Living richly; simply and debt-freely

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

I hope you are all in fine fettle and that the weather is kind to you - I know that there is supposed to be heavy rain in western parts - hope mrsinvisible is ok.

You'll be very pleased to hear that I have been keeping out of mischief And have been making some progress on 'house' things too. And what has pleased me most is that seeing me trying to do things, has spurred DP on, so we're back to accomplishing things - albeit at a lightning snails pace...... :rotfl:

I've tried out a couple of 'new to me' recipes this week, I thought I would post - just in case they are of use to anyone else - as they are both keepers in my file

Tuesday was thrifty, so we had soup I tried out Creole Black bean soup which was from 'The ethnic vegetarian cookbook' by Angela Shelf-Medaris. The other recipe I make out of that book often is veggie scrapple Whilst it was a bit heavy on the ingredients list, and wasn't really the epitome of thrift, it was a very tasty soup, and I was able to take advantage of sweet potatoes being 67p a kilo in mrA :T Pic here;



The last night we had Baked Orzo with mozzarella and oregano (scroll down for recipe) which is from Yotam Ottolenghi. Again, not a dish that was light on ingredients (then whenever is a YO recipe????), but another keeper. It is interesting that orzo (grain shaped) pasta tends to divide folk - as it can get very claggy when you cook it, but it worked really well in this dish. I think that it is also a dish that would lend itself to vegetable substitution, and I bet a bit of chorizo would make it smashing too I kept costs down by using convention smartiepricey mozzarella - rather than the firm stuff. I used one. And I used the half price pecorino that I had got from mrL during one of their recent offers, rather than parmesan. It was served with green salad leaves and broccoli (valoo frozen), and I'm sorry that the tomato (mrL family pack £1.29 a kilo) looks so manky. It was the better slice to come out of the dish, but I didn't notice until after that the tommy had shed it's seeds and looked a bit naff As it was DP's plate, and not a scrap remained, I assume it tasted perfectly fine Pic here;





Today has already been a bit of a chore-fest. However, I will be rewarded this afternoon by being whisked off to a 'hip bar' No dear reader, I have not yet succumbed to needing our dearest and most treasured NHS, I mean a 'hip & trendy bar'. DP wants to go for a little celebration and this place captured the imagination... I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll feel uncomfortably out of place and get watery eyes from the prices...... :rotfl:

Did anyone see the last episode of Andrew and Giorgio - Italy unpacked? The Veneto is just glorious! Especially the bits that are furthest away from Venice. The Dolomite mountains! Gasp! Although they were there in summer/autumn, I really would like to live there - although I suspect I wouldn't be saying that when 6ft of snow fell in winter..... :rotfl: Glorious. Also, do you get the impression that they've not been recommisioned? Andrew seemed to be hinting at it, although Giorgio was a bit more positive. I would have thought it quite a popular programme, they present it well and don't get too silly. Although I noticed they weren't drinking in this series when they ate........

Well, I've had my little break, best get back to it.

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

for my cooking and housework mojo returning

for DP's help and support

for the prospect of a treat this afternoon.

Best get and make the meal for our dinner later - that way we won't get 'takeaway munchies' following our little libation.....

Thanks for continuing to pop in, read, comment and offer support. Mucho appreciated.

See y'all later.

Greying

rtandon27

Happy Weekend dearest GP! - Your YO orzo bake looks mouthwateringly good! Such a plate full of colour - just my type of meal - totally agree with you that all YO's recipes seem use a plethora of ingredients - Wondering if I could use some of my pasta stores to create something similar...

...of to ponder acceptable substitutions!

mrsinvisible

glad you got your mojo back, GP, and as usual, the food pics look fan flippin tastic.!! l'm not a fan of sweet potato, but there are 3 in the veg drawer, so the creole black bean soup may be copied at chez invis.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning :hello:

rtandon - I read your post and immediately thought, 'broken bits'. You know, all the itty bits of pasta that congregate in the bottom of the pasta bag or box. I usually save mine for minestrone - although we are eating a lot less pasta these days, so it takes a while to collect - but then again, any pasta really will do in a bake. The smaller the better though - I'm guessing????

mrsinvisible - what a very kind comment. It was a nice soup, I have to say. Happy to share the recipes, always

Well, I survived my trip out to trendy-ville....... The good news is that we weren't the oldest in the joint There were quite a few folks in - two large groups, a threesome and us, and I have to say, the generations were quite evenly represented.

