Christmas Delivered with a Soggy Bottom

We got back from an afternoons Christmas shopping in Llandudno for stocking fillers and a spot of lunch yesterday to find this in the garage.  It was in a cardboard box but when Alan picked it up the bottom literally fell out of it as it was so soggy.  It had been raining all day and perhaps the delivery guys van was a bit wet ... our garage floor was certainly moist!!!

It's our annual Christmas 'thank you' present from the company Alan works through for the day job.  They downgraded from the Fortnum and Mason ones we used to get a couple of years ago, but these are just as lovely.

Inside the little cool pack were these.

And the rest of the hamper, once it was cleared of the paper straw ...

...was full of these.

Not a bad selection, it should keep Alan and any Christmas guests in tasty nibbles for quite a while.  Unfortunately there is little of it that I can eat just the mince pies and the onion marmalade, but it is a lovely gift and very appreciated.

After a nice lunch out and then coming home to sort through all this food, all that we could manage for our supper was a chip bun each ... very tasty washed down with a can of cider  :-)

Sue xx

Back to Oats

I've come back to oats.

Well it's the time of year for a tummy warming bowl of porridgy goodness to start the day.  I recently gotten into the habit of leaving a couple of scoops of oats soaking in water in the fridge overnight, this makes the oats creamy rich in their own right without the need for lots of milk. As you can see in this photo they swell nicely and absorb all the water, meaning they are all soft and ready for a quick cook.

Which means every morning all I have to do, is to get it out of the fridge so it can come to room temperature while I sip bleary eyed at my first coffee of the day.  Add a splash of my favourite almond mylk, give it all a good stir and breakfast is a four minute blast in the microwave away.

It keeps me full until lunchtime and stops me getting the nibbles mid morning which my previous couple of slices of toast were doing.

What's your favourite Winter breakfast warmer?   Alan's is still two poached eggs on toast.

Sue xx

Soup ... and Egg and Bacon Breakfast Muffins

The huge pan of soup I made at the start of the week has done sterling work keeping us fed every lunchtime.

After dishing us up a bowlful each at lunchtime on Monday, I cooled off two single and two double portions for the freezer, and some was put into a clean pan and popped into the fridge once it was cold.  Today we have just eaten the last of this particular batch, a smaller bowlful each this time, followed by a sandwich. 

Tomorrow while I am away at my sons, Alan can have some of last weeks Broccoli soup for a change with some of Stilton crumbled in ... his favourite.

A new favourite of his are these egg and bacon breakfast 'muffins'.

Easy to do and they cook in the time it takes you to feed dogs and drink your first coffee of the morning ... about 20 - 25 minutes.

Simply oil a muffin tray and line each section with a slice of bacon, add some chopped tomatoes, and/or mushrooms if you have them ...

... pour in some beaten eggs and cook in a medium hot oven until the egg is set as much as you like it.

You can just crack an egg into each cup of the muffin tray if you like the white and yolk separate from each other, but our eggs were quite big so he divided two eggs between four cups.

And then try and remember if you are going to do a blog post about them to catch him before he eats the first two  ;-)

Sue xx

A Meatier Than Usual Post

This week for the first time ever I ordered from Musclefood.  My son has used them a couple of times but I had always resisted temptation.  But now with not a lot of meat left in the freezer for my lovely hubby I decided to stock up in time for Christmas with the idea that this would form the major part of his Christmas dinner and keep him well supplied into the New Year.

I chose an offer that I picked up off a Facebook frugal foods page, which gave me 2.5kg of chicken breasts, with a 'hamper' of various mixed meats that were worth £19.55 but which were the 'free' offer, and then another 2.5 kg of chicken for £12.

It was delivered on time by courier in a chilled box yesterday and after it spent a night in the workshop, which is as cold as a fridge overnight, we set to this morning to get it all ready for the freezer.

I was surprised at the size of the chicken breasts, so I got out the scales and weighed them.  Not bad at all, they were well over 200g each.  Which means that following NHS guidelines there is more than enough in each one for two adults to have as part of a meal.

With Alan doing all the meat handling and me doing the wrapping it was all portioned out and ready for the freezer in no time.  The chicken breasts were wrapped individually and then put into boxes to avoid freezer burn, the sausages were snipped apart and wrapped with a layer of EasyLeave between but everything else was just checked for a level of separation and then popped into the freezer as  they were.

I was wondering how to work out the costings for each item at first, then Alan suggested to simply count the portions we would use for a meal.

