Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Brambling

Money my limited knowledge came from a colleague yesterday I've just had a look at the bbc news site and it's quite an interesting read, it seems it come from the production of ammonia and it is now cheaper to buy it in than produce it ourselves so we could have future problems. We seem to use it more and more for example delivering frozen food as dry ice and packaging to prolong shelf live of some food ie bags of salad as well as stunning some animals for slaughter......

With regards of beer manufacturing it's probably the same a bread manufacturing we have changed how we produce things and make them in large plants, for beer co2 is used for bottling, I think co2 is made in smaller amounts when yeast works ?

Farway

After bog standard porridge, banana, HM yoghurt & honey breakfast I made another batch of yoghurt using a few spoonfuls from the breakfast one

Then tackled watering the pots out the front before the heat gets going, it's nice & cool out there until the sun moves round in the afternoon.

This weather is certainly bringing the plants on, my dahlias from seed are in flower, nothing special they were a YS mixed packet, I note one seed merchant has free P & P this weekend, may splash out on "something", always liked the reddish leaved dahlias, Bishop of Llandaff type, another on on my watch list

Last night's YS black pud, it was "boootiful" I've got two slices left, plus the YS Morried beat bangers were surprisingly good, 85% meat, they were 30p YS, £2 normal. Not sure if I'd pay £2 but superb at 30p.

Because last night's was so tasty tonight's dinner is a repeat, bangers out already & defrosting on the side

Lunch, LO tinned corned beef, with tomato in a sandwich

I was tempted to go down the sea front, big "do" down there for Armed Forces day, but just too hot even with a sea breeze, plus out tomorrow anyway, I'll save a bit of energy for then

PS, CO2, the "beer" that is affected is the c@ts pee type of lagers and ciders that need gas to pressurise them, real ale that is traditionally brewed and comes in barrels, pulled by hand pumps is not affected

caronc

Good afternoon everyone,

It will be interesting to see what all gets hit on the SM shelves with the CO2 shortage.
I have a (temporarily) functioning hose again thankfully. I managed to wrench it off the wall and found the leak, of course I now have rather a lot of hose that is no longer neatly contained in the sealed drum, however I can live with that until I get a new one sorted out. Much better than the alternative of using watering cans as I reckon it would take at least 25 to water everything which is more than I can manage, nevermind twice a day!
I'm shattered now as it was a bit of heavy job that required every ounce of my concentration to balance enough to do it. Lunch therefore was a quickie of crackers & camembert, some pea pods and a couple of flat peaches.

Farway

caronc wrote: »

Good afternoon everyone,

I have a (temporarily) functioning hose again thankfully.

Good job done there, I am able to carry a watering can now, so I do and am glad I can do so. Mind you I only need ten cans at the most and it is not far to lug them

Just too hot now, however because the dinner is chosen, with bangers defrosted and black pud on it's death date I'll go ahead and slave over hot stove for 15 minutes later on this evening

Brambling

Well guys it seems my internet is either broken according to a heavily accented 'BT' lady asked to call me from my internet provider and I needed to let her give me instructions to follow on my system to 'fix' it OR according to an automated message an hour later my router is corrupted and will stop working in 24 hour unless I press 1 :cool: the first caller I politely let her know calling a hot, tired, middle aged lady wasn't going to get her anywhere. The second my finger slipped and missed the 1 button and landed on the hang up :rotfl:

The sun has reached the front of the house and even the cat has gone in search of shade, as long as I don't turn on any cooking appliances the kitchen is currently the coolest place in the house, unfortunately it's not very big but I have just stood on the cold tiles for longer than necessarily to get a glass of water

PasturesNew

I've stayed in. Nothing to go out for - why walk/lug a vast array of heavy beach stuff and food and drink to a sandy spot, then sit in a tiny space, with 10,000 other people screaming and shouting around me..... when I could just sit here, quietly, in comfort... with a loo.

The sea's too cold this side of summer to really think about spending time in there.... and once you've been in for 5-10 minutes it's pretty boring, especially as all you can do is lie in the water and keep your eye on your stuff to make sure nobody thinks it's abandoned and starts poking about with it (or running/jumping over and around it)....

I'd like to be there.... but not alone. You really need a minimum of two people, two little tents and a windbreak to get any form of space where you're not going to get trampled on by running kids.

Lunch: TWO egg custard tarts and 3-4 pastilles.
Snack: 2 cocktail sausages.

I don't know anything about gardening, but I never water mine. If it rains it rains. Grass has been "crispy underfoot" for about 4 days now... it's quite a nice sound. Does grass die? What'll happen? I bet the first time it rains it all goes green and grows again. No watering required.

