Cooking for one (Mark Two)

[Deleted User]

karcher, have a look at the widows thread on the over 50s board. You might see where I am coming from and like I said, we had a good chat

A brand new day. First breakfast eaten: spelt flakes with added dried raspberries and cacao nibs plus almond milk. Later an egg and berries for second breakfast at 10ish. Lunch continues with freezer usage so will be starter soup plus fish with ratatouille plus fresh greens and carrot. Snack later, baked apple. Another snack will be kiwi and grapes and pecans

Once that lot is eaten then I don`t need to think about fruit and veg but I will also feel full enough, so teatime will just be a slice of spelt and peanut butter and if I can stick to that lot, then I will be happy

I am going to spend a little time this afternoon on forward planning re financial stability, now that I am almost seventy. Continual regular safe income is even more important and I think I will be buying an annuity out of part of my pot, in a few months. Gotto go with the flow as always, either bend or break

PasturesNew

kittie wrote: »

Continual regular safe income is even more important and I think I will be buying an annuity out of part of my pot, in a few months.

I'll have no pot. As a single person all my income always went on getting/keeping a basic roof over my head, no spare for pensions etc.

I'll be solely on the Govt handouts, which, to be fair, isn't a great deal less than working full-time after rent/mortgage and commuting costs!

While that's OK, as a homeowner, I do have the additional costs to "worry" about, such as replacement of capital items (new kitchen/new bathroom), keeping the boiler running and making sure the roof's still working. So I'll have a lesser lifestyle than, say, an OAP in a council house/rented ... but I'll do OK. I've always had nothing, so to continue to have nothing won't change much

I probably don't expect to "make old bones" though as my lifestyle choices have never been those on the list of centenarians

Need2bthrifty

Morning Everyone,

Been up since silly O'clock this morning and got a pot of pea & ham soup on the hob by 7.15. I did a Gammon joint in the slow cooker yesterday and had it with pineapple, chips, peas and sweetcorn for my evening meal, oh my plate runneth over - it was so nice and I thought I'm not going to waste the cooking juices so put some peas to soak overnight, I haven't had pea and ham soup for ages.

The last pea soup I made I used yellow split peas which I think were from L1d! and they took forever to cook and some hardly softened at all, I ended up having to give it a good blitz in the liquidiser and pass it through a sieve to get a soup you didn't actually have to crunch your way through, so this time I opted for green split peas which seem to be cooking down nicely.

I'm starting to feel a bit peckish now so will go and have some Greek yoghurt & prunes before I take the stick blender to the soup and add in the gammon. I had hard boiled a couple of eggs to have a salad the other day but with the heating not working it was too cold and had soup instead, so that will be lunch today.

Haven't decided what I'll have for tea yet, I need to go work on my menu plan as well today.

Glad to hear other peoples technical problems are being sorted - My heating is working again and I'm so glad I have a couple of portable electric heaters - NE Scotland is not a comfortable place to be if you don't have heat.

meg72

PasturesNew wrote: »

I'll have no pot. As a single person all my income always went on getting/keeping a basic roof over my head, no spare for pensions etc.

I'll be solely on the Govt handouts, which, to be fair, isn't a great deal less than working full-time after rent/mortgage and commuting costs!

While that's OK, as a homeowner, I do have the additional costs to "worry" about, such as replacement of capital items (new kitchen/new bathroom), keeping the boiler running and making sure the roof's still working. So I'll have a lesser lifestyle than, say, an OAP in a council house/rented ... but I'll do OK. I've always had nothing, so to continue to have nothing won't change much

I probably don't expect to "make old bones" though as my lifestyle choices have never been those on the list of centenarians

I had no pot either basic pension and pension credit and its really no problem have about the same lifestyle as when working.I don't have my own property now as due to urban renewal my lovely large two bedroom flat with garden was compulsory purchased. Now rent a tiny one bed bungalow but get housing benefit and no worries about repairs.

There is a government scheme to help homeowners on basic pension to get help with property repairs etc. Afriend of mine has just had her boiler replaced for free. and free loft insulation.

theres also help with heating, £200 heating allowance plus if your supplier is in the scheme an additional £140 warm home discount.

Plus little extras Free bus pass, free prescriptions, and to my mind best of all no council tax lol always hated paying that.

moneyistooshorttomention

PasturesNew wrote: »

I probably don't expect to "make old bones" though as my lifestyle choices have never been those on the list of centenarians

:rotfl:at that one Pastures.