So we counted :

24 chicken breasts x one meal each

1 x mince meal

2 x meatball meals

2 x steak burger meals

1 x sweet chilli chicken meal (these seem quite small)

2 x sausage meals

2 x chicken breast meals

So a grand total of 34 meals, which if I divide that by the total amount the order cost me to have sent (including delivery), would make the meat part of each meal £1.08. 

But after seeing the size of the breasts we now think that most of them will be used for two meals if it's something like curry, casserole, stew etc.  If they are to be the 'star' of the show, sliced meat for sandwiches, a large roast dinner etc, then they might be used for just one meal.  So counting three quarters of them as two meals, and using the mince for two instead of our original thought of one meal (it's very tightly packed, not loose like you get from a supermarket or the butcher, so seemed small, but after checking the weight it does weigh in at over 200g), we now have a working total of 55 meals.

Yes that's fifty five meals!!

Which brings our cost for the meat part of any meal down to 67p.

Bargain.

I know it's not very often that you get a 'meaty post' from me, but living with a meat eater is my life and something I can't change, so it means that we just make the best of things, and one of the things I am good at is saving money with food .... but I am glad I had Alan to help with the handling of all this well packed meat, otherwise I think a thick pair of rubber gloves would have been called into play   :-)

If you would like to have a look at the Musclefood site for yourself and see all the bargains there you can use this link to get you there:   MUSCLEFOOD

If you do decide to buy anything while you're there use my referral code ... which is SH731226 ... and you will get an extra freebie that can be chosen from one of four items ... and being totally honest I will get a 500 point referral fee.  I have also added a link to the sidebar for while so you don't have to keep coming back and finding this post.  Just click on that and you will have access to the site and my code.

Have you used this site before, what did you think of it?

  We were very pleasantly surprised and wondered why we hadn't taken the plunge before.  One thing for sure is that we will be ordering again in a few months when the 55 meals have been eaten and there is some more space in the freezer.

Sue xx

I Miss the Food .....

I miss the food posts on this blog, they all seem to be over on the 'Year Without ...' blog at the moment, but I thought I would put up a photo of my just strung onions on here, as they are homegrown food and that's what our life is all about.  

I even clicked on the Approved Food link on the righthand sidebar to see what they were selling these days, it seems ages since I did a blog post about them, but then I've not ordered anything at all this year.  It was interesting to have a trawl around the website though ... and I was almost tempted to place an order.

Yes, the onion crop has been poor this year the ones you see strung here are pretty much all we have at the moment.  The overwintered leeks all went to seed before I could harvest them and before they had time to put on any real growth to make them worth harvesting (and yes I have saved some of the seeds for next year) and the best onions I have in the polytunnel at the moment are the Spring Onions.  They are doing well, this reminds me I need to get another batch of seeds in asap to replace the ones we are eating.  The tomatoes are turning slowly ... ever so slowly ... red and the cucumber plants have started giving us enough cucumbers to keep us going.  Shortly, hopefully, there will be some extra and I can gift a couple to my neighbour to say thank you for all the gooseberries and red and blackcurrants that she allowed me to pick a couple of weeks ago.

I don't know what has happened to my courgette plants, they seem to be on a go slow, at last there are a few flowers but no fruits to speak of at all, I'm sure I'm further behind than I was at this time last year.  It seems nothing has enjoyed the strange unpredictable and changeable weather we have had over the last two months, well except the bugs, slugs and weeds of course.

One really good thing is that the Blueberries are now ripening and this morning I picked this trayful, currently open freezing ready to be tipped into a box in the freezer for free flowing easy use.  I only stopped picking because the little tub I had taken over was full, so I will be back first thing in the morning to gather in all the rest that have turned that delicious shade of blue that means they are ready to eat.   I'll bring you some next week Mum when I come to visit ... we always share they were Mum's bushes before they were mine :-)

Today's main job has been pruning the tomato plants of the excess leaves and extra little side shoots that have sprung out seemingly everywhere, but it was so hot in the polytunnel this morning that I had to end that and leave some for later on when the temperature goes down to a more tolerable level.

It's that time of year when it almost feels like a full time job growing the food we eat ... but a good one at that!

Sue xx

Storing Pumpkins

The last of our pumpkins which were harvested at the end of Autumn of last year is finally being eaten.

I have to admit to giving a couple of them to the chickens who care not a jot if a snack is bit soft, soggy and almost mouldy, but we have enjoyed the majority of them.  In soups, stews and pasta sauces mostly they add their luscious taste and bulk out a meal nicely.

Of course this looks like a full pumpkin ....

