Away From The Madding Crowd

Humboldt

Morning @bluenose1, thank you for inspiring me to make a warming, nutritious, spicy carrot and lentil soup in my slow cooker today. You may already be aware, but if not, Fage Greek Yogurt is currently on offer in S@insbury's, 450g @ £1.75 (Nect@r Price).  Not as yummy as clotted cream on warm scones, but as a treat, this particular yogurt does make an excellent healthier alternative.  We tend to revert to frozen berries when fresh are out of season, and use homemade stewed seasonal fruit. Spiced pears, apples and plums can be cooked in the slow cooker with minimum effort and then frozen until required. Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like making the most of this season and squirreling things away to enjoy over the winter months?

Today's simple pleasure - a beautiful sunrise that was a colourwash of peaches, greys and light blue.

Katiehound

yes, this is the time to 'make hay whilst the sun shines!' or more exactly make the most of fruit / veg donations.
Today is a beautiful sunny day so I am trying to use every minute of free electricity from the panels

Picked a small handful of blackberries this morning- ate them with my breakfast. I guess this is the last of them....folk tale legends about why you don't pick them in October.....actually they are past their best anyway.

Over the past 2 weeks I have been given quite a few beetroots so have just made beetroot in red jelly- one jar to gift to the beetroot giver!
recipe here: https://craftycookieskitchen.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/beetroot-in-raspberry-jelly/

I was given a huge courgette last week (a marrowlet?!!) so shared it and made courgette cake x 2 with my piece
Also had quite a few pears- stewed, crumble, and the best was pre-cooked pears with a ginger sponge on the top (one egg sponge mixture)- it was very yummy, served with Graham's kefir yoghurt. (Good buy from Aldi)

today's treat: sunshine!

Humboldt

Hello and welcome.

Motivational quote of the week.

‘They are not long, the days of wine and roses’ – This line is included in a poem by Ernest Dowson.  The title of the poem is in Latin, Vitae Summa Brevis, but it is more commonly known as Days of Wine and Roses. The poem had a bit of a revival when recited in the TV series The Durrell’s.  A beautiful poem to remind us that happiness is brief, life is short, vague and a mystery.  So, let’s make the most of it!

Money saving.

Our monthly grocery budget for me and my DH is £250.  Week 4 spend for September was £62.12.  Total spend for September was £261.54.  £11.54 over budget this month. 

Used the bus to travel to a local town to collect my M@S sale order, taking advantage of the previous government’s £2 bus fare cap, saving £3.  The scheme was due to run until 31 December 2024 and hopefully this will remain the case.

This week’s main menu.

Monday – Slow-cooker spiced root and lentil casserole (Go0d Fo0d recipe) with sourdough discard flatbread (F!fteen Sp@tulas recipe).  This is a meal swap from Sunday when DH cooked us steak with peppercorn sauce, mushrooms, a small portion of oven chips and peas. 

Tuesday – Teriyaki pork, with noodles and vegetable stir-fry.  I recently bought a jar of teriyaki sauce (reduced to £1), and will use some today, and the remainder for our meal on Friday.  Pork was reduced in price and frozen until required.

Wednesday – Cottage pie (H@iry D!eters recipe), with cabbage and gravy.  I will make a root vegetable topping using swede, carrots, and sweet potatoes.

Thursday – Ping meal (cook once, eat twice - saves time and energy).

Friday – Teriyaki chicken, with homemade egg fried rice.  I will fully utilise the oven by also cooking a homemade sourdough loaf and a batch of chocolate and raspberry muffins. Raspberries were reduced in price and frozen until required.

Saturday – Stilton and broccoli soup (Go0d Fo0d recipe),  with homemade sourdough.  I will cook the soup in the slow-cooker, and use homemade chicken stock and stilton from the freezer.

Sunday – Pasta with tuna & tomato sauce (G0od Fo0d recipe). 

For health reasons, weekday breakfasts continue to be mainly oat based.  This morning’s breakfast was chocolate porridge (just add a tbsp of good quality cocoa), with a sliced banana and a drizzle of local honey. Lunches will include homemade soups from the freezer.

Healthier lifestyle.

Completed 2 free workouts via Fabul0us50’s on Y0utube.

Competed 4 free meditations.

Step count last week was 40,648.

Simple pleasures.

