It's Been a While ...

It's been a while.

But if you've been missing my occasional wild and wacky Challenges.  The snippets of day to day life, including the odd photo of my furry and feathered friends, I have been blogging at a different location for the last few years.

You can find me at ...


A Smaller and Simpler Life

Sue xx

Leftovers .... and The Sealed Pot

Leftovers are brilliant, in fact I think I find more pleasure in making a meal or a treat out for us out of leftovers than I ever could browsing the aisles of the supermarkets for the former or the latter, and of course the post-Christmas fridge is veritable treasure trove of things to choose from.

The bananas were languishing on the worktop, they are the only fruit I don't put in the fridge .... poor lonely things!!

I knew there was half a tub of cream in the fridge and a tin of caramel in the cupboard .... 

... so it just had to be Lovely Hubby's favourite dessert in the whole wide world - Banoffee Pie.  It looked a bit plain as it was and of course we had  ...

... leftover Quality Street!!

Damn Tesco and their last minute reduction of the must have Christmassy sweets to two tubs for £6 ... I succumbed.

A quick grating later and it looked much more appealing, and we did really well and rationed it out over the last few days, a total of eight portions ..... good leftovers :-)

*** *** ***

And talking of leftovers, using things up and saving money my new blog 'A Year Without ...' went live yesterday.  Starting off with a film clip of the opening of the Sealed Pot, which netted us a grand  total of £328.71 which is my housekeeping money for 2016.

The blog will follow my progress as I manage with this, bolstering it up with vouchers, coupons and Nectar points, and of course home grown foods from all the free seeds I collected this year.  It will also chart our attempt to live for a whole year without buying any books or clothes or a lot of other things which we are adding to the list as and when we think of them.  

This is going to be my only Challenge during this coming year.  We have to focus long and hard on saving all the money we can and hopefully daily blogging about it will keep me accountable to myself.

Use the link to nip over and have a look if you would like to.

Sue xx

365 Days - 365 Pounds



We've been having a few Internet problems, due we think mainly to the really bad weather, all seems sorted now but Lovely Hubby needs the main computer for most of the next couple of days to do our end of quarter accounts, not his favourite job in the world but a very necessary one if you have your own business.

Leaving him to it upstairs in the office, means that I have commandeered the old laptop and am sat in the rather chilly conservatory struggling with it, I will go and get a cardi in a minute to warm me up before my fingers go blue!!  This dinosaur of a computer means blogging in any normal way is limited and time consuming, for a start certain letters are, and always have been, swapped with each other for example if you want a '@' you have to hit a capital 2, there is NO pound sign hence the word pound in the title of this post when the idea of it is to introduce my brand new Blog to you all .... which rather frustratingly (at the moment) has a pound sign in the title!! 

There are actually no posts on it yet, there should have been once for each of the last two days but having no internet connection has meant that they will be forever missing, but the two main pages have been set up and I thought while I am absent you could have a little read and find out all about my brand new Challenge for 2014.

I don't know if I can actually do it, whilst I was dreaming it up I went from absolute certainty that I could to horror that I would even try.  But if nothing else I am a trier and it will cost me nothing to give it a go, so in the optimistic frame of mind that I usually have and that is present at the moment I will give it my best shot. 

Use this  link -  http://365days365pounds.blogspot.co.uk/  to nip over and have a read if you are interested, and I would be very interested in your opinions on the idea.  There are at the moment just the two pages that explain the concept and plans behind the Challenge 'My Aim for This Year' and Rules and Extras', this should give you a good idea of my plans.

  A bit more work will be done to the new Blog when I can get at it, a blog list of some of the Blogs that have inspired me for instance and any other links you may think should be there.  My mind is blank at the moment and full of frustration at this bl**dy dinosaur of a laptop (yay .... the ** were in the right place) so for now I am signing off and going out to clean out the henhouse .... at least I know where the chicken shit is!!