... but if I turn it around you can see that I've already chopped it in half  ;-)

The good stuff is for us, ready to go in the oven and be roasted, the trimmings are for the chickens and the other half is being popped in the fridge until I decide what to do with it.

Pumpkins store really well, I just leave them to harden off where they grow for as long as I can and then bring them indoors.  Last years specimens lived on the conservatory windowsill looking very ornamental from harvest time until three days ago for this one.  You've got to love a vegetable that gives you so long to decided what to make with it haven't you.

Sue xx

The Whole30

I'm currently reading this book.

 I've had it on the kitchen shelf for a while but decided to save reading it until after our usual, although slighter than previous years, Christmas excess and my wander back into eating foods I should know by now are not good for me.  I have noticed that once you fall back into old eating habits it is a hard slippery climb back to get yourself eating properly and healthily again, and of course we have had to eat up all the bad things that were lurking in the cupboards ... haven't we!!  ;-)

I was just wondering if anyone out there has read this book and done the 30 day programme and if it worked for them?  

I am thinking of doing it myself as a kick start to getting me back to good habits, healthier eating, and even more importantly to me feeling good.  It seems very Harcombe like and that suits me.   So I have put a big ring around the 1st March on the calendar as it seemed a really good time to start.  The first of March is on a Tuesday so the Monday would be my day zero, a chance to menu plan, examine all the foods we have in store that would be suitable, and thank goodness, there is a lot in the freezer and cupboards that will be, but possibly more importantly this week I am going to see what we have in that might tempt me back to the 'dark side'  ... I don't think there's too much.  We don't buy processed junk foods, sugary drinks or cakes, but I do know there are a few things that I like that are really classed as processed food so it would make sense to add them to this weeks menu plan and thereby remove them from temptation for the coming month.

I have just printed out and gone through the pescetarian/vegetarian/vegan shopping list and there is such an abundance of food that I can eat and that we do already have in store that it should be no problem to do this even with our current 'Year of Without'.  The things I have crossed out with my marker pen were just things that I don't like or can't eat due to allergies.

If you would like more information on The Whole30 click HERE.  I haven't read much of this yet but it looks interesting.

Sue xx

The Freezer is Full

I spied a few bargains when I was out and about the other day.  

Not vast amounts of money off as I was shopping quite early in the morning, but the coincidence of finding some reduced British and Welsh lamb only hours after Lovely Hubby's admission that he would prefer some lamb for Christmas rather than the chicken he usually gets, meant that these packs on the reduced shelf caught my eye immediately.

We don't have turkey in this house .... ever.  I have a 'thing' about the way they are handled and treated in the processing plants.  I saw a programme back in the late eighties when my turkey ban began, and the images have lived with me until this day.

We have talked a few times about raising a few turkeys ourselves so that Lovely Hubby could eat a home reared one, but he has a fear that we would end up with half a dozen of the ugliest pets ever running around the paddock until they finally keeled over from old age.

A turkey is for life .... not just for Christmas ;-)

I got a couple of other things alongside the lamb.

The cheese was a fantastic reduction and is now nestled in the freezer, grated and boxed and ready to last us for a long time.  The beauty of buying mature cheddar is that a little goes a long way in the taste stakes, and as I try not to eat too much cheese, although I love it, that suits me just fine.

The fish pie selections are also in the freezer, which is now full ... to the very top.  Usually I have a  bit of room for Christmas purchases but unless we eat a lot over the next two weeks there is no room.  It is not a worry though because at least this means we are going into next year with a good selection of food, both bought in and home produced.

All in all not a bad saving, what would have cost me £41.77 actually came to just £27.44 a saving of £14.33.  I've got to get in the habit of bargain spotting  even more than I currently do if we are to survive next year with our limited housekeeping budget.

I'm ITCHING to open the Sealed Pot to find out what cash we will have to go with the Nectar points and the vouchers and coupons that I have pinned to the notice board in the kitchen, but I've been told to wait until LH is home for the Christmas holidays so we can do it together.  I do keep picking it up and marveling at the weight .... I hope it's not all coppers!!

Reverse Advent - Day 8

Three unused make up items.  

Never has my make up bag been lighter!

Sue xx

Holding Hands in the Wash

I pulled the washing out of the machine earlier and once again all the shirts and long sleeved tops must have got a bit scared as they whizzed round together ...... as they were all holding hands!!  Well to be more specific all the sleeves were so tightly entwined I thought I'd never work out the puzzle of how to get them separate.

