Pickled Onions, Driveway Progress and Fattening Up the Pug

I had to pull up all the onions, some yesterday and then the rest this morning.  The bl**dy rabbits had eaten the stems right down to ground level on most of them.  Another couple of weeks and a bit more rain and we would have been harvesting enough onions to see us through a good few months,  instead I will be lucky to get a couple of jars of pickled onions.  Or I might just blitz the lot in the food processor and see if they will freeze as chopped onions.

Today these three trays and one more slightly fuller one containing the onions harvested today, have been sat in the sun drying out.

This is where it gets tough growing your own, all the work I have put into these, planting the sets, weeding and the occasional watering and they have barely had a chance to grow.  It's very disheartening.

Asda sell one kilo bags of red and white onions for £1.  Sometimes I ask myself is it all worth it. 

Meanwhile the driveway is starting to take shape ....

... levels have been worked out and the noise of rollers and diggers has been incessant all day, I was feeling pleased with real, visible progress.  

Then I caught the builders feeding Suky titbits from their dinners ... bread crusts and pastry edges, to say I was annoyed would be the biggest understatement of the year up to now.

I have been carefully weighing out her food for weeks now, giving her exact quantities to help with her weight loss, ignoring those pleading brown eyes whenever I have been eating, and feeling like a mean Mum, and all the time they have been thwarting my efforts and slowing down her weight loss journey.  No wonder her weight has been going down so slowly!

All in all it's been a very infuriating day.

Sue xx 

A Blissful Nights Sleep and a Trip Down Memory Lane

Last night I had the most blissful nights sleep.

I washed all the bedding yesterday, the pillow protectors, mattress protector everything.  They blew in the light breeze we had for some of the day and dried super quickly in the high heat of the midday sun.  So rather than getting out a fresh set from the storage basket I simply put the same duvet cover and pillow cases etc right back on the bed.

The room had been aired all day and damp dusted while the bedding dried, so everything felt fresh and lovely,  Even my towel had been added to the wash although it had only been washed the day before.  So after a cool bath, it was off to my fresh bedroom and my lovely fresh bedding.

Yes it was warm, very warm but the freshness was relaxing and I fell asleep in my customary two minutes and woke bright and early this morning raring to go.

Oh and nothing flew off the washing line, I now have super strong pegs just to be sure :-)

The top picture was borrowed from Google Images, and it reminded me of hanging out my washing when I lived with my first husband and my boys on Ship Street on Barrow Island in Cumbria .....

.... so I just Googled the flats, and this image is one of the ones I found, exactly as I remember the outside of our flat.  

We lived on the third floor, one from the top, oh how I remember bumping Jason's baby buggy up all those steps, then putting on the brake and going back down to fetch my shopping.  But the good thing about living so high up was the speed at which the washing dried, even on a wettish day because of the shape of the flats most things got nearly dry, a good thing as I didn't have a washing machine in those days, it was all done by hand in the bath and wrung out as  tightly as I could, and the washing line was accessed out of the bathroom window which was very handy.

I used to love seeing a row of freshly washed white terry nappies blowing in the breeze, but any bedding hung so low you would block out your lower neighbours view until it dried and you could reel it back in.

For all the hardship of the time we lived there I have lots of good memories to look back on, it was a simple time.

Sue xx

Fat or Sugar

Infographic borrowed from Mail Online/Food and Drink

Fat or sugar the debate rages on, which is bad for you, which does the most harm, which one should we avoid.  My view and that of a lot of well respected researchers is we should avoid sugar.  It does nothing for us other than give us insulin spikes, rot our teeth and cause us to become more and more addicted to it, there are NO vitamins, minerals or nutrients at all in sugar.  But the good thing is once you start it is surprisingly easy to cut down your consumption of it until your sweet tooth vanishes altogether.

I thought my sweet tooth had simply gone into hibernation until last Friday.  We were out and about running errands, picking up building supplies, paying for the last lot of building materials that had been delivered etc and I said to Lovely Hubby "I'll treat to to a cream tea", his eyes lit up like the eyes of a man that had not eaten a cream tea for a long time (he hadn't, he's been very good).

The reason for my offer, we were just about to drive past our favourite, and possible the cutest tea-rooms in Llanrwst .... Tu Hwnt Ir Bont, which means Beyond the Bridge.

Inside it looks like this, but with the glorious sunshine on the day we sat in the gardens and enjoyed the fresh air.  Why this ramble ... well I always order a plain buttered scone with my coffee while Lovely Hubby goes the whole hog with a pot of tea and a cream scone.  You get pretty impressive portions of jam and cream here so he offered me some, I spread the smallest quarter of one of my scones with jam and topped with some cream ..... and it was sickly sweet, I swallowed it down and had a quick swig of my strong black coffee to take the taste away.  

The thing is we know jam is full of sugar, but seeing the infographic shows just how much sugar is actually hidden in foods we think are good for us.  I used to eat Activia yoghurts, but I haven't for a long time, while they don't taste overly sweet because of the sour fruits in there I prefer to eat food in it's more natural state so just simple plain yoghurts for me and I add my own additional ingredients if I want any, usually a banana or some strawberries.

In the infographic I was shocked at the amount of sugar in the KFC coleslaw ... WHY!!  Coleslaw is a savoury thing why would it need sugar at all.  It's as though we are being driven purposefully into the clutches of the sugar producing companies, after all the more we get addicted to and come to expect the taste of sugar in everything we eat, the more we will spend on products that they make money out of.