Sun's round the front, I'm at the back. Kept the curtains closed until the sun had passed. Sitting here now, patio doors open, side window open, front door wide open .. and it's still 78°F indoors! Mind you, yesterday it was 81F.

moneyistooshorttomention

I get the "Why water it?" thing about gardens - but, in the event, I've got some pretty "new" stuff planted in that earth and I think it needs watering "artificially" for a while whilst it gets established??

Then there's the stuff in pots - some of which ain't cheap:eek: (thinking of things like my couple of trees in pots for instance). I'd not be a happy bunny if they keeled over and died.

Found a little more evidence of a marauding nearby moggie (ie where it had been to the loo:cool:) whilst trimming a bit of the garden stuff today - yuk - and all the plants concerned duly ripped out and I resolved to make sure I always wear gardening gloves in case in future.

PasturesNew

I've dipped into the cocktail sausages a couple of times.
The pastilles got hit too, for 2-3.
I made a cheese/salad cream/crisp sandwich... then a bit later I finished off the crisps.

caronc

Farway - you'll be so pleased you are back to being able to wield a watering can, these small things feel like a real victory when you get them back:D. I can manage to manhandle a couple of trips balancing one on my zimmer but only for short distances before a rest. It would literally take me hours to do the whole garden, and no doubt when I got it done the first area would be thirsty again:eek:

Brambling - I've had those calls too one from BT (I'm not with them, though they wittered on about all lines ultimately geing owned by them. It was a case of "not cable mate" as I hung up. The other was from "Microsoft" - they hung up when I said I had an Apple Mac (which I don't but hey ho) :rotfl:
:rotfl:


PN - my sister found to her cost that yes grass does die if you don't water it and no it doesn't come back when it rains.... Best get watering if you want your place to look all tickety boo for selling up;):)


MTSTM - like you I've too much cash (& time) invested in my garden to risk losing it. Re the cats, cheap wooden BBQ skewers popped spike up where they want to go is very effective, as is a layer of cheap pea netting (or both).:cool: Thankfully none of the local cats so far are finding my garden "toilet friendly", probably because I'm all pots & slabs:)


I might just have bought some more plants :o:o, admittedly it includes 120 pansies for autumn that won't arrive until August but I have some gaps and also caterpillars have pretty much destroyed a load of nasturiums. That's my excuse anyway. I do have a lot of baby perennials but I'm going to nurture most of them in growing pots & over winter in the greenhouse so hopefully they'll flourish next year. I did by them as teeny plugs so didn't expect them to be part of the garden this year.


My big news though is - I have runner bean pods:D, just two at the moment but it's at start. I'm scarily pleased about this :D


Dinner tonight is going to be smoked haddock cooked baked in foil with diced tomato & spring onions, a baked spud and wilted calvo nero, chard & pak choi from the garden. Yes it means popping the oven on but I don't need to be around while it is cooking.

PasturesNew

caronc wrote: »

PN - my sister found to her cost that yes grass does die if you don't water it and no it doesn't come back when it rains.... Best get watering if you want your place to look all tickety boo for selling up;):)

Oh s0ddin' round danglies.. just when I was "enjoying" the fact the weeds were easier to pick out of it ... and I didn't have to cut it.

I'll go do it now then... I'll toss some buckets of water in its general direction. Garden's on a slope, so I only need do half the lawn as it'll run off into the lower half

Not all of it's "as bad" as some ... some is still green, where it's had more shade.

EDIT 8.35: Back. I'm not very good at that.... no hose, no watering can, so just used a small flexi bucket. First lot I "walked" along, tipping the water out a bit slowly. Second lot I was bored of that, so stood back and lobbed the lot across the grass. Then I CBA to wait for the flexi bucket to refill, so I ran a series of 2 buckets and kept the tap running on slow, then went back/forth lobbing 3" of water at a time at bits here and there.

That'll have to do I guess...

Previous owners "left" a hose, which I've never used.... just found out why - it's got a hole - and I've no gaffer tape. I'll get gaffer tape tomorrow and bung that round and see if the hose works. Actually, for now, I'll give some cheap parcel tape a quick go....

EDIT 8.45: Well, that worked, in a fashion - I didn't turn the tap on very much, so the water was dribbling out of the end of the pipe... and the hose didn't reach the end of the garden, so I was flicking the hose up and down like an 8 year old trying to pee highest up the wall.... the hose had a few more/minor leaks, but, with the water pressure down, it at least did a good little job. I'm sure the purist would've said "and you need to stand there for 20-30 minutes to give it a good soaking"... but I figure "Hey, I did something, that still makes me ahead".

That's probably the first ever time I have ever watered a lawn in my life! What a palava.