There was an aspect that worried me about my own lifestyle choices a while back - when I saw the number of books etc that were written along the theme of "Be healthier - and live longer". At that point I would read them - but be genuinely puzzled how I could get the bit I wanted (ie be healthier) without getting the add-on of "live longer". I do want being healthier - I don't want what (to me) is a downside of living longer.

Thankfully - more modern books take a different slant (maybe they realise there's other people out there equally horrified at the thought of living longer) and it now comes over as "Be healthier - and have a higher proportion of your life as healthy/active years than other people would". Now that makes sense to me - as someone who wants to think along lines of "If I decide to go out dancing or for a walk literally the day before I die - then I want to be healthy enough to do so". Maybe the change of emphasis these days is down to the fact my generation (ie the baby boomers) are now into late middle age/gone into elderly age group and are looking at those in the generation before us and thinking "If that's what being elderly is like - count me out - I don't want that".

...on that note...must head off to the supermarket (where I seem to be doing the minority of my food shopping these days) and do my usual "cast eyes over everything - hoping for something new I've not tried before".

PasturesNew

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

do my usual "cast eyes over everything - hoping for something new I've not tried before".

I don't do New Year Resolutions, but next year I do plan to find something new/something old and cook/eat it every fortnight.

I think it's unrealistic to find something every week because, CFO, just one simple purchase can mean 4-6 meals, so it's unrealistic to then try to squeeze "something new" in.

I also think that committing to finding something new each fortnight is daft, if there are old things I've not eaten for 10-20-30 years.

So I'll be doing a Fortnightly quest to: "Find something new, or revisit an old thing again".

And, the "new" might simply be to try a new flavour, or brand.

So, overall, no major changes, but a way of rattling the rut a bit ... in fact, I'll call it that: My 2018 Rattle the Rut Challenge
That's now trademarked and copyrighted, by me!!

It means you don't go down an aisle and grab the usual ... but scan the shelves ... or buy the usual at another shop. e.g. swap a L1dl cheap family pie ... for the 4ldi one.

It doesn't have to be a big change... just a little rattle of that old rut.

Or like this past fortnight - when I've gone out of my way to pick up a dish for Giant Yorkies and bake some (4+ so far I think!). Or, like at Xmas, actually having a nut roast (whether I buy one or make one) ... to do it, instead of thinking about it.

Nachos are on my hit list .... I've been intending to make those cheese topped ones again for months/years! I made them a half dozen times about 10 years ago and not since. But every time I've bought the tortilla chips thinking "Ah, nachos" I've ended up just opening the packet and dipping into them.... so the RTR challenge will have me actually DOING it.... (I did actually think nachos might be lunch today ... as I'm already half way down the bag of tortilla chips).

[Deleted User]

old bones pn! its down to genes and lack of stress too. I know two old ladies, both in their 90s and are doing very well, one tried to push things along by eating bought trifles even though she is a diabetic. It is whatever our destiny is, it is always best to live in the moment and anyway, the way things are in the world, do we really want to live to a century? Not me

So I need to get arris into gear and have had my berries, coffee and eggs and been out to take a bag of clothing. I will be postponing cycling until after lunch as the lanes are awful dirty, no rain as such to wash the muck spreader muck away. Lunch will now be a combo, no added veg as there are plenty, I skinned the mackerel and put it on the ratatouille and sprayed parmesan on top. All in one and all in the oven

poppystar

karcher wrote: »

Will he?
No offence meant, but how do you know?
(Everyone is different, so it is not comparable with anyone else's experience)

Distraction is all well and good but in a moment of quiet it could hit him like a tonne of bricks and only then will he really start the grieving process.

And if/when it hits he will have physically exhausted himself so may have additional problems to contend with and it take longer to build back up

Wednesday2000

Toast with Marmite and a cup of coffee for breakfast.

I was going to have a vegan cheese salad for lunch, but the weather is rainy. It's not cold, though so I might still have that. Tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce, marinated artichokes, apple cider vinegar, herbs, lemon juice and cubes of Violife vegan cheese. I wanted to buy some olives to go with it too.

Hollyharvey

I had decided that I needed to eat a bit better today. Well that was the intention this morning until I saw I had left some crumpets out of the freezer by accident on the kitchen worktop overnight. They were left open to the air and they have gone a bit hard, so I decided that they needed using up this morning. So they were breakfast, two of them with butter, mid morning snack was one of them with jam and lunch will be the other one with chocolate spread (so much for healthy).

But...I have got some cod out of the freezer for dinner and will have that with some mash and steamed veg, so something healthy there.

I need to start eating the larger items in the freezer to create a bit more space for some Christmas goodies. I'll have a think about food for the next week later today taking that into account.