Cooking for one (Mark Three)

Wednesday2000

I had some lemon and ginger in warm water and wholemeal toast with marmite for breakfast.

I put a very easy soup on now just before I have a bath and go for a walk. Veg bouillon, carrots, onion, yellow pepper and a tin of sweetcorn. I will whizz it up and have that with a roll when I get in.

It looks lovely and bright out there.:)

PasturesNew

I've burnt my tongue.... quite "badly".....

Nuked some of that stew and added 3 dumplings to the top .... then scoffed it with a big spoon and it was all still too hot

Farway

Lunch was the last of the PLM, in Brioche rolls. In the OKish category not one to bother with except using LOs

Sun eventually got going, so all daffs now in, with chicken wire over top to stop cats and the like
It was so nice I got on and pruned my big apple tree, it was getting too tall for me to safely reach the top branches, plus catching on my laundry whizzer
I love my loppers, very satisfying, I was probably an axe murderer in earlier life, just lopping limbs off;)

My garden is not really large enough for a bonfire or my arson side would have a good outing
All in my garden waste wheelie bin, my licence expires end of this month so best get my money's worth

Dinner decided, LO mash & LO veg, bubble & squeaked, with LO YS burger, LO beans & couple of fried eggs, plus compulsory brown sauce

Maybe cheese & apple later?

Found one more ripe yellow balcony tom in the conservatory, and there were a few raspberries before I cut them down this afternoon. More of a token harvest than a meal

moneyistooshorttomention

Getting any food from the garden at all at this time of year has to count as pretty miraculous imo Farway.

The "Siberian" weather we've been promised seems to have just hit this afternoon. I went out for the afternoon okay, but by the time I re-emerged to come back home again a few hours later by heck it was parky....

Telling myself the bright side of this may be that the tarmac in that part of my front garden that is tarmaced currently (currently a noticeable amount:() might start cracking up rather more. It's been deteriorating steadily since I bought the house and there's now various cracks and I'm thinking "You never know - at some point - cold weather might crack it all up sufficiently I could manage to pull it up myself". Don't know if things work like that? I'm feeling incentivised again after finding there are various people growing LOADS of food on their gardens - when their site is only 1/10th of an acre in size (with, of course, their house sitting right in the middle of it). Well my plot isn't much less than that - and I only require to produce one persons worth of food (not enough for a couple or a family). I figure I've got as much growing space "per person" as these people have now - but if I can have that tarmac up too - then all to the good and rid of tarmac too (which I hate with a passion).

Yep...you can tell that I've been studying that Nimbus Maps website in some detail LOL. One of the things they tell you on the free version even is the size of your plot (hence I know mine is about 90% of the size of those 1/10th of an acre madly productive gardens a few people have).

candygirl

Wednesday2000 wrote: »

I had some lemon and ginger in warm water and wholemeal toast with marmite for breakfast.

I put a very easy soup on now just before I have a bath and go for a walk. Veg bouillon, carrots, onion, yellow pepper and a tin of sweetcorn. I will whizz it up and have that with a roll when I get in.

It looks lovely and bright out there.:)

You can't beat a lovely soup, n crunchy bread, in this weather

caronc

Good evening everyone,
Hope the burnt tongue isn't too sore PN - a good excuse to have ice cream to soothe it?;)
Lucky you Farway still getting veggies, apart from some chard & rosemary my garden is completely done though I noticed some of remaining green toms on the windo sill have ripened nicely:).
Money I don't have a big veg growing space and it's all in tubs but grow more than enough to cover y needs. Would tubs be an option on the tarmac? I use 60l builders buckets with some holes drilled into the base, they cost me around £5 each and while they do go brittle over time they last a good few years.
HM soup and crusty bread is one of favourite meals in cold weather.
I had to have a "get a grip women" conversation with myself earlier! I decided I didn't fancy a burger tonight and then felt "guilty" as it was on my plan:o. What nonsense it's only on the plan because I put there, I haven't defrosted it so it's not getting wasted and I have lots of alternatives!! Pork ribs, mushrooms, corn cobette and baked spud it is to be enjoyed with a glass of red and a catch up with Masterchef:).
It's been cold all day here and due to head towards freezing overnight, I didn't realise how cold the house was as I had been pottering about and only noticed when I sat down, heating is now firmly on. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be cosying up to a blazing log fire

moneyistooshorttomention

I've got some raised beds in one part of my garden currently and, according to the Square Foot Gardening ideas (ie growing food in 4' x 4' raised beds) I've got 2-3 times as much growing space in them as is needed for one person.

So I've got some of those and some "down at earth level" former owner edged beds (ugly things they are too - so on the long-term plans to modernise) but that's a noticeable amount more growing space.

What I do feel the need of is more "open ground" type growing space and to do it in a more "forest garden" type of way on "ground reclaimed from tarmac". Hence my monitoring the progression of the cracks in the unwanted tarmac:rotfl:

This garden is so different from what I envisaged the garden would be like on what-could-be-rest-of-life house (bar that lottery win) that it certainly constitutes a challenge to have it look as near as possible to "the way I'd always planned on" and there's plant adaptation to be done too with the garden being in a worse weather area than I'd always planned on. Just a few challenges.....

Hmm.....just had a thought that maybe deliberately pouring a load of water over the cracks in tarmac to date just before a frosty night might give them a "helping hand"....wonder if that would work. Thinks - does ice expand?

Well - I had some degree of success throwing live yogurt round madly on bits of the tarmac and hoping moss would grow on it to "tone it down" a bit...

caronc

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Hmm.....just had a thought that maybe deliberately pouring a load of water over the cracks in tarmac to date just before a frosty night might give them a "helping hand"....wonder if that would work. Thinks - does ice expand?

Definitely worth a try:cool:

Brambling

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Hmm.....just had a thought that maybe deliberately pouring a load of water over the cracks in tarmac to date just before a frosty night might give them a "helping hand"....wonder if that would work. Thinks - does ice expand?

As long as it's not somewhere you walkover Money or you could end up going A over T and breaking something

Decided to have a easy day and not go out just pottering getting jobs done. First two callers were trying to sell me something :cool: the first his services as a roofer as he could see my chimney needed repointing when he drove past to work on a house further in the close. The second two gents trying to sell me religion. Third caller I allowed in for a kiss :rotfl: as it was my nephew wanting to use my shower . My sister used it last night so I was prepared. I'm also told that my IP address is corrupted and will be disconnected :eek: I did ask them to tell me my IP address and they hung up

I finally managed to plant the tulips and daff bulbs my sister gave me, hopefully without his lordship digging them up to use the nicely dug soil :cool:

Lunch was LO ratatouille and dinner is still in the oven I fancied roast chicken and chicken soup so picked up a small chicken so not too many meals from it :rotfl: to be served with root veg mash (swede, carrot, celeriac, turnip & parsnip) and some Savoy cabbage which has been lurking for a while and needs using.

caronc

:eek:lots of unwanted callers Brambling, but at least you had a welcome one too:)
:rotfl::rotfl:re the "showering" visitors, sounds like here when my sister's shower broke. Though I was less than impressed when my nephew pitched up without warning at just after 5am one morning....
You should have utilised the religious gents for some chores, my late great uncle was a dab hand at getting them to do some bits for him, he reckoned it was worth the subsequent preaching during which he used to subtly turn his hearing aid off.....