Cooking for one (Mark Three)

unrecordings

First cooking for myself for well over a week last night (down to a lack of steroids then far too many steroids & no sleep), so thanks to a lack of adequate supermarket planning last week I ended up with a sort of fry up (or several of them) - let's call it a Yorkshire Kebab. OOD black pudding, OOD eggs* fried both sides to the texture of cardboard, bacon & mushroom served in OOD pittas - yummy

Eggs were only two weeks past their BB so didn't need the float test

Tonight is lamb curry - fresh tomatoes, peppers onions etc in a madras sauce. I use a Pataks paste pot with extra minced ginger & garlic paste, and omit the extra water. Served with basmati rice and poppadums (they'd better not be stale this time)

Farway

Lunch modified, not really enough soda bread to stretch two meals so I baked up a couple of PB rolls, same cheese & tom filling though

PasturesNew wrote: »

I do all of that automatically ... but they are often out of date and they still look different in pictures to driving round "in the flesh".

It's also slow/jerky and faffy to move far on streetview. I just use it to nail the door number, then go into aerial to see what's alongside, behind, around and close by.

If I see a place for sale on RM and "investigate it" it's 10 minutes of views and checks and aerial/streetviews before I even start to look at what the inside's like No point getting excited about a nice looking interior if the area/alongside/over the road's not up to scratch.

I assume you check for unsavoury behaviour in the locality while at it? https://www.police.uk/
Around here it has a hot spot around the Tsco local, shoplifting I assume

AndyCF

@PN , same with G.Maps for me, I do prefer that 'instant street' view alternative but again its still a bit "lumpy" , good to know you do have a peek though! Do agree it is not anywhere as good as looking in person however it (as you know) can at least give a vague idea of the area even i if its the road layouts or suchlike etc etc.

@Farway, that's a good idea. I just looked at mine actually:

In August 2019 214 crimes were recorded in this neighbourhood.

You know, I don't know if that is good or bad. You have to take these figures with a "pinch of salt" anyway because so many things do not get reported for one reason or another.

A look at the details shows a varied mix ( ) of drugs, thefts, assault, arson and a few that do not say what they are. The first two do not surprise me actually, the latter two do.

To be honest aside from a noted increase by me in antisocial behaviour (tbh its mainly feral children it seems running about) it is actually I would say slightly better than it was.

PasturesNew

Farway wrote: »

I assume you check for unsavoury behaviour in the locality while at it? https://www.police.uk/
Around here it has a hot spot around the Tsco local, shoplifting I assume

Yes, although those stats are too vague to get a good idea.

I've joined over a dozen "local" Facebook groups and keep a spreadsheet of roads where people's cars are being vandalised, men in white vans are wandering into people's gardens and sheds/garages are broken into... also drugs paraphernalia at parks, feral yoofs on bikes terrorising people, etc etc.

Then the local papers run a bit on who was in court, which can be added to the spreadsheet for "where the crims live" and "what the crims are doing/where".

There are behaviour magnets, such as local shops, playgrounds, parks to avoid.... and footpaths leading to them.

That's, in part, why finding one's being so hard. So many in my price bracket are on estates, beside footpaths, leading to open ground/heathland etc. Very few are "a property in a row of properties in a road" which you get in more established homes/areas.

PasturesNew

I nodded off

When I woke up I made myself a toasted sausage sandwich.

caronc

Good evening everyone,

Glad you had a lovely weekend Wednesday and the scales are in your favour;).
Great to see you're back cooking unrecording and feeling better.:)
I hope the FB pages you are viewing PN are more reflective of what life is actually like in the area. Ours are good for keeping up with the local gossip but from the moans and rants you'd think it was a den of iniquity rather than the overall lovely place it is to live:eek:.
I do wish the weather we had later on today had been what we had this morning while I was out, the wind died down and the sun came out for a bit! Still blooming chilly though and it's raining and windy again now.