Sorry for the rant, this infographic really got me going didn't it  :-)

My opinion on fat?  Well it's natural, it comes attached to various foodstuffs and it has nutrients we need, it also helps our bodies pull the vitamins and minerals that they need from the foodstuffs we eat, particularly vegetables,  So in my book fat has a place in our lives but sugar should be relegated to the bin.

I'll jump off my soap box now and go and sob quietly in the corner ...... the rabbits have eaten ALL my onions and shallots from the Veggie Patch.  I have to stop rescuing baby rabbits from Rosy and Ginger  they grow up to be veggie munching monsters, so from now on I will let them get on with pest control in their own way and just not watch while they do it.

Sue xx

Building Work Goes On .... and On and On ....

After a bit of a respite last week the building work is once again going on and on and on.

Today and for a couple of days this week, it is the turn of the front walls to go up a bit more, in fact by the end of the week it should be almost done.  We can't quite finish this off as we have to leave room for the big HGV that will be delivering the garage steels to be able to reverse up the drive, but we can get up to the gate post block on the left side (as we are looking at it in the photo above) and almost as high up on the righthand side.

At least it will look like good progress.

Over the weekend the big water storage tank was delivered.

So now it's sat near the retaining wall looking for all intents and purposes like a little submarine, only instead of keeping water out as a submarine would, it will be collecting all the rainwater that falls on the garage and workshop roof and storing it for us to pump up and use to water the polytunnel and the veggie patch.

Deliveries continue to arrive and trucks of various descriptions and sizes disgorge loads of stone, pipework, sand and cement.  I just try to take photos to document all the comings and goings when I can.

In more plant based news, I managed to get my Tomtatoes planted this weekend.  One is at the front of the polytunnel in the zinc planter ....

... and the other two are in this huge bag that I found in the shed.  They should have enough growing room with 70 litres of compost in there.

Sue xx

Like Two Peas in a Pod

Most of the peas I've grown have been just normal sized and very delicious, and I have to admit that not many have made it into the house as they are a lovely thing to be snacking on when I'm in the polytunnel .... but I thought this one was totally cute :-)

Some of the peas that did make it into the house were added to Ratatoullie.

Tasty with some brown rice.

Hopefully soon I'll have all the ingredients homegrown for next batch of Ratatoullie that I make for the freezer.  I always make a huge pan full because it, and curry freeze so well it would be daft not too.

You can't beat home grown, home made ready meals.

Sue xx

Am I looking Any Thinner Then ...... ?

"Am I looking any thinner then? "  Suky seems to be asking in this cute photo taken yesterday.

She's been going to doggy 'Tubby Club' for the last six weeks, although I keep slipping up and calling if Fat Club!!

  With three fortnightly visits under her belt she has now dropped down from 12.1kg to 11.3 kg, not a bad rate at all and the veterinary nurse who runs the class at the vets surgery is really pleased with her.  She's been photographed for her 'before' pictures and she gets measured each time we go, this week she has gone down a total of three centimetres, two from her chest and one from her neck.

The best thing is she is most definitely more sprightly, which is lovely to see.

She'll never be a skinny Pug but we're hoping she will get down to around 8 kg and will feel a whole lot healthier .

Her mum was not a dainty Pug and has the same large shoulders as Suky, but she was definitely a bit smaller and lighter than Suky is at the moment.  This photo is of Suky, me and her mum ... Lady Midnight Star (Suky's full name is Suky Midnight Star after her mum).  Her dad is called Ken, Kenmilleven Graphite, unfortunately I can't find the picture I had of him, but he was a lovely black Pug.

She will never be as tiny as she once was ...

... but I'd like to get her back to this, which was taken two years ago.

But for the moment we are tackling this slowly and surely, and hopefully over the course of the next six months should be able to get her weight down to where we want it to be and more importantly give her back a whole new zest for life.

Now to deal with me and my weight .... I think I need to get back to doing Weight-loss Monday !!

Sue xx

My Three Tomtatoes

The interruption to yesterdays blog writing was when the postman brought these to the door.

My three Tomtato plants, ordered from Thompson and Morgan here.  Mine were on special offer at three for £19.99, so a bit of a bargain too.

I've heard that you get a full crop of good tomatoes but not as many potatoes as you would on a single potato plant, but I don't mind that, it's more about the trialing something new for me and with this being my first year back growing our own food on any scale I thought I would treat us  me.

They came with three packs of plant food, I'm not sure I will need this much according to the instructions on the packets, but it's handy to have it in.  I think if they work out it would be a good plant for someone with limited growing space.  So I'll keep you posted on how they do.

While I finished the blog post the Tomtatoes had a rest after their journey, having a nice drink of cold water in the sink.  (Spellcheck hates this new word, and is insistent that they are tomatoes ..... still it knows it now.)

And did you notice three unusual objects in the top right hand corner of the parcel .... they are dog treats.

I started this when Rosy was a pup to discourage her from running up the farm track after any delivery van as it drove off, by making out the parcels always had something for her as well as me in them she was eager to dash back into the house while I opened them.  She actually watches me now get the treats out of the packet they are kept in and drop them in the parcel .... but she still plays along with the game :-)

Suky's face just says it all doesn't it ..... "Mum why are you photographing the treats when we usually just get to eat them?"

Sue xx