Whilst I still have much to learn about sourdough baking, I have managed to keep my starter alive, and produced a half decent loaf of homemade sourdough. 

A fleeting glimpse of a hunting barn owl.

I am enjoying the new series of All Creatures Great and Small on tv.

Books read 13/2024 – Return to the Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater (a charity shop find). Having read 'The Olive Farm' earlier in the year (book 1 in a series of 7), I was pleased to find another book from the series.  Although I would have preferred to read the books in numerical order (this is book 6), as @mark55man highlights in his earlier comment, compromises are sometimes required. The author is best known for her role as Helen Herriot in the original series of All Creatures Great and Small, and this series of books relate to the abandoned Provencal olive farm that she and her partner bought.

The plight of the honey bee has become an international crisis and Carol is faced with unsettling news about the hives on her own olive farm.  This is the story of how Carol and Michel struggle with some difficult choices, and how they decide to deal with the unavoidable disappointments and inevitable responsibilities that come with running an organic farm. 

I enjoyed this book, not only because of the authors beautiful descriptive writing style, but also because it confronts the issue of pesticides, and provides some interesting historical information. I have included a couple of extracts below:

‘My life had become a world of small things, a story of minute details, of the earth’s growing.  I found joy in minute observation.  It was about looking, seeing, and hearing the sounds of the land’

‘Pasta, the real substance, was created from a base of durum wheat, which, back when the Arabs were a force in the Mediterranean, was cultivated only in these southern Med climes.  Spaghetti, vermicelli, macaroni: all were invented by the Arabs as they learned to work and utilise the durum paste. And because at that stage, eleventh century, the Arabs were still here in Sicily or on the point of being ousted, the Sicilians had mastered along with their colonisers the skill of pasta, the preservation of the basic wheat food.

Thank you for dropping by and taking the time to read my diary.

Humboldt

@Katiehound thank you for your recent comment. The beetroot in raspberry jelly was a new recipe to me, but not so, the pre-cooked pears with a ginger sponge on top, delicious!

uralmaid

Does anyone know why Baron Dales abruptly closed his thread and seems to have disappeared?

Katiehound

uralmaid said:

Does anyone know why Baron Dales abruptly closed his thread and seems to have disappeared?

Well he did that once before saying he was going to concentrate on other things (I think) and then suddenly he reopened the thread. Ah, but now see he is a "deleted user", so who knows? 
 he had an operation on his hand, didn't he?

mark55man

sad to hear about the Baron - this site can drive you a bit batty from time to time.  many but probably not all of the site's restrictions are required for compliance with the various rules, but I suspect he had a run in with Authority and left in a fit of annoyance.  That happened to me when I was an ambassador for a bit, which was enjoyable (even though I am not fond of Ferraro Rocher) but as a volunteer you expect not to be micro managed like staff - or perhaps the Baron and I are grumpy older men of a certain disposition

anyway I think we are all agree chatting, quotes and reading (and jam recipes) are good for the soul so lets get back to them.  I am staying with my sister in laws while we help look after FIL so my quote about snow and guests not looking good over time has come back to haunt me

Organgrinder

Unless anyone has been in touch with him or he returns in another guise, I doubt we will ever know.

Farway

mark55man said:

sad to hear about the Baron - this site can drive you a bit batty from time to time.  many but probably not all of the site's restrictions are required for compliance with the various rules, but I suspect he had a run in with Authority and left in a fit of annoyance. 

Sounds likely, he did close a thread once when someone had an alternative view to one of his comments

bluenose1

Love your diary update @humboldt and how true is that motivational quote. I know I personally take happiness too much for granted and can get annoyed too easily by silly things.  Many thanks, meeting  my friend for coffee tomorrow and on my list for Sainsburys Fage yoghurt if offer still on.
Inspired by you I have picked the last of my bramley apples and going to stew them to have with yoghurt. I honestly have to force myself to do cooking and gardening etc, was hoping when I retired I would get pleasure but not as yet. Though I still say I am decompressing so maybe next year .

I have read Return of the Olive Farm, hadn’t realised that was the last one. Really enjoyed it though felt like I had skipped some of her story re splitting up with Michael for a while.

Made a chicken, carrot and pearl barley soup with 1/4 of a chicken and carcass. We all really enjoyed it  so a good way for me to do an extra meal.
i really am trying to reduce food expenditure but not going very well at moment. There again with price of strawberries etc no wonder.