Get a grip woman!

foxgloves

Morning @Suffolk_lass, I have my 4 first-ever jars of home-bottled tomatoes in the pantry, thanks partly to your encouragement. We are overwhelmed with apples & pears atm, so I'm thinking of adding a few trial jars of apple puree & poached cinnamon pears. As soon as I see with my own eyes (& taste buds) when we come to eat them, that I've done them correctly & they've kept perfectly well, I can see me getting into bottling & doing a lot more next year. I do make pickled pears sometimes, although I'm the only person who eats them now my Dad is no longer around to take enthusiastic delivery of boxes of my preserves. Pickled pears are good with ham, cold meats, etc, & I always think have a festive vibe.
F

Suffolk_lass

foxgloves said:

Morning @Suffolk_lass, I have my 4 first-ever jars of home-bottled tomatoes in the pantry, thanks partly to your encouragement. We are overwhelmed with apples & pears atm, so I'm thinking of adding a few trial jars of apple puree & poached cinnamon pears. As soon as I see with my own eyes (& taste buds) when we come to eat them, that I've done them correctly & they've kept perfectly well, I can see me getting into bottling & doing a lot more next year. I do make pickled pears sometimes, although I'm the only person who eats them now my Dad is no longer around to take enthusiastic delivery of boxes of my preserves. Pickled pears are good with ham, cold meats, etc, & I always think have a festive vibe.
F

I am so pleased you have given it a go @foxgloves, I am sure you won't regret it. A woman of your frugal practices and experiences I am only surprised you had not routinely begun bottling before now. I am amazed that bottling (canning, as the Americans call it) generically, is not making a huge revival, given the costs of storing food. 

I wish we had pear trees, the farm where we keep bees grubbed out their orchard because it was not economically viable to pay people to pick them any more. The other farmhouse has two good mature trees in their orchard but we weren't offered any this year. With the re-work of the veg garden we are doing, I might buy a cordon tree this November.

Suffolk_lass

Just logged into NS&I to check on PB and I have won 3x£100 this month. Blimey, £50 is the best ever before now and most recently it has been £25 a month max! Most encouraging!

That said, it does not unfortunately compensate for even one of our S&S ISA losses or the reduction in Mr SL's DC pension pot as each of these has tanked by considerably more than £300 since Daggers (three (not 2, thanks EH) up from Barking) and her Chancellor started messing with the economy.

foxgloves

I suppose the answer is that I've managed to deal with our produce without needing to bottle it, @Suffolk_lass. This year, however, we have had 3 gluts simultaneously - tomatoes, apples & pears and I started to think I need to overcome my botulism fears & give bottling a go. I've had poor results using the traditional ring-lidded branded preserving jars for other types of preserving but could recall an elderly Labour Party comrade telling me how she used recycled jam jars because the buttons pop in to indicate they have sealed. I will buy a selection of proper jars next year if my initial efforts store ok as I can see me expanding bottling into pasta sauce, maybe curry sauce, etc, as well as rhubarb & other fruit.
Re pears, what a shame you are so far away from us, as I could easily gift you a stone in weight of our conference pears without noticing a break in supplies. They can be prolific fruiters. Ours is an old tree & has a good year followed by a more modest one. Years ago, I had my pear chutney recipe published in a magazine & the prize was a slow cooker. Naturally we'd recently purchased one, but the prize one is still in its box up in the loft ready to shop from home when our current one goes kaput 
F x

EssexHebridean

Suffolk_lass said:

Just logged into NS&I to check on PB and I have won 3x£100 this month. Blimey, £50 is the best ever before now and most recently it has been £25 a month max! Most encouraging!

That said, it does not unfortunately compensate for even one of our S&S ISA losses or the reduction in Mr SL's DC pension pot as each of these has tanked by considerably more than £300 since Daggers (two up from Barking) and her Chancellor started messing with the economy.

I think you're getting our share - ERNIE has gone distinctly quiet on us since March - it's really not acceptable! 

(And as a Londoner, I could take issue with the Daggers reference - look at the District line map for the reason why...   ) 

foxgloves

"Daggers - two up from Barking" - Oh that has made me laugh, @Suffolk_lass......it's set me off coughing again, but it was worth it!
F

Suffolk_lass

EssexHebridean said:

Suffolk_lass said:

Just logged into NS&I to check on PB and I have won 3x£100 this month. Blimey, £50 is the best ever before now and most recently it has been £25 a month max! Most encouraging!

