Monday was hot and humid. A man with a van came to mend 2 tires on Col's tractor. They were OK on Friday when he was using it but then Saturday morning flat as pancakes.
This is what I picked first thing to go out for sale:- 4 punnets of raspberries, 1 punnet of morello cooking cherries, 4 cucumbers, 2 bunches of beetroot, 4 bags of potatoes, 1 bag of green beans, 1 bunch of onions, 1 Marrow and a small bag of cherry tomatoes - the first toms to go out this year.
On Sunday I moved everything out of the big chest freezer so I could defrost it. We've still got a smaller freezer in the shed so everything was squashed in there with 2 big bricks on the top to keep it shut. Now it's all back in the largest and the small one will go to the scrap yard with the next load of scrap.It was when Col was hauling an old bale sledge out of the nettles to add to the scrap heap that he must have run over something that punctured the tractor tyres .
We've been doing lots more tidying ready to have a barn/yard sale here on 15th August, so as well as the scrap to go, the skip load of rubbish has been taken away.
University Challenge at 8 and Only Connect at 8.30 were the only things we watched on TV. Hardly able to answer any questions - as usual.
Tuesday, still hot and dry.
Col went off to get chicken feed and I made 3 loaves of bread and did some weeding. Then I took a bucket of soapy water out to the caravan to give the fridge and oven a good clean. We've checked everything (except the awning and the loo) to make sure it works and the only repair needed is to the worktop cover for the sink and drainer. We spent less than half of my surprise pension payout on this caravan and we are pretty chuffed, because others similar on Ebay are well over £5,000.
Wednesday. Hot and sunny again with a nice breeze. Black skies in the evening produced about 10 spots of rain - no good at all.
Serves me right for being pleased about the caravan bargain because today the car went to have an odd rattle checked out and it needs a part that's going to cost us nearly £300. It's something Col can't do himself and its going to take a few days to repair.
I biked to Saxmundham for shopping, it was lovely weather for cycling, but hot work walking up the hill out of Saxmundham with a two loaded baskets of shopping - one on the back and one on the front. I've mentioned before that our choice of shops locally is Tesco or Waitrose. - No choice really, and I just don't understand how anyone can afford Waitrose. Take yogurt for instance. Since Col had the bladder operation and the subsequent problems that meant two spells on antibiotics, I've been buying him yogurt to help re-balance everything. Tesco everyday value 45p for 500g versus Waitrose everyday essentials £1.20 for the same amount. Wonder which I buy?
Here is a conversation that happens in our house now and again. Me" I'm trying something for dinner that we've not had before". Him looking and sounding worried "Oh Dear" ! Today it was savoury pancakes stuffed with soft cheese and courgette and chard ( in place of spinach) topped with a home made tomato sauce (the last of my last batch of pizza topping) and cheese. It was OK but needed a bit more ooomph.
Vera on TV in the evening. A new series I think, although I read the book on which this story was based last year, so it seemed very familiar.
Thursday. Really cold overnight, I hope the tent campers on the campsite kept warm. We had some sunshine but quite a lot of cloud too.
Today I mixed up a big batch of crumble topping to go in the freezer and made 6 boxes of pizza topping too.
Another home grown veggie meal for dinner using the first of the aubergines from the poly tunnel.
Aubergine and pasta bake.
I've added the recipe to the separate recipe page. We only eat this once or twice a year when we have aubergines available as it is quite oily. I then made 6 sausage rolls (using 200g of sausage meat and ¼ of a pack of puff pastry) to shove in the oven at the same time ready for dinner tomorrow and Saturday lunch.
Col was doing some repairs to the lid of the nest box on the chicken shed we are selling and working at our neighbours.
Not a single thing on TV in the evening so it was back to Jo Wiley on radio 2.
I had an email with a voucher for half price delivery from Approved Foods. I've not ordered anything for a while so I had a look to see what they'd got in stock. They still have the lovely malted wheat flour in big 16kg sacks and have reduced the price even more but I do think some of their prices have gone up since they were featured on the TV programme. I dithered a bit and put things in the basket and took them out again.Had another look, checked prices on My supermarket site and eventually put in an order for some of the branded products we buy like Yorkshire Teabags, Heinz tomato ketchup and Blue Dragon stir fry sauce. We've tried cheap tea bags but with our hard water Yorkshire are the only ones that taste good and we use so little tomato sauce that we decided we might as well have something decent. The Blue Dragon sauces were 4 for a £1 - quite a saving. I also got some tortilla wraps, custard powder, Jacobs biscuits for cheese and de-indentified table salt at 5 x 1kg for £1. Think I might give three of these to the children. Cols treat was Liquorice Allsorts and my treat was De-identified Cappuccino dusting at 500g for 75p. That should last ages on my morning Frothy Coffee.
So here we are round to Friday. The first runner beans are out for sale today. I looked on My Supermarket again to check prices and the cheapest were £4.75Kg - Good Grief, and how weird is this - you can actually buy them ready sliced. Surely they would dry up and look awful? I guess someone must buy them. We are forecast to get some rain today which would be useful, hope it doesn't miss us again. Col is doing more work on the trailer in the workshop and I don't know what I'm doing yet although I have picked redcurrants, raspberries, cucumbers, onions and beetroot to sell and washed the hall floor.
Our homemade and homegrown food eaten today will be raspberries, tayberries, salad leaves, beetroot, cucumber, tomatoes,potatoes, green beans, the sausage rolls made yesterday, bread, jam for Col and a apple and blackberry crumble with fruit from the freezer. The bought food eaten today will be porridge, milk, coffee, tea, cheese, yogurt, butter, a couple of biscuits and peanut butter for me.
Before I forget, welcome to more followers - Simple Living and Chris - hope you enjoy my diary.
Back sometime soon
Sue
