I'm so DONE with Too Good To Go

I managed to get a Too Good To Go bag from Morrisons supermarket on Sunday.  I've paid for one so many times, only to have it cancelled next day that I thought I was in luck at last.  I got :

2 loaves of crusty bread

A bag of carrot batons

A swede

A bag of pea shoots

A pack of prepared melon and grapes

1 cookie 

There was nothing in the bag to make a decent meal with so we ate baked beans on toast sliced from the small loaf.  I put the other loaf in the freezer because it would go stale so quickly if I left it out and the carrots (tasteless) and swede (ok) were cooked on Monday and served with some other (homegrown) veg and gravy.  The fruit was shared for breakfast.

I added up the original prices to get £9.16 including the swede at full price as there was no YS on it.

Then the YS prices came to £3.00

As I paid £3.09 ie 9p more that the YS prices, I felt a bit cheated.  This is not the first time this has happened and sometimes I've given dodgy looking meat to my lovely neighbour to cook for her dog, as G didn't fancy it.

I. AM. DONE. with TGTG 😢 I've deleted the App....

Have you had better luck with TGTG bags in your area?

Thanks for popping in and stay safe wherever in the world you happen to be x

What the heck is going on?

I had to do a small top-up shop yesterday so visited our local Sainsburys.  Whilst browsing I spotted these tins of soup...HOW MUCH?  😱 Now, I know Heinz is a good brand but £1.70 for a tin which will serve two people at the most is plain wicked, even with the price reduced to £1.50 if you have a Nectar card, it will be too expensive for anyone struggling to put food on the table......

All varieties were the same price.....

....with the exception of Vegetable which was on offer at 50p.  There were very few left for obvious reasons, I imagine.  I'm perfectly capable of making a pan of veggie soup but bought 2 tins for the store cupboard for days when I just feel too tired to make any, or we need a quick fix for lunch.

How can this price be justified? It seems that Winter this year will be just as hard as last year for many people.

Has anyone else noticed that the cost of petrol & diesel is slowly creeping up again?  Petrol has reached the dizzying height of 150.7p per litre in the village and I don't think that will be the end of the increases either.  It looks like curtailing our driving even more.

Sad news:  Barclays Bank in the village has closed 😢  There is no other bank.  At the moment we still have a Post Office where we can draw cash, but it's a bit of a trek up a steep hill to reach it.  Yes, I know we can use a card to pay for stuff but a case in point....when we went to the local plant nursery to buy a couple of things, they  were in the middle of a power cut.  They had no electricity across the whole site and therefore could not take card payments.  It was cash only.  G and I only had about £7.00 cash between us so we couldn't buy what we went for.  We spent our cash on a scone and butter in the coffee shop ( and a free glass of tap water) hoping the power would be restored in the meantime.  It wasn't.  The nursery must have lost an awful lot of custom that day.

Are banks closing in your vicinity too?

Thanks so much for popping in and stay safe everyone wherever in the world you happen to be x

Changing Focus & a Big Thank You

First of all, I want to say an enormous "THANK YOU" to everyone who left kind and concerned comments on my last post and to Stephenie, Sue in Suffolk, and Sue Hall who left additional comments over the last week asking if I am ok.  The short answer is yes, I'm feeling better, thank you.

I don't know what happened but I began waking after a restless, sometimes, almost sleepless night, with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. I felt in a constant state of anxiety which affected my whole being.  I worried about G's health, my own health, my Grandchildren leaving school last term, the state of the economy, the plight of the world, and a myriad other things which left me feeling down and quite unwell. So....I cut myself from the news and social media to a great extent and concentrated on eating better and just reading gentle blogs.  I now feel a bit better and more in control of everything.

The thing that helped me to de-stress the most has been the allotment.  I've visited alone in gentle rain, torrential downpours and gentle sunshine. For the first time we have tried to grow Butternut squash and I found this last week. I just need to work out the optimum time to harvest it......

And there are more babies....

The sweetcorn is doing particularly well despite the lack of heat this year.....

We have onions......

We have a bloomin' local badger who digs his way in and forces his way into the centre of our raspberry canes 😡  despite of all our efforts to stop him.....

We've cut several heads of Brocolli , all a good weight and absolutely melt in the mouth tender.....

And more runner beans that we can possibly eat.  I've been busy freezing them and giving away loads of them to family and neighbours too......

We've harvested:

Runner beans

French climbing beans

Brocolli

Carrots,

Baby parsnips

Sweetcorn  (gradually ripening now)

Cherry tomatoes,

Beetroot

Windfall Bramley apples

Thanks so much for popping in my friends, and stay safe wherever in the world you happen to be x