That said, it does not unfortunately compensate for even one of our S&S ISA losses or the reduction in Mr SL's DC pension pot as each of these has tanked by considerably more than £300 since Daggers (two up from Barking) and her Chancellor started messing with the economy.

I think you're getting our share - ERNIE has gone distinctly quiet on us since March - it's really not acceptable! 

(And as a Londoner, I could take issue with the Daggers reference - look at the District line map for the reason why...   ) 

Worse than that then! 3 up, not two! It's been a while since I used that end of the District Line, and I confess it was a steal but it made me laugh out loud.

Sorry about the Ernie thing. I have won exactly £575 since October 2020. I have not checked which bonds are responsible for the £300 but within the same period I bought £12,883 - using £10,000 of DH's pension pot for a big one, rounding up from the odd £17 I had as a child, and buying either £250 or £1000 bonds monthly when things felt less squeaky, financially, just after we paid off the mortgage. 

On the other hand, DH's pension pot has dropped by another £1100 in the last month, thanks largely to the piffle-paffle from Daggers and each of our three S&S ISAs have lost over a thousand each in the last month (more since the war started). Hence my need to stay consistently within our income and not to top up from savings.

I am thankful for what we have but still feel resentment at the loss of over two years state pension so far, with the change to womens' state pension age so late in my working life

beanielou

Aye, the state pension is a blooming bumble bee.  

Karmacat

Suffolk_lass said:
I am thankful for what we have but still feel resentment at the loss of over two years state pension so far, with the change to womens' state pension age so late in my working life

Yup.  They took 6 years from me.  I can see the logic of equalising with men, seeing as we live longer, but it was done *so* fast.  And then they took another year some time later.  Barstewards.

beanielou said:

Aye, the state pension is a blooming bumble bee.  

Thats a new-to-me way of saying it, I like it 😃

Suffolk_lass

A bit to update on.

1. Poor cat has obviously been feeling stressed by pup. I think partly our fault. We had fallen into the habit of feeding him first so he naturally assumed he is above her in the pack and chased and nipped her when he could get near her. She had developed stress-related cystitis, with evidence in the shower and bath (bless her, trying to be clean) but also on the old black leather sofa, in front of me. Only when I noticed this did I realise she was starting to be stressed and was already showing traces of blood. Then I twigged the marks in the bath (under the sloping beams, I had assumed something falling off them, stupid woman!). As an indoor cat she has not been to the vet for some years as cat flu or other infections seem unlikely. I rang our dog's vet (he is on a monthly plan) and they agreed to see her as an emergency. Big jab of antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and a 14 day course of capsules of calming powders to be sprinkled on her food. It has worked. Got my affectionate old girl back and pup is understanding he has to wait for her. The vet recommended a Fel*way optimum plug in thing too so that is coming today.
2. Yesterday we took pup to Southwold to take part in the world-record sausage-walk. Over 2000 dachshunds of all shapes and sizes. Much admiration of ours and by us of some others. Some seriously overweight dogs there. Poor things, being killed with kindness. Some seriously lovely examples too. We splashed out on a new harness that is a bit padded and will be better in the car. That (£27) and two coffees (£4) plus parking (£4.20) were all we spent. We had chicken sandwiches when we got home, using the chicken I could not eat from the previous evening's F&C supper that came with the quiz night we took part in. We knew the dog was shattered because he just went to sleep in a puddle of afternoon sunshine, taking no notice of the chicken, packets of crisps or even the cat, the other side of the pen section, by the French door in her own puddle of sunshine.
3. In garden and home produce terms we inventoried the chest freezer contents (which remain in the bee freezer) and I cooked enough tomatoes to have 48 jars. I gave four away to the friends in the quiz, along with pumpkins, cucumbers and butternut squash, all homegrown. I also pressed some shop bought passata on to her and a bag of the gleaned onions from the net we were given that are hanging in the larder. I will not need to buy any more meat for literally months.
4. Big spend. I have ordered the generator we have been talking about for several winters. We always get power cuts extending to several days after storms and I resent throwing food away having no means to make alternative arrangements. The possibility of overnight power interruptions is a whole other thing that was not part of the thinking.
5. As a result, things are not great on the financial side, although I have stuck to my plan of not shopping in October GC beyond what we have in (fruit, dairy, a couple of frozen treats for DS who is house/cat sitting). We are off to SW Scotland today, to visit my Mum. So away for just under a fortnight I don't know when I will get on here. Keep going everyone. Keep plodding, as beanie would say!