Ding! Ding! All change, please... (now replaced with new diary on MFW)

EssexHebridean

Sally thank you but sadly it's not - I decided that I "Should've gone to..." and therefore I am! ;-) 

Foxgloves we rarely saw them until a few years ago - now there is a little flock of 20-odd around the lake near work, challenging the Canadians for supremacy!  And I'm sorry RS but I did have to giggle at that - although it must have been quite bothersome too!

Very brief post to say that my new laptop has landed - indeed I am typing on it right now - and I am a very happy EH so far as it seems super speedy! Next task is a camera firmware update and some photo processing software to install! 

milann

Happy new laptop….enjoy.

savingholmes

Lovely photo 🦆 and enjoy your new laptop 💻 . Great use of money 

jwil

Woo hoo, I've finally got to the end of your diaries and am all caught up

Fascinating reads and lots of inspiration for me, thank you.  Good luck with selling the flat, hope spring brings some movement in the markets.

EssexHebridean

Hello jwil - you're a right glutton for punishment reading right through my ramblings - thank you! 

Milann & SH I'm loving the laptop - definitely well worth the spend! 

I'm very much hoping that my spendiness can now come to an end - as my trip to "should've gone to..." on Saturday cost me £363 - and that's before I add the costs relating to the second pair of glasses (free frames) should I choose to get those!  Due to my prescription paying extra for thin/light lenses is pretty much a given for me, and I've also opted to go for the most expensive option on the varifocals that it turns out I apparently need as this reduces the amount of the lens that is less clear. In fairness I knew it was going to be an expensive one - and (hurrah for MSE habits) the money is set aside in my clothing account ready to pay for them too - so not so painful as it might have been! 

Grocery shopping done yesterday - £16 in the world foods shop on various dried beans, chickpeas, lentils etc, then £36 in T's for the weekly shop. That last included a nice big outdoor reared smoked ham - which I'll cook ready for next weekend I think. We enjoyed the Christmas one SO much - and got a lot of meals from it so I figure this one should be well worth it's £12 price (half price on CC Prices). I'll shove it in the slow cooker overnight on low with lots of spices added I think - I seem to recall the christmas one featured allspice, star anise and cloves. 

Oh we did decently via a quick "pop in" to Sainsbugs on Saturday as well - needed to go in as we'd abused their car park for the trip to the town centre and found it surprisingly good for yellow stickered bits - so got a big tub of houmous, two quiches (will each do two meals for the pair of us, and were fine for freezing) and one of their pork-egg gala pies which did us for lunch with the addition of a crusty bread baton. Total cost for the YS'd bits was £2.81 which I was pleased with. I was quite surprised that a saturday lunchtime would be that good for reduced items to be honest, but I'll bear it in mind for the future. 

Yesterday was a mix of collecting my foldy bike (yes - that cost me money too!) from repair, spending some time at the local RSPB reserve with the new camera, getting that shopping done, getting some of the tree that's been ditched outside on the communal lawn area chopped up (the chunkiest bits we've cut to manageable lengths and will be leaving to dry to eventually use as firewood when camping, the the flimsier bits have gone into the bin store where we suspect the bin men will ignore them... ) then we got some voluntary role stuff done in the evening.

The weekend also featured a bit of cooking - a big pot of chickpeas soaked for a full 24 hours before cooking cooked to soft in a fraction of the time taken when they are only soaked overnight so I'll remember that as a trick. Then yesterday I made a double batch of cauli/pasta cheese bake with bacon and chunks of cooked black pudding - kind of inspired by Jack Monroe's Bacon Black & Cheese recipe, and partly just adding the black pudding to my own standard method for cauli pasta cheese bake. hat did tea last night plus it will do a meal in the week as well - most likely tomorrow I think. The chickpeas have been divided into plastic tubs and frozen - I left them sitting in a colander overnight to get as much liquid off them as possible so they freeze better.  I plan to cook a big batch of black beans at some stage too to use in the same way as I bought a bag of them yesterday - we've been enjoying the tinned ones a lot. 

Tea tonight is a nice quick & easy Monday option of chilli (the base for which was home made as a batch cook and frozen) and rice. Got to love a HM "ready meal!". 

Have to say that I am thoroughly looking forward to the long weekend now - we're starting to get some plans in mind too - there will definitely be a day out in London with a few pubs in the evening I think - we need to think of some tube based stuff we fancy doing, and I'd quite like to pop in to the LT Museum as well. Might actually do some more "underground overground" walking in fact - perhaps tied in with a "trip to the end of a line" as that was fun when we did the Metropolitan line/Piccadilly line the other month! Might also see if pals are available to join us for the pubs too. 

savingholmes

Sounds a good mix of activities planned. Have fun!

jwil

cauli/pasta cheese bake with bacon and chunks of cooked black pudding - this sounds lush!  Have you got a recipe please?

milann

Sounds as if you have a great weekend planned……think the weather forecast is a good one 😁

EssexHebridean

jwil said:

cauli/pasta cheese bake with bacon and chunks of cooked black pudding - this sounds lush!  Have you got a recipe please?

