From Frugal Foundations to Fortified Family Future

beanielou

I see absolutely no need to not take two boxes if you will use them. Just like ys’s people can take as they choose. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening MSE'rs

Well, tea went down well.  I'm not entirely sure it touched the sides with LG - munch! and it was gone!.  The dhal was a Madhur Jaffrey one - from her 'Curry Easy - Vegetarian' book.  I can't provide a link, as no-one seems to have blogged about it, but I love it for it's simplicity, and yet 'differentness'.  Then using the green beans out of the green box, I made a 'made-up', potato, green bean and chickpea curry.  I used my 'goto' Sri Lankan curry powder in the base of onion, garlic and ginger, added a tin of chopped tomatoes and then chopped up some tinned potatoes, and the tin of chickpeas and then towards the end of cooking added in the green beans (LG topped & tailed them and I sliced them into inch long segments).  I added chopped coriander in at the end.  Both served with boiled basmati.  Filled a hole and there is a tub of curry and 2 of dhal left over to freeze for another day - YAY!  Pud was strawberries and yoghurt - LG made a good choice, the strawberries were delicious 😍

Today I am grateful I got to purchase a £1.50 box.  It's been so long since i have seen them in our local branch of MrL - the one I got a few weeks ago was from a totally different branch in a totally different county - before that, I'm not sure when I last bought one.  I do only buy them if they offer VFM and I can use (or easily pass on) the vast majority of the contents.  It has certainly added variety to several meals already, and I've still things left to use - including a rather marvellous head of broccoli.  

Ta for popping by and joining in the conversation.  Appreciated.

Greying X

kayannie

Sounds as if your green box today was a great success!  I quite look forward to getting some fruit or veg that I've not tried, or rarely bought, before as it's a good chance to try something different.  Last year I had an unusual fruit, palemo, which resembled a huge grapefruit. I thought we wouldn't much like it, as we don't like grapefruit that much. It turned out to be very nice,  grapefruit - like but much milder. 
KAx

badmemory

I often wonder about those as my mother wasn't allowed grapefruit with her tablets & I'm not sure if it applies to these too.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

It's interesting what enzymes or trace elements etc are in 'real' foodstuffs isn't it?

Good news, a chum accepted the kiwi fruit - we popped them round last night - so literally no waste from the green box which pleases me mightily.  

A wash is in the machine and will be ready to peg out just now.  Cold start to the morning (although we have sun now), and there is condensation on the windows 😕 

I think we might have a go at 'carpet camping' tonight in the lounge - as we've not had chance to do the 'real thing' (thanks summer weather 😕) - so tea is definitely going to be 'wot you'd eat camping using a single burner stove'..... Don't judge....It'll possibly not be the most nutritious...... And there may well be hot chocolate.

I've moved the money for the monthly DD's already, so we're prepped for the start of the month.  

Can't think of anything else MSE at the mo, so I'll love ya and leave ya.

Greying X

ladybird1106

My kids used to love camping in the house in fact the eldest was reminiscing about hedgehog camping ( that’s what they called it) in the dining room. We used to get hedgehogs 🦔 in the garden and the security light would come on, so we could see them. Kids loved it. So glad we made those memories.
love 🐞

Cheery_Daff

Carpet camping sounds like a fantastic idea! 😃

rtandon27

Ooooo - tents and forts in the formal dining room in the middle of winter is one of my favorite memories! Cups of hot chocolate and smores were the highlight!

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning MFW'rs

So the camping went well........ DH was the preferred camping buddy, so I didn't get a look in 😢  But a chapter of '"Five go off to camp" was read before sleeptime, and a reasonable night's sleep was had by all - DH complained of being cold 🙄Instant porridge potz were on the menu for brekkie this morning.  Naturally, LG selected a flavour that they have now decided they don't like 🙄but I think they will all be eaten up somehow or other.  DH has cheated and done toast in the toaster 🙄 but we hadn't got any marmalade to have a marmalade sandwich, so......

Tea last night worked surprisingly well.  'Camp Stew' of baked beans, qu0rn cocktail sausages and chopped up tinned tatties tasted surprisingly Ok! 🤣 I will admit to cheating, and microwaving a bit of rice - whereas if camping I could have used 'boil-in-the-bag' rice.  But it all got polished off.  I would have bought MrT veggie sausages and beans, but apparently they don't make them anymore, so the cocktail sausages were a compromise - but at least they were on n*ctar price of a £1 per packet, so actually beans and sausages weren't much more expensive than a tin of the same, but you'd have storage issues without a fridge, camping.  

After a slow start yesterday morning (which was not the plan 😕), I decided to take our lunch out 'for a walk'.  I purposely didn't tell LG where we were going, as whilst i had been to the place before (think landmark on top of a hill), I hadn't approached the walk from the 'proper' carpark, and DH and I had taken a rambling, long since reclaimed by nature footpath that went through bogs, bramble patches, pine forests.........  Anyhoo, the 'proper' carpark is at the side of a forestry road, so off we set.  I knew it would be a climb, and it was.  We got to what I thought was 'the top', but I couldn't see the landmark.  Luckily, i had reception on my phone - as I was looking, DH video-called and was alarmed that we were 'lost' (which wasn't the case - as if all else failed, we could just walk back the way we'd come - on the forest track), but after our conversation, I managed to pull up an online OS map, and found that we were nearly at our destination.  We had to go round 2 more corners, and then revert to 'footpaths'.  By that time, we could at least see the target, and eventually, we got there - despite taking the wrong footpath that was the 'long' way around 🙄  We were treated to the most glorious view - there were other people about, but not too many.  We ate our lunch and took some pictures to prove to daddy we'd made it! and then walked back the way we'd come.  At the carpark, I discovered a very shonky, faded 'map' of the routes to the landmark.  The path we used - which was the best in terrain terms I think - was actually the longest, at 2.5 miles each way.  So we walked at least 5 miles and as the top of the hill was 365m at the trig point, we had quite a work out too 😁It was a pleasant walk, as most of it was through woodland, so we were in shade, and then when we got to the top, it was sufficient cloud so that the sun wasn't burning down all the time. I am glad that I grabbed hold of the skin-s0-s0ft as we left the house though, as there was much more forest walking than I had anticipated, and sheep were on the hill near the landmark, so there were lots of biting beasties about.  As it was on estate land, we saw loads of pheasants - which made LG think of 'Danny Champion of the World', we saw Jays and dragonflies, and we fired up Mel1n and heard nuthatches and goldcrests, which we didn't see and several of the t1t family that we did.

What amazed me most was that LG wasn't too moany as we started the walk - they did get a bit 'I want to go back to the car' when we got a bit lost, but they did feel a great deal of satisfaction when we reached the top, and when we got back to the car, they said they had really enjoyed the walk - which for LG is definitely a first!  We saw a really low-flying training helicopter on our return home, and whilst we were in slow moving traffic on the way back into Greying Town, a low-flying heron went over the top of the car.  So plenty of things to see on our adventure!

I'm hopeful we'll get over to a local market town today, and I need to get a wash on.  

Greying X

themadvix

Pity about the lack of camping for you Greying but your walk out sounds lovely! And hooray for LG enjoying it too!