It's like when you put in the duvet cover with a few other bits and pieces, they all somehow manage to get inside the duvet cover during the course of the wash ... even if you've only accidentally left one button on it open.  You couldn't invent a machine to do this if you tried!!

Reverse Advent - Day 4

The three balls of wool I was lucky enough to receive when I reviewed the magazine Landlust when it's first copies landed on UK newsagents shelves a few weeks ago.  I was going to use it to tie up my tomato plants next year, but I have plenty of string for that (and I mean plenty), and it would be put to much better use by a knitter to make something cosy for Winter.  So it's gone.

Sue xx

Random Harvesting, Bowls and Stocktaking the Freezer

A random harvest, that's what I call the things I bring back into the house after cleaning out the henhouse each morning.

There is usually at least one egg there already when I go to clean out the house, we have had three a day for the last two weeks, I'm more than happy with that it means we have a plentiful supply for the kitchen and the occasional half dozen for Mum.  Yesterday I brought a handful of Kale back from the polytunnel on the way back from the morning doggy walk around the paddock, and since the weather has taken a turn for the chilly I bring at least one bowl full of wood into the house.  

I like my big old handled bowl, we picked up a couple of these from a farm auction we went to years ago and they have proved useful for all sort of things.

The best ever use of this larger one was as the 'day bath' for the geese, Harry, Larry and Mo.  We sat it in a tyre so it didn't tip and they had lots of fun washing, preening and generally playing with the water.

Of course all the chickens, including their Mum, the Hyline hen Mother Goose (hence her name), thought this bathing in water malarky was totally ridiculous and would have nothing to do with it.  But the geese would happily take it in turns to bath or just sit there watching the world go by.

Today it's been raining virtually all day ... yet again, so I finally got round to a bit of freezer stocktaking.  The small freezer half of the fridge/freezer in the kitchen is all done now and a list of the contents has been scribbled down on to waste sheets of A4 paper (we use the back of printed out things that we have no further use for) and will be typed up neatly once I get round to stocktaking the big chest freezer.  I'm not doing it yet in case I can combine any duplicated items.  I was amazed at how much this freezer had in it.

I virtually got frostbite while going through it ,and had to make a coffee to warm my hands around after spending five minutes separating slices of lemon that had stuck together.  I found two boxes, both half full and decided to combine them into one for ease of use and stacking.  The slices were pretty stuck together but I persevered and now they are free flowing again.I think a pair of gloves will be used once I bring myself to tackle the big chest freezer.

Time to feed the dogs now and take them for a wet and muddy walk round the paddock, the chickens will be closed up for the night as we get back to the house and then the fire will be lit.  The only good thing about these short dark, wet days is the long, cosy evenings cuddled up in front of the television with snoozing dogs and the flicker of the candles on the mantlepiece.

Have a good evening.

Sue xx

Lettuce Soup

Lots of you were spot on yesterday when you asked if I was going to make soup with the lettuces I picked.  It's a simple soup .... as most soup recipes are, I don't go for fancy, I go for tasty.

To the 'bolted' lettuces I added the ingredients in the photo above.  Split red lentils, a couple of dessert spoonfuls of the bouillon powder and a good squirt of garlic paste.  I found this almost used up tube nestled in the door shelf of the fridge when I was cleaning it out on Monday.  I don't know how long it's been opened for but I was determined to use it up.

They were simply all popped in a pan with lots of boiling water, brought back to the boil and then simmered in the oven for an hour while I got on with other things.

The kitchen smelt lovely and when the soup came out of the oven it looked luscious.

Once whizzed up I had a litre of soup for very little money or effort .....

.... the only thing was it looked just like the six piles of sick I had cleaned up thirty minutes earlier, deposited all over the house by Mavis, exactly the same colour just not as lumpy :-(

I had toast for lunch!!

Sue xx

Storing the food .....

Storing the food we grow ourselves is almost as important as the actual growing of it.  If we are to get to any level of self sufficiency we need the homegrown vegetables and fruits to last us as long as possible throughout the year, from one growing season to the next if possible.

There are still lots of fresh things in the polytunnel.  The carrots, cabbages, kale, spinach, celery, spring onions, radishes, lettuce, kohlrabi and sweet potatoes are all things I could pick and eat now, the cabbages are yet to fully heart up but the outer leaves are being sparingly picked and added to soups and stews, the other things in this list are all fully grown and ready for the picking.

Coming along behind them are the newer sowings of beetroot, more spinach, onions, garlic, more radishes, more spring onions and a couple of other things that I can't for the life of me remember while I'm sat here at the computer.  It's important to me to try and avoid too much of the dreaded 'hungry gap' by trying to keep some things available fresh at all times of the year.

Last week I used up the last of the potatoes that were in the kitchen cupboard, so yesterday when we decided to have a 'proper' Sunday lunch and I needed potatoes I went to the understairs gloryhole and lifted out the big bag of potatoes that I had stashed in there months ago. 

 They were exactly as they were when I put them in there, and still covered in the soil that dried on them while they basked in the sunshine of late September.  So now I know that the cool, well ventilated cupboard under the stairs is the perfect place for my vegetables to go.  It was a bit experimental putting them there but it worked ... phew!!

Of course my other methods of saving food to last us through the Winter months and well into next year have been well documented on various posts.  Bottling ...

... pickling ...

... and of course the easiest of easies .....freezing.

Before our Challenge kicks off on the first of January I am going to do a complete food stocktake and see what we have stored in all these methods.  It's going to be an entire year of recording what we eat, what we grow, how we preserve it all and all the nitty gritty of getting ourselves to a place where it will be viable in the future.  So you can see why sometimes my mind is buzzing at the moment.  Every trip to the cupboard or the freezer sets me off thinking again, making basic outlines of plans and wondering how we can do better.

But for now, I'm going to try and stop thinking about food and dash downstairs to empty the washing machine and peg it on the line ... because for the first time in ages it has stopped raining and we have SUNSHINE.

Sue xx

The Nut Harvest is in .....

The nut harvest is in ..... all three Almonds have now left the tree ;-)

In other news .... we are also eating the last of the large cucumbers tonight with our tea, and the ex-bread bin full of carrots has now been upended.  I also picked the last four stems of Rhubarb while I was out cleaning out the bird bath earlier and they have been stewed with some of the Bramleys and are now awaiting a crumble topping.

Well you need a Fruit Crumble after a salady style tea on these chilly Autumnal nights don't you !!

Have a good weekend.

Sue xx

Excess - No Excess

I had a coupon for £5 off a £50 shop at M&S the other day, not a huge amount but worth having if you do need something, and as we needed meat for the freezer and that being the most expensive part of any food I buy, I decided to stock up on things that would make lots of meals.

I was also lucky enough to get a couple of 'yellow stickered' bargain items that fell neatly into my 'many meals for one packet' train of thought.

Of course I didn't just come home and pop all the purchases straight into the freezer.  I unpacked everything that could be portioned up, individually wrapped things and then put them into labelled boxes.  The little chicken things were open frozen first so they wouldn't stick together and then packed into a box.

The only thing I hate after doing this is the excess of packaging ... but as we were having a bonfire after tidying outside I just chucked them on there ... lazy me, you don't have to wash them out if you do that.  They did start the fire well meaning that the damp newspaper from the henhouse burnt much better and quicker.

Out shopping with Mum yesterday in Sainsbugs I treated myself to the latest magazine, don't you love that they have altered the publication month so now the October magazine actually reflects things in season and available in October and is not a whole month ahead of itself.

Anyway I didn't notice at first but it came with a free silicone pastry brush, as soon as I did notice I swapped the magazine with the pink brush on it for one with a green brush :-)

Inside there were also a free drink and a body scrub, nice to get something for nothing and I will most likely be happy to use these.

What I don't like however, is the amount of leaflets that fall out of every magazine you buy in a shop and even those that come through the post as a subscription purchase.  In a shop if the magazine is unwrapped I take the leaflets straight out and leave them in the shop, but this edition with it's freebies was in a polythene bag so I couldn't do it.  So once home they joined the other annoying pamphlets and leaflets in the recycling bin.

More and more magazines are also sticking leaflets inside with that clear snot like glue (yes I love to peel it off ... but there my fun ends), or even including them in the staples ... The Radio Times is a big culprit of this, and this weeks edition even had the leaflet for something I never look what these are for, stapled in between pages rather than being in the centre, making it even more awkward to get rid of.

How much paper, ink and electricity are wasted in the manufacture of all these, not to mention the amount of trees cut down purely to end up in landfill or recycling boxes.  A whole industry built on something we neither need nor want.

Arrgghh ... they are all driving me mad!!

I'm jumping off my soapbox now and looking instead at something with no excess ,,,, a perfectly formed miniature Cauliflower.  

I had to harvest it as the slugs were devouring all it's brothers and sisters.  There's absolutely no excess here, even with the full sized version you can simply cut off the very end and then use every little bit of your purchase or picking.

Phew ...... the world is not completely mad ....YET!!

Sue xx