Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Farway

I enjoy the "free stuff" put on by a local seaside council, I'm not a CT payer there, but I enjoyed the Tour de France when it came over, plus Kite Festival, and D Day stuff. My local CT goes towards paying for things I do not use, but could, like a National Park. I don't begrudge those type of extras but I can see how it could annoy others. I can think of things I would not use CT for, but it goes there anyway, swings & roundabouts

pineapple

I'm still getting my head round the discussion about bins. Here we don't get bins, we have the infamous blue bag - or rather two blue bags. But owing to rats from the farms and the river you can't just leave your blue bag out, so end up buying your own bins to put them in. On the weekly collection day, you put your two filled bags outside your gate to be collected and they lob over your wall two new bags tied together in a knot. I line my bins with them. Once when I chucked some rubbish in, it fell straight out the other side. Yes the latest blue bags were missing their bottoms
We also get issued with two large woven bags for fortnightly recycling.
Edit: I have no idea if larger households get extra blue bags

[Deleted User]

oh what a lovely day today, sun all day and I have been reading inside in the sun all afternoon. It does pick the spirits up after winter.

Food? well tbh whatever I could nab from the fridge and freezer, anyway I am back into using-up mode but at the moment have to concentrate on the fresh veggies in the fridge and they will go with almost anything. Probably the same scenario tomorrow and the day after, as long as it takes

The new ct bill came today, up £11 a month and auto over 10 months, which is what I want.

caronc

Good evening everyone,
I had a rather long wait to be seen at the Drs (I thought that might be the case so had my book & specs) so I'm just back, boy it's getting chilly outside. Blood results were all fine but my BP is still playing up so back in a week to see if it has settled if not meds will get tweaked again!

My council does very little by way of "free stuff", that said local groups have filled that gap and there is quite a bit on in the town over the year due to their hard work, including two very popular (though not free, they are non-profit making so affordable) fairly large scale music events.

Farway - are you hoping someone will rescue the onion or will you just leave it to eventually take care of itself?

kittie - lucky you get a sit in the sunshine:), unfortunately it clouded over hear so I didn't get much of a chance to enjoy any.

I'm looking forward to my dinner tonight as I've not had sea bass in ages, not sure why as the one in the freezer has been there for a good bit. I'm just going to stuff it with some of the spiced onions, drizzle with olive oil and bake it. I'll nuke some rice and veg to have with it. I had thought to have something tomatoey with it but I think I fancy runner beans and cabbage more.

wort

4 large bins here ! Blue- paper
Brown- plastic and glass
Green- food and garden waste
Black -everything else!
Rarely full apart from green over summer, when I usually use everyone else's green bins too!!!
Not many gardeners round here.
Caronc- the onions sound great and fairly simple (not loads of spices etc.)
Thanks for reminder of carrots they have now been cooked and put in freezer minus a few for tea tomorrow. Ala PN.

I've had ham salad thin for lunch with 2 kiwis and yogurt.
Jacket spud cheese and rest of tin beans ,salad of tomatoes lettuce onion,peppers.
With magnum style choc ice.

wort

Wednesday - my Kittie goes outside now but when he was a kitten I bought greenwoods plant fibre litter,
Layered deep, then scooping after each no 1 or no 2 , it didn't need throwing the whole litter away for a few weeks. There was no smell ,though my Kittie is raw fed, so his no 2 are tiny, and don't smell anyway.
The litter is compostable and can be flushed. Though I didn't flush it.

Sorry if TMI!

PasturesNew

Green bits for garden clippings here are chargeable, ~£65/year.
I don't have it as I've a tiny garden, which I cut just 3-4x a year and so I take it to the tip.

I don't want to get lazy and leave it rotting/smelling, so I wait until a day when it's been dry 2-3 days and I fancy it and I've got the time to finish the job and go immediately to the tip to get rid of it.

wort

Gosh I hope they don't start charging here!! I love gardening, it's not huge, only small but it requires lots of chopping and clipping.
I don't drive so no car, and the tip is a quite a few miles away!!

meg72

pineapple wrote: »

It does irk me somewhat that I only pay 25% less than a house full of people. Singletons lose out everywhere. Used to live in a little hamlet where the residents had shared responsibility for maintenance of the access lane, the communal septic tank etc. Unfortunately for me, liability was calculated on a property basis and not per person. It was the only way it could be I guess, but it cost me dearly. Don't even get me started on those bumper packs of cheap potatoes etc. If you see someone scratching her head at a fruit and veg counter, that would be me trying to work out if it is worth it (or even possible) to cook and freeze, or which is cheaper - getting the cheap bulk pack and throwing some away or going for broke and getting the expensive small pack, which I am however, likely to use in it's entirety.
'Buy loose!,' I hear you cry - unfortunately the Co-op in town doesn't seem to have got the plastics message and has taken to packaging just about everything.

re Potatoes, I realise that not everyone has a frost free storage but if you have, garage, shed, old coal bunker or as in my case an outside meter cupboard. It is well worth buying in bulk I bought a 25kg sack for £5 last October and have just fished the last few out of the sack. Yes they are sprouting now, lol they do in Spring, but hey ho, can peel the sprouts off and use them or can plant them. if you have the space. I don't now I haven't got my allotment, I just get a pack of early seed potato from poundland and put in pots and get a few pounds of lovely early spuds.

PasturesNew

meg72 wrote: »

....I bought a 25kg sack for £5 last October and have just fished the last few out of the sack. Yes they are sprouting now, lol they do in Spring

I've bought a lot more spuds recently than ever before. I bought 2.5Kg 10 days before Xmas, then 2.5Kg for Xmas, then 2.5Kg on 31st because Mr T, then 4ld1 had them at 29p or 39p or so.... and so it seemed daft not to.

I finished those and have bought another 2.5Kg this year.

So, really, really, pushing it and going out of my way to plough through the spuds .... I've still only managed 10Kg in 3 months. If they "kept forever" and if I bought 25Kg and never had to rush to get through them that'd probably do me for 2 years as I could slow down and just eat them when I wanted (not when they needed using).

Even at £5 for 25Kg (20p/Kg) ... I'd still not wish to waste a single spud, so I'd have to eat spuds every day, endlessly!

I buy my frozen chips because they work out at about 65p/Kg, which isn't bad and they're already peeled and chipped and part-cooked ... so just need a tiny bit of cooking compared to when staring at a raw spud with a skin on....