I discovered at lunchtime that I had two not one wrap left so another one to have for lunch tomorrow. I've used up the brie but I've plenty of salady bits and I'm sure I'll come up with a suitable protein element.;)
All my groceries arrived as ordered so fishcake it is tonight. I'm glad I've a nice easy meal planned as my balance is still quite iffy. On special were cauliflower and leeks. The cauliflower is a decent size and there are three large leeks in the pack. Good value for 59p and 45p respectively:). Cauli cheese will feature this week :Dand the leeks will probably end chopped and added to the existing stash in the freezer. At that price I wasn't not going to not get them as I use leeks a lot in the winter when quite often they can be quite pricey.
No gardening done but did pick the last courgette, two cucumbers and loads of tomatoes:) though I also had to ditch some semi ripe ones due to slug/snail damage. There must have been a hatching of them during the past few weeks.:( There's another couple of quite small cues on the plants so I might get some more of these yet. Tom wise I'll see how it goes, if possible I'll keep them going for a bit as there are still lots of fruits but may well pick and bring into ripen next week as the plants are definitely starting to die back. It's defnitely heading towards the end of the season for another year though

unrecordings

caronc wrote: »

Great to see you're back cooking unrecording and feeling better.

Thanks.
Not quite better but improving - i needed a little help getting the tomatoes chopped, the rice sorted and it still took nearly three hours from fridge to plate - okay that included eating a pack of poppadums, and carefully getting the excess fat off the lamb to maximise Cat appreciation

and there's left overs

Brambling

I sometimes think too much information from the WWW can do more harm than good :cool: when I was house hunting I knew where in town I didn't want to live for various reasons, I know that is the advantage of living somewhere for a while but It can be easy to get too bogged down especially using social media and frightening yourself away from everywhere

I must of hit my snooze button in my sleep this morning because when I did focus on the clock I was running about 25 minutes late :eek: luckily breakfast and lunch were ready to grab and go in the fridge but I hate rushing in the mornings and his lordship who was lying on me purring didn't appreciate being flung off .

Grey start to the day followed by rain by lunchtime which didn't help with my mood . Also not helped by realising I've been stuck with working all around Christmas and New Year mostly on my own, not sure what happened to we would all cover one day, he's under the assumption I'll come into the office rather than work from home :cool:

Sorry rant over

Lunch was the chicken laksa I made yesterday and dinner LO salmon, rice and veg from Saturday so a nice easy food day with no prep required

caronc

unrecordings wrote: »

Thanks.
Not quite better but improving - i needed a little help getting the tomatoes chopped, the rice sorted and it still took nearly three hours from fridge to plate - okay that included eating a pack of poppadums, and carefully getting the excess fat off the lamb to maximise Cat appreciation

and there's left overs

Improving and happy cats are always good . Often it's the small things that make life so much more tolerable <hugs>

Brambling wrote: »

I sometimes think too much information from the WWW can do more harm than good :cool: when I was house hunting I knew where in town I didn't want to live for various reasons, I know that is the advantage of living somewhere for a while but It can be easy to get too bogged down especially using social media and frightening yourself away from everywhere

I must of hit my snooze button in my sleep this morning because when I did focus on the clock I was running about 25 minutes late :eek: luckily breakfast and lunch were ready to grab and go in the fridge but I hate rushing in the mornings and his lordship who was lying on me purring didn't appreciate being flung off .

Grey start to the day followed by rain by lunchtime which didn't help with my mood . Also not helped by realising I've been stuck with working all around Christmas and New Year mostly on my own, not sure what happened to we would all cover one day, he's under the assumption I'll come into the office rather than work from home :cool:

Sorry rant over

Lunch was the chicken laksa I made yesterday and dinner LO salmon, rice and veg from Saturday so a nice easy food day with no prep required

Rant allowed:cool:, what a blow re Christmas & New Year. Still early enough to have some serious discussions and get some changes in. Sometimes a wee spell of withdrawing or highlighting the "goodwill/unpaid/unrecognised" stuff works wonders......;) (Sometimes not but does give loads of ammunition when it comes to bonuses etc.:cool:)

Brambling

caronc wrote: »

Rant allowed:cool:, what a blow re Christmas & New Year. Still early enough to have some serious discussions and get some changes in. Sometimes a wee spell of withdrawing or highlighting the "goodwill/unpaid/unrecognised" stuff works wonders......;) (Sometimes not but does give loads of ammunition when it comes to bonuses etc.:cool:)

I fear not as he's booked two weeks off himself, the trouble is we are a small team with 3 FT and 2 PT staff and both the other FT staff have booked 2 weeks off :cool:. Let's just say he knows I'm not happy :mad: and I politely told him what to do with his generous offer of carrying it all over to next year (8 days) he doesn't want me to be off when we deploy a new system upgrade which was due August and we currently have no date for other than this year :wall: