What to do on a cold, wet Saturday in August

 

I awoke to drizzle and, with the promise of a wet, miserable day ahead, decided to crack on with something productive..

I didn't sleep well last night for worrying that our move will not be happening.  It seems that the only thing outstanding is from the management company of our current home who are simply not replying to emails from our solicitor and so are effectively blocking the sale.  I have to forget it and hope that the solicitor can sort it out eventually.

Anyway, after a leisurely breakfast of muesli, fruit and yogurt I hopped into the car and drove to our local M&S for some easy ready meals as I'm totally fed up with cooking.  Just over £16 spend has put 5 ready meals in the fridge as well as a box of cookies which our Granddaughter loves.  It will be her birthday on 1st September so I  will give her those along with some money in her card envelope.

The breadmaker is on, producing a lovely crusty loaf for tea......

My hair is feeling messy and in need of a cut.  I rang the posh looking salon down the road and they can fit me in on Monday afternoon.  Perhaps a new haircut will give me the mental boost I need.

Half an hour left before G comes back from work so time for this....

Tomorrow there is an antiques fair at Himley Hall from 9am to 4pm.  Weather permitting, I'll be having a wander round there.  It costs £2 to park and £2 entry fee to the fair but it's in the open air so should be quite safe.  I  can take a flask and a sandwich.  I LOVE antiques fairs 🥰

What are you doing this weekend?

Stay safe everyone x

Food On The Cheap, Bungalow Update & Eating Fresh,

 Since my lack of success with the 'Magic Bags' a while ago, I haven't managed to get one at all.  They either fly out as soon as released or are too far or too late in the day for me to pick up.  DD has got the Greggs ones down to a fine art!  She has managed to get 3 over the last few weeks.  The latest one shown above contained:

Ham & Cheese baguette

Tuna crunch pasta

4 sausage rolls

4 doughnuts 

2 Gingerbreads

All for £2.59 (RRP £8)

And the previous haul contained a lovely fresh sliced bloomer loaf .  Success!

This last week has been a bit mundane for us,  just catching up with jobs and chasing, chasing, chasing progress.....

Bungalow Update:

Why is everything such a struggle lately?   I got so frustrated with lack of information, poor communication from all concerned, as well as being unable to speak to a 'real' person, that I got stuck in and 'kicked ass' as they say!  I spent most of 2 days on the telephone, insisting on speaking to someone in authority each time until I got a call from a man who knew what he was talking about!  He chased everything up from his end regarding the purchase of the bungalow and emailed me all the legal stuff in pdf files which I promptly forwarded to our solicitor.  He now has everything required to process the purchase.  We are now waiting on the local searches for the sale of our current home which have a backlog of months by the sound of it.  Then we should be ready to go.  I feel rather like ' I bought a dog and have to bark myself ' as far as the solicitor goes.  Which begs the question "why am I paying him so much?"  Fingers crossed that things will start moving now....

Allotment News:

Our Grandson, K, helped us out again on Tuesday by climbing a ladder placed against the Bramley apple tree.  So many windfalls were depleting the harvest and the last few were big apples which had fallen and been spoilt.  K enjoyed the adventure of climbing the tree for the best fruit!  Any which didn't come away easily were left for another day.  The harvest totalled over 20lbs of fruit 😀 I processed any which were blemished, zapping them in the microwave with a spoonful of sugar and freezing in batches for future crumbles.  The rest were shared with DD, my brother and our storeroom 😆

We have picked in the last week :

Sweetcorn cobs (3)

Runner beans

Calabrese (4 decent size heads)

Parsnips

Carrots

Raspberries

Bramley apples

G has sown lettuce and spring onions this week.

A big welcome to my new followers Anjie & Barbara....Hello!  Glad to have you aboard.

That's all for now. Stay safe wherever in the world you happen to be x

From Fork to Plate in 4 Hours

We had a fabulous day yesterday.  G and I went to the allotment and our daughter and the two grandchildren joined us.  I wanted to dig up a whole row of potatoes so that I could more easily reach the back of the row of  runner beans. Our grandson K had his 14th birthday last Thursday and is much stronger than me (which isn't difficult!) So he willingly got stuck in digging them up with a fork, whilst his sister G bagged them up and collected the leaves for the compost.  He didn't spear a single one, unlike me, I usually spoil at least 2 or3.  G once managed to spear 3 beauties on the fork in one go so he's been banned from digging them up ever since!  This meant that I could harvest the runner beans at the back before they went over. We pulled up the pea plants, removing any edible bits before putting them on the compost too.

The giant onions are growing so big that one or two are actually touching which isn't what we want so I harvested 3 to make space.  Onions can be eaten at any point in their growth so I kept one and gave our daughter the other two.  This is the smallest of the three...

We spotted a tiny visitor in amongst the leeks and onions.  There are plenty of slugs and snails for him to get through......

Our lovely allotment neighbour gave us 4 beetroot to try.  As soon as I got home I boiled and skinned my 2.  They were delicious and have been added to salads and a sandwich......

 I took hot and cold drinks for us, as well as soap and water for hand washing, so we paused for lunch and bought chip shop chips to share 😜 followed by freshly picked raspberries . It was the most exciting day out that I've had for months!