Well, it's sort of evolved...but it goes roughly like this...

Cook the amount of pasta you need for the number of portions you're cooking - then 5 minutes before it finishes cooking shove the cauli in - cut into small but not tiny florets - think bite sized. Once it's all cooked to al dente drain off and leave to steam dry.
Meanwhile make a basic white sauce - (lump of butter, melted, shove some flour in and stir briskly until it's nice and stiff, then gradually add milk a little at a time (a good tip is to let the milk warm before trying to beat it in, goes less lumpy that way). Beat frantically, and swear copiously about the blobs of sauce flying round the kitchen because the wooden spoon isn't quite the right size or shape... )  - again in terms of amounts you need to think of the quantity you want for the amount of portions you're producing. I usually shove lots of ground pepper and nutmeg into mine Don't season with any salt - you may well find it will be salty enough once the bacon and cheese are in.
One the sauce has cooked out, thin with more milk to slightly thinner than you really want - it needs to end up runny enough to run through the gaps in the pasta & cauli, but stiff enough to coat things nicely, and it will continue to thicken as it cooks.
Chop your bacon into small pieces (you could use those nice chunky lardons you can buy - they'd work great, I usually use smoked streaky though) and shove it into the sauce to cook, while you grate the cheese - a nice big pile of it. 
Shove a handful of your grated cheese into the sauce, and then a bit more because you know there's no such thing as "too much cheese". Taste and (probably, let's be honest) add some more cheese...
then I just chuck the pasta/cauli into the dishes I'm going to bake it in, dribble the sauce over the top a little at a time to let it sink through a bit, remember I was going to use the black pudding I cooked previously specifically for this dish, shove the cut up chunks into the now steaming hot pasta/cauli/sauce combo, and swear again because JEEZTHATSAUCE ISEFFINGHOT. Then throw the remaining cheese over the top, you can also sprinkle with breadcrumbs if you have any about (I keep a tub of blitzed bread in the freezer for this very purpose!) and pop into the oven (about gas 5-ish seems to be ideal, from memory) and bake until it's bubbling, and the top is golden and crispy. 

I've been cooking variations of this one for SO many years I do things pretty instinctively now - and I don't think it even started out from a recipe as such. The inspo for adding the chunks of black pudding definitely came from Jack Monroe though - but the recipe on her website is very different to my method. Apologies though - I'm rubbish with recipes - I can follow them if baking (because I know it wont work if I don't) but with regular cooking I do tend to get distracted and end up veering off course! 

EssexHebridean

Well good morning all - and it IS a good one here, cold first thing (I only had to scrape the flipping windscreen, the cheek of it in April!) but glorious bright sunshine and an absolutely clear blue sky too - lovely! 

Banks checked and all good - what I think should be the final payment has gone to my Sant-and-Er reg saver this morning too so that's now showing fully funded, and I've just checked and the Standing order has now disappeared so that is the last payment to that - MrEH's one will go tomorrow and then it's just a case of waiting a month for them to mature. Once they do, then the funds from those will be heading off to the Coventry limited access account to form part of our available cash deposit pot.

I've suggested to MrEH that we should probably have a money summit over the weekend at some stage - we've got various savings plans to discuss, plus we probably also need to discuss changing amounts on both the holiday and car maintenance pots - one up, one down. 

I've sent an email chasing a response from the people I bought the camera from - I've asked them to refund me the courier cost I paid extra for as I paid for a premium delivery thinking this should mean I got tracking on the parcel - when in fact the first I knew that it had even been dispatched was when I got an email from them confirming that I'd taken delivery of it! (Spoiler alert - I hadn't!) It's only £28 - but frankly it's money that I don't feel I got any value from, so we'll see what they say.

I got the refund from TFL for my accidental touch-in on my Oyster this morning - that's been transferred out to the VSP at the moment. 

The weekend is now looking roughly like a trip into London on Friday - possibly walking the top end of the Piccadilly line but that's open to discussion currently. Then some brewery taprooms in the area I grew up in later in the day. Saturday we're pencilling in an RSPB reserve we've not been to before I think, and the other two days are going to be more locally based and probably a mix of getting voluntary role stuff done and general relaxing, sorting out odds and ends at home etc. We'll see what transpires though - the weather could yet mean we change things entirely!