Of course, because I ain't with the 'zeitgeist', I'd not really caught on - until a couple of days ago - as to how trendy it is now to be a 'c0cktail bar'. That's all very well, folk like to drink them - I appreciate that. However, the operation of a c0cktail lounge is entirely different to your run o t'mill pub - waitresses carouse the floor. So, imagine our surprise, at having just sat down at the table - only just stemming the flow of water from us eyes at the price of 2 beers - ie not a lot of change from a..... tenner :eek: When a waitress sashayed over and asked if we wanted more drinks????? :eek: I'm sure that it's probably a sales volume/commission deal, but it did seem a bit *pushy* to me. And funnily enough, DP said exactly the same thing this morning about it. I suppose to be fair, she went to the other groups and they did order drinks - so........ I suppose I'm not adverse to making the 10 pace journey to the bar when I've finished my first drink and if I fancy/can afford a second. I'm glad that we tried it, though I'm not sure that we'll return in a hurry - when asked did they do crisps (expecting to have to pay something extortionate for some hand cooked artisanal things...) we were told that they did not, but we could have meditteranean 'platters' (think meat/cheese/olives etc). Fine. But we didn't want food, and each platter was £10 :eek: DP considered ordering a c0cktail, but said, 'I think I would regret it, as it'd buy us at least 2 drinks in our usual pub'. We toddled off there after - for a dose of reality (fantasy living is fine, for about 5 minutes...:D) - and we had 2 pints, and a packet of crisps for 25p less than the cost of a fancy c0cktail in the other place..... :rotfl:

Still, time out together with DP = priceless (oh, apart from we couldn't hear each other in trendy-ville - the music was really loud )

Dinner last night was another new to me recipe. Much simpler this time and something that can be made in advance, so dinner wasn't too much trouble when we got home. I made Ewa or Nigerian bean stew from The Global Vegetarian kitchen (UK title) by Troth Wells. It was very much the sort of thing that I cook/we like to eat. The ingredient list was reasonably straightforward - you can use any beans really, I used black beans, but I wish I had used black-eyed beans, as we have BB's on the menu again later in the week You can't really tell in the front bowl in the pic, but the dish does contain green pepper - I got another bag of frozen mixed peppers from 1celand and used the green slices out of it. I served it with sweetcorn - as I had plenty of frozen kernels - and rice. It was a nice, easy, satisfying dish. On the 'keep' pile I think

I've a ton of things to do today - despite a slow start But we made time for scrambled eggs on toast (with hm bread), so life is pretty good! Think I'm going to have to get the sewing machine out - gotta design a carry bag....... mmmmmm.

Today I am grateful for these 3 things;

the opportunity to get 'gussied up' with DP - doesn't happen very often, and we had a lovely, relaxing time. We made the most of it

for a simple, yet tasty breakfast - many people won't have that luxury this morning

for the opportunity to get experimental and creative with fabric and for my sewing machine

Thank you so much for continuing to pop into this diary, for reading and commenting. You should all know that I am humbled by your ongoing support. Thank you

See y'all later.

Greying

in_need_of_direction

Scrambled egg is my Sunday morning breakfast treat. Only hm bread I do is soda, pancakes or scones.

Greying_Pilgrim

A pic of us tea would be a good idea, wouldn't it?



Ewa (Nigerian Bean Stew) with sweetcorn, boiled rice and a tomato. You can just see the green bell pepper that is part of the dish, if you look at the dish at the back - it seems to be hiding in DP's portion

Greying

rtandon27

Greying_Pilgrim wrote: »

...I read your post and immediately thought, 'broken bits'...

Thank-you GP - what a brilliant idea! - I may even put some curly pasta (fusilli?) in a bag and take a bash at it with a rolling pin to produce the broken bits!:D I have such a hard time using up pasta, we've fallen for the - it's cheap and filling trap - only to find that the six bags:eek: in the stores don't shift at all as we would much rather eat rice noodles or udon noodles or (when they are on clearance) soba noodles. We did go through a stage of making vegetarian lasagna so the soopermerkato brand of lasagna noodles did get used up!

little_sweetie

Hi GP, I am so pleased that you have your mojo back You gave me a giggle this morning reading about your trip to Trendy-Ville! I resent paying extortionate prices for trendy drinks too and I actually like to hear what my OH is saying to me whilst we drink :rotfl: Although the bar might be good if we had had a row :rotfl:


As usual your food looks great. We have been making the most of cheap leeks so leek & potato soup has featured heavily in our food plan.