DD took home some carrots, runner beans, peas and potatoes as well as a couple of corn cobs.  She cooked them, ate a plateful of veg with gravy and kept a corn cob back for later after taking her son to football training.  When she got home her hubby had eaten it (even though he swears he 'doesn't like' corn  🙄) so she never got to try it.  It was deliciously sweet and tender served with a small knob of butter.....

I'll pick some more for her next time we go. She did take home 3 carrier bags full of potatoes which she will share with her Sister-in-Law and her neighbours.

Food Shortages:

Sainsburys has just delivered the food shopping and each week lately there are out of stock items and substitutions; 4 out of stock and 4 subs this week alone.  It means we are 3 meals short on the food planner for the next 7 days.  On the rare occasions I nip into Morrisons for a forgotten item I notice empty shelves everywhere. I do commend the supermarkets for pulling out all the stops to keep the deliveries flowing.  It must be tough at the moment.

How are food supplies where you are?

I'm especially grateful for the veg at the allotment.  

Coming soon:

Leeks

Calabrese

Parsnips

Sprouts

Blackberries

Bramley apples

Russet? dessert apples

Still harvesting:

Potatoes

Runner beans

French beans

Carrots

Onions

Luckily, there was a small piece of steak in the shopping so G can have that tonight with roast potatoes, roast parsnip, carrots, and runner beans.  I think I'll just have a big plate of veg like DD did but with home grown mint sauce 😀

Stay safe everyone wherever in the world you happen to be x

'Free' Food

 

I roasted the cherry tomatoes as suggested and, after removing the skins, froze them to use later on pasta or pizza.  The Tumbling Tom plants have now been emptied out of the hanging basket and put on the compost heap at the allotment.   Nothing has been wasted. 

From the allotment we have been eating:

Potatoes (we still have enough to feed the whole village!)

French beans

Runner beans

Spring onions

Radishes

Unfortunately,  the last 3 cabbages bolted in the heat so were chopped up and added to the compost.

The Mammoth onions are becoming enormous. The one in the photo is one of the smaller ones! G seems to have a 'thing' about gi-normous onions ever since he won first prize at the village show 🙄 One single onion lasts us about a week and we have a whole raised bed full .  Heaven knows what we will do with them all 🤔

We have 9 healthy looking sweetcorn plants but I have no idea when the corn will be ready to pick.  Any suggestions from Gardeners out there will be very welcome.....

I intended to go to the allotment this morning to pick runner beans for my best friend but it's now raining heavily so I might have to bide my time and go this afternoon instead. At least I won't have to go and water the plants.

What do you have planned for the weekend?

Stay safe everyone wherever in the world you happen to be x 

Completely Confused....

Yesterday I decided that my blog needed refreshing with cool colours and a new profile.  Not So Simple!

I'm hopeless with technology and don't find using Blogger easy at all, so if I shocked you at some point with a massive photo of me I sincerely apologise.  No one should have that inflicted on them without warning!  I will carry on experimenting so now you have been warned 👀😅......

Nothing else to report except...STILL no rain for us here, although it's decidedly cooler which is much more conducive to a good night's sleep.

How is the weather where you are?

Stay safe everyone wherever in the world you happen to be x

Tumbling Toms and An Update

 This morning is promising to turn into another hot and beautiful day for sunlovers with 31 degrees forecast.  It will be a bit too hot for me so I'll be either sitting in the shade or inside the house with the fan on!

The update is about our potential move.  We sold our house within a week to first time buyers and have found a bungalow we like in a lovely quiet setting with no upward chain. Simple ....or so we thought 🤔 6 weeks later our buyers are struggling to get their mortgage sorted and we are in danger of losing the bungalow. I'm wondering whether to put ours back on the market quickly. What do you think?

Our Tumbling Tom tomatoes look lovely....

But they are dry and tasteless, despite regular watering and feeding....

Any suggestions what I can do with them? Is it worth roasting  them do you think? There are loads more on the plants and I'm loathe to waste them.  Suggestions welcome please!

On the allotment we have been harvesting:

Potatoes (Colleen)

Broad beans (horrible blackfly but tasty beans)

Peas

Runner beans (our first 6 beans 😋)

Cabbage

Radishes

Spring onions

Lettuce

And we swapped potatoes for some delicious raspberries with our allotment neighbour, who is a lovely chap.

Its going to be hard work watering in this hot weather but we love sharing our produce with our daughter, my brother and several lovely neighbours who we are seeing a little more of with the imminent easing of restrictions.  From tomorrow masks and social distancing will not be required but we will not be ditching ours anytime soon.  Will you?

We've both done our lateral flow tests this morning (negative) and our daughter and the family are doing theirs too so we are going over there this afternoon for a barbie 😀 

Enjoy your day wherever in the world you happen to be. Stay well x

Pulling Up My Big Girl Knickers

 Thank you to everyone for your lovely supportive comments on my last post. I have now deleted it because I don't want it to be part of my diary. I want to be hopeful not hopeless 👍

Poor G's health has taken a downward spiral over the last 18 months and he is finding that stairs are not the ideal thing to cope with so we are, hopefully, moving to a bungalow. As I have a lot to sort out (yes, me... G leaves all paperwork and phone calls to me 😳) I will be taking a blogging break. I'll still be lurking, reading other blogs and commenting though.

Until then, take care and stay safe wherever in the world you happen to be x