara if you will. My version didn't contain bread crumbs and I purposely made it thin so that I could drizzle it over the tofu. Then I sprinkled sesame and nigella seeds on top with some sumac. Picture here;



Apart from the tofu, which was £1.17 for a pack, all other ingredients were in store. It worked well, and I would definitely repeat it. Dukkah crusted tofu is the way forward!

*I omitted the nuts from the dukkah this time, as I was using walnuts in the sauce. But this opens up endless possibilites for crusting tofu/paneer in the future!

Well, I best get on and seize the day. Sunshine is burning

Thank you for popping in, reading and commenting. Always appreciate it. Always.

Greying X

joeyjimbles

Looks lovely - I like Dukkah too - think it was Nigel Slater in one of his early books who dipped boiled eggs into it as a snack, works really well.

Fishcakes were a massive success on Monday with the leftover sweet potato and trout and I added discs of tiny red chilies, the only ones that my little plant is now prepared to grow, some dodgy spring onions from the bottom of the fridge and some frozen green beans. They were really good. There's another box of leftover trout in the freezer so I now have a plan for it.

Were the mung beans 'fresh'? I'm not sure that I've ever seen them.

Greying_Pilgrim

joeyjimbles wrote: »

Were the mung beans 'fresh'? I'm not sure that I've ever seen them.

joeyjimbles - wasn't it Quail's eggs that he dunked? I seem to remeber that too.

No the mung beans were dried. 'indus' brand, 2kg bag. IIRC they were £1.49 instead of £3. The weird thing is, although we've got a 'world foods' aisle in our mrT (it isn't terribly 'worldly ) I'd never seen them for sale, so it was a lucky spot (they were on a RTC shelf in a different part of the shop). However, a quick 'goggle' seems to indicate that none of the supermercados stock this brand now????

Scored some YS'd cheese today :j 75p for 300g of mature cheddar :j will grate it and pop it in the freezer to adorn future pizzas :j

Right, lunch time. Shall i have a cheese sanger?

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

Tea tonight was a riff on a dish that i had seen on a retaurant menu. I think mine is sufficiently different, and I'm sure that their presentation would be exemplary - whereas mine looked like .........

It involved beluga lentils - the really tiny ones, that look like, um 'caviar'. We bought them on a 'day out' in June. Strange mementos the Greying Clan bring back from their travels They were from the type of wholefood shop that you just want to move into - it even smelt healthy!!! anyway, the lentils were £1.65 for 500g, which is a little pricey, but I'd not used them before, and as we'd had a picnic lunch, and not spent on anything else frivolous, I figured I'd get a bag as a 'treat' (yes, we are a bundle of laughs here at Greying Towers :rotfl:). AND - guess where the lentils were grown.... only Canada - who knew? So thank you canada, beluga lentils are yummy

I marinated some red onion and garlic in lemon juice and white wine vinegar, salt and pepper, and mixed this into the cooked lentils when they were still warm. Once the lentils had cooled, I added in some chopped 'idared' apple (HB £1 for 15) for a bit of texture. I made a sauce out of beetroot, tahini, dates and cumin thinned with a little balsamic and some water. This was a disaster, I added way too much tahini (just crushed sesame seeds), so it was too thick and sesame was the dominant flavour Still, it was ok enough to eat, just looked awful and didn't drizzle Then the lentils were topped with half a sliced avocado (not that you can tell that from the pic ) and dotted with toasted walnut pieces, sesame seeds and nigella seeds. The avocado was really ripe - had I been making an avocado/chocolate dessert, it would have been perfect - and I bought 3 for £1 at the greengrocers today.

As I say, it'll win no prizes for presentation, but it did taste OK, and we didn't waste anything - not even the awful sauce, which was dolloped on with abandon once the camera was put away :rotfl: Picture here;



Everything was out of stores, with the exception of the apples and the avocados, which were bought today - but I have 14 apples and 2 avocados left, so not really 'only' bought for this dish, despite the £2 spend!

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

- love and kindness shown and given to Baby Greying; no agenda, no strings, just love freely expressed with the gift of time.

- A ripe avocado

- the lentil producers of Canada :j for variety

I'm off to flop. Think I'm still getting over the heatwave #lightweight :rotfl:

Thank you for popping through and reading. Mucho, mucho appreciated. By me. Always.

Greying X

Cheery_Daff

:rotfl: Love the colour of your dusky pink sauce Greying! :j :j Never heard of beluga lentils, how mysterious! Apparently it's possible to grow your own lentils in this country! Who knew? But you'd have to grow an awful lot to just make one curry, so I might not bother :rotfl:



You're not the only lightweight - I was so exhausted when I got in, I had to lie on the sofa for 2 hours before getting up again to plaster the bathroom. And that was after a two hour lunch and finishing work at 4pm! Now *that's* lightweight! :rotfl:

Do you mind if I join your 'three things to be grateful for' again?

- a leisurely lunch with a lovely friend I haven't seen for months
- getting back to a part of my work that I haven't done for a year, and which I love doing
- my plastering skills, which are slightly shoddy but functional, and which have saved us a fortune and made me feel all self reliant and cool :rotfl:

Thanks

Greying_Pilgrim

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

You're not the only lightweight - I was so exhausted when I got in, I had to lie on the sofa for 2 hours before getting up again to plaster the bathroom. And that was after a two hour lunch and finishing work at 4pm! Now *that's* lightweight! :rotfl:

Upsidedown Bear - we need your 'knock me down with a feather smilie' Good lord Cheery - I need to lie down on the sofa just reading about that lot! Well done you

Cheery_Daff wrote: »

Do you mind if I join your 'three things to be grateful for' again?

- a leisurely lunch with a lovely friend I haven't seen for months
- getting back to a part of my work that I haven't done for a year, and which I love doing
- my plastering skills, which are slightly shoddy but functional, and which have saved us a fortune and made me feel all self reliant and cool :rotfl:

Thanks

Great list! I'm just getting back into the swing of eating with a fork and a knife - I've yet to attain leisurely...... :rotfl:But we're getting there We gave in and hired a plasterer - and paid accordingly So mucho respect

Greying X

Cheery_Daff

Well I had a veggie sausage butty for lunch - no need for cutlery :rotfl: And I assure you that reading for 3 hours, having a 2 hour lunch with a friend, spending 2 hours talking to some other nice people wasn't really a very hard day at work :rotfl: Certainly it didn't seem to justify snoozing for 2 hours! :rotfl:

But still Sometimes you just need a nap anyway :rotfl:

mothernerd

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

Upsidedown Bear - we need your 'knock me down with a feather smilie' Good lord Cheery - I need to lie down on the sofa just reading about that lot! Well done you



Great list! I'm just getting back into the swing of eating with a fork and a knife - I've yet to attain leisurely...... :rotfl:But we're getting there We gave in and hired a plasterer - and paid accordingly So mucho respect

DS3 is 26 and I still just use a fork most of the time. When I was breast feeding I would make prawn coleslaw in a mixing bowl. When the baby began to cry I would scoop some into a small bowl and spoon it into me at the same time as feeding him.

Greying X

DS3 is 26 and I still just use a fork most of the time. When I was breast feeding I would make prawn coleslaw in a mixing bowl. When the baby began to cry I would scoop some into a small bowl and spoon it into me at the same time as feeding him.