Sue xx

Lots of Lovely Freebies

 

I nipped out yesterday to pick up some milk and a couple of other bits and pieces and because I hadn't visited our local Waitrose for a while, they've being having a re-fit and it's been absolute chaos so I stayed away, I decided that would be my supermarket of choice.

 

I spent just enough to qualify for the free newspaper, Lovely Hubby's not really a Guardian type of man but it was the only one left of the free choices available so he is for today!!  I got the weekly 'weekend' magazine and sat in the newly re-furbed Waitrose Café to drink my free coffee and have a read.  At the checkout I picked up my free copy of the Waitrose Kitchen magazine, it's one of the better supermarket magazines and I really like it, even more so now that I get it for free.

 

I totted up what I had just got for free -

 

Newspaper £1.40

Weekend paper - free anyway

Waitrose Kitchen magazine £1.20

Regular Latte - £2.10

 

Total - £4.70

 

I was very happy :-)

 

And then I came home ...

 

 

... to find the biggest and bestest freebie of the day!!

 

And I was even happier :-)

Just sat there waiting for me on the doorstep .....

 

 

... posh Christmas in a box (and in a posh box at that).

 

As Margo would say "Christmas has been delivered".

 

We've decided to leave it safely packed in it's box for now, take it with us as it is and unpack it on Christmas Eve, it'll make it all feel really Christmassy.  We are really lucky as we get one of these every year from the agency that LH works through, we have quite a collection of baskets now all put to very good use, but I think this one, once empty is going to a very good home.

 

The contents should also help me slightly in my new Challenge for the New Year.   I've almost thrashed out the details now and have decided it will have a Blog all of it's own linked to from this Blog, I 'm thinking there's no way it would have fitted into the day to day running of a smallholding, it needs more accountability and a separate presence.  So a new Blog has been born .... should I let you in on it soon or would you prefer to wait for a grand unveiling in the New Year?

 

Decisions, decisions .......

 

Sue xx

 

Introducing My New Blog

After starting the Harcombe Diet a few weeks ago I came to the realisation that the best thing I can take from this is the need to eat Real Food, that is not processed foods, just good home cooking made with real ingredients and made well.

Glancing to the side of me as I Blogged one morning I looked, and I mean really looked at my vast collection of cookery books and the idea came to me that I should use them ...... actually work my way through them, deciding which books I needed, wanted and were actually useful, and which books were simply sitting on the shelf looking pretty and bought because they were just something I fancied reading.

I have collections of my favourite cooks and foody peoples books.

I seem to feel the need to own all their books, something I got from my Dad, although his field was science fiction and history.

I love books, we're a booky family, I introduced my children to the love of reading from an early age.  My younger son  has a vast collection of crime and scientific books.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with having loads and loads of books.

But not just for decoration, they should be read, used, and appreciated.

And I want to make sure that my collection of cookery books fulfils that criteria.

As a Blogger through and through I decided that the best way to chart my progress along the shelf would be to Blog about each book I go through it deciding it's fate.

I guess it will take some time, I haven't actually counted my books, on these two shelves alone there are 153 cookery books (yes, I just got off my chair and counted).  I have others, some in the kitchen, some in the living room, even some by the bed, they are literally everywhere.

So........ The Plan.

 Over on my brand new Blog see HERE, or click on the picture link at the top of the sidebar of this Blog,  I will each week choose at least one book, photograph it, read through it, choose some recipes to follow from it, photograph the results and give my honest opinion on the book and the food.

Then I will decide whether the book has earned it's place on the shelf or whether it will be relegated to the dusty box in the corner of the shed, where it will await it's fate at the car boot sale or charity shop.

Well that's the plan, now to choose the first book!!

Some of you have already found the Blog through the link on the sidebar and have been popping over to check for progress, well the good news is, from today you will at last have something to read.  Thank you for your interest and special thanks to the lovely  folk who have already signed up as Followers....you lovely little eager beavers!!

Sue xx