Have a great week x

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening :hello:

Well, I don't know if there is any correlation with not popping in here as often, but £'s have literally been flying out of Greying Towers in the last few days or so And there are more (known) bills to attend to as we advance into the month

Still, we try to keep our pecker up where we can, and find delight in the small things in life The birdsong is particularly glorious at the moment - early mornings and early evenings especially

I found 10p *roadkill* on my travels :j I did give it a kick first, to check that it was not stuck to the ground, as it was in an area surrounded by flats - and it has not been unknown in certain similar areas for small change to be glued to the floor, presumably as *entertainment* for the flat-dwellers to watch folks *fall* for being made to look tight Anyhoo, it was free so it was mine - into my pocket it slipped

I'm wondering whether the royal mail has finally processed my door-to-door opt out application, as thus far, this week, we have received no pizza leaflets, stairlift brochures or brochures for expensive-cheap furniture :j You watch - we'll get a deluge through the door tomorrow :rotfl: I'm wondering whether it will work anyway. Our neighbourhood is always a test bed for newby posties, so I'm not sure how you get continuity of 'don't deliver there'? However, I hope that it does, as we really don't want these leaflets nor to fill up our recycling bin.

I made another batch of yoghurt (have updated siggie Figgie) and I have to say YAY! :j for british milk - the whole milk UHT I get is from Devon. I used an organic starter (just happened to be the cheapest way to buy a starter), which again, used milk from british farms. Why am I flag waving you ask? Well, the taste of this yoghurt is completely different to that made with the 25p whole milk UHT that was of EU origin. I don't know what they do differently, perhaps it was because it was originally intended for sale in another part of the world - and every nation has different tastes, eh? But it didn't make yoghurt a patch on my regular stuff

Oh, and the other thing, that I'm not noting as a smug-brag-fest, i'm just noting for my own reference really, was that our March donation to the FB has been made. A$da still have 6 x 1L packs of UHT milk on special offer for £3, and as s/s UHT milk is something of a permanent on the *most wanted list* we gave 2 packs. We didn't make a donation in February, but you may recall that we happily donated to Maggies Centres in remembrance of dear kissjen.

My main purpose for popping on tonight was to share another 'new to me' recipe. With it being a Thursday, I made it as a Buddha bowl, but on re-reading, I found it was supposed to be a breakfast dish Ironically, I had - whilst waiting to start us tea, been reading a blog post about 'shaking things up' - doing things out of sync etc. One of the things mentioned was eating non-breakfasty type things for breakfast. Well, I guess I'm just turning that on its head and eating breakfast for dinner Anyway, the original recipe is from The Green Kitchen, which evolved from the green kitchen stories blog. Well, I had a go at making Thin Omlettes with cottage cheese and apple (sorry for linking to a different blog, but it's not available on the green kitchen stories blog). I omitted the pumpkin seeds, because I didn't have any, and forgot to buy some (they were on my list ). I served each omelette with boiled rice, spinach, grated beetroot (left over from our warm beetroot, lentil and mozzarella salad last night) and then in lieu of a *sauce* I made a little salsa from a tomato, a red onion some red wine vinegar a little oil, salt, pepper and basil. Picture here;



DP really liked the cottage cheese and apple stuffed omelette (which, needless to say, my pic doesn't convey at all well!! :rotfl:). Relatively cheap dish - the cottage cheese was courtesy of mrL - about 45p I think.


Today, has been very stressy, people can just leave you gobsmacked with their arrogance some days can't they? But I still remain grateful for these 3 things;

that I made a stand - even if it had no immediate effect.

that since the weekend I've continued in my 'make it' mojo and made something else for DP, with a 'spare' halfway completed too

for remembering what is, in fact, important in life.

Thank you so very much for popping in and reading. Know that I appreciate it. Greatly.

See y'all later.

Greying

rtandon27

:wave::wave:
Hello dearest GP - what a loverly post - so happy to 'hear' from you!