For a good solution to regional eating, that is. I met the guy from the CSA-style program this morning and I left feeling, well, underwhelmed. I went all ready to sign up straightaway and now I don't think I will at all. I did appreciate that he was honest about the shortcomings of the program at least. Opinions welcome on this one.
Cost per month (with a commitment of a year, renewed every year for another full year): €130, which works out to €30 per week.
All of the produce comes from the same farm. Basically, the people in the association (about 180) get together and tell the farmer that they'll pay x amount of money. They also meet every six weeks (not mandatory but it sounded like most people do attend) to decide things like what's to be grown. From what I understood, the farmer who owns the farm also participates in those discussions, which makes sense. As well as "employing" that farmer, there are three other full-time farmers employed to work with him. The six-weekly meeting decided last year, for example, to increase the wages from €12 to €15 per hour, slightly higher than average for work on an organic farm apparently.
The place I would have gone to collect my stuff from is close to work. About 15 people also collect from there. It's basically just a cellar at the back of a communal/alternative student collective of some kind. And honestly, the building entrance was not very well kept and, well, kind of smelly.
Once a week someone from each depot drives to the farm to collect the stuff. I would also be expected to do that at least a few times a year (using a car-sharing car they could make available). Then everyone just brings their own bags to take their portion of stuff. This week, for example, one share was 1kg potatoes, 2 small pumpkins (each slightly bigger than a handful), 1kg onions and 500g black kale (which was totally infested with white cabbage moths).
You also get 1.5 litres raw milk every week but you have to provide your own bottles and they just fill them up. Then, every two weeks there is also meat or cheese. You more or less end up with about 1kg of meat and 300g of cheese per month, from what I understood. Various cuts, mince or salami/sausage (all beef). And finally, a loaf of bread every week, too. Oh, you can pay an extra 1.30 a month to get herbs, as well.
But while I would have assumed that a share looks very different in the summer/autumn peak season, apparently not all that much. They grow no tomoatoes, cucumbers or peppers (ok, no peppers or cucumbers wouldn't bother me). The only fruit seems to be gooseberries and blackcurrants, with a couple of litres of apple juice once or twice a year. So apart from salad, it seems like summer tends to be early potatoes, early carrots, leeks and, well, he wasn't sure what else. From photos on their website I can see beets and kohlrabi, too. And, of course, as they don't keep chickens, there are no eggs included either.
So, all in all, I'd probably end up buying a good bit on top of what I'd get from them. And given that I want to concentrate on eating to lose weight this year, such a big proportion of every week being potatoes and bread, even in summer, isn't ideal. Lots of thinking to do now.
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Food. Show all posts
Fresh start
Carolyn over at The 1940's Experiment is starting afresh this week with both weight loss and budgeting. And so am I. I'd already been thinking about doing something like this for a while and just don't seem to get anywhere with it. I went to the doctor a few weeks ago and asked about getting help with losing weight and will hopefully have an appointment with a dietician early in the new year. It's not that I feel like they will be able to actually help me much in terms of teaching me about food (let's face it, I probably at least as much as they do on the subject of food and how to lose weight) but I need outside support to actually do something. I'm just not getting anywhere on my own. The place I'll be working with seems to be quite holistic as well, so hopefully the health insurance will also cover the cost of some basic exercise programms. I've also signed up for a new program my health insurance are offering which is a kind of mental health support scheme. Not sure exactly how that will work out but it's kind of like a step before therapy (there's a severe shortage of places with psychologists here and people can end up waiting for a long time before they can get an appointment). From what I understand it involves a weekly phone call with one of their counsellors to talk about whatever is going on and try and find ways for me to deal with everything that's going on. It was sheer coincidence that I got the leaflet for this program at the same time I was trying to get the cover for a dietician set up but I grabbed at the chance immediately. I am trying to be better at asking for help.
As for budget, well, barring one potentially crappy situation (I messed up a big translation job and am waiting to hear back from them - may have to pay them back, may have to cover damages they incurred if they ended up getting someone else to redo it), I'm actually starting to slowly get to a relatively stable place. I have enough money set aside to be able to pay my tax bill for 2016 whenever it comes in and when the rest of my outstanding invoices are paid, should have enough to cover 2017's tax bill as well. I have 450 set aside for annual expenses and 250 for travel/holidays. But, I should also be able to cover annual expenses and travels costs for the next two months directly without needing to touch the savings. Finally, I have 500 set aside in a separate savings account, which is the start of a proper emergency fund.
As I am now working full-time, I am earning almost 300 more per month than I was before. I will have a few expenses that I want to put this money towards over the first few months of the year (getting bike fixed, getting shelves put up in the kitchen and so on) but by June I want to be at the stage where I am living on my previous 75% salary and saving the extra. Will someone come back and ask me in June whether or not I've managed to do that? To be perfectly honest, I'm not really loving working 100% again and I'd rather not get used to the money so that if I can at all finagle my way to reducing hours, it won't be a difficult financial decision.
So much for the monthly stuff. On a more micro level, I'm going to start an envelope method again. I have signed up for a monthly Solawi* box (or at least, I'll be visiting tomorrow and plan to sign up) and that will provide the bulk of my food. Apart from that I will be withdrawing a very generous 60 euro per week from the bank in cash. That's actually how much I was planning on allocating every week before I took the Solawi box into account. I'm going to see how it goes. The idea is that I should be well able to not spend that amount of money every week and will be able to build up a bit of a buffer to start my envelopes off well.
I should think about what envelopes I want to have actually. Hmm. Here's a first list:
I'm sure I'll end up changing this all a lot as time passes but it's a starting point at least. Need to just keep repeating to myself that a millionaire is made ten bucks at a time.
* Solawi is the name given to an organisation called Solidarische Landwirtschaft or literally solidary agriculture, and is similar to the CSA programs they have in the US. I pay a certain amount every month and for that get a box of food every week. Mostly veg but also meat, dairy and wheat (in the form of grain, flour or bread). Smaller amounts in winter, obviously, and if there is a disastrous harvest then it's tough luck and not a lot of food. The monthly amount paid remains the same. But it means I'll be genuninely back to having mostly local and organic food, as it really is just the one farm providing everything and that farm is located less than 7km from where I live and 15 km from where I work (my pick-up point will be close to work).
As for budget, well, barring one potentially crappy situation (I messed up a big translation job and am waiting to hear back from them - may have to pay them back, may have to cover damages they incurred if they ended up getting someone else to redo it), I'm actually starting to slowly get to a relatively stable place. I have enough money set aside to be able to pay my tax bill for 2016 whenever it comes in and when the rest of my outstanding invoices are paid, should have enough to cover 2017's tax bill as well. I have 450 set aside for annual expenses and 250 for travel/holidays. But, I should also be able to cover annual expenses and travels costs for the next two months directly without needing to touch the savings. Finally, I have 500 set aside in a separate savings account, which is the start of a proper emergency fund.
As I am now working full-time, I am earning almost 300 more per month than I was before. I will have a few expenses that I want to put this money towards over the first few months of the year (getting bike fixed, getting shelves put up in the kitchen and so on) but by June I want to be at the stage where I am living on my previous 75% salary and saving the extra. Will someone come back and ask me in June whether or not I've managed to do that? To be perfectly honest, I'm not really loving working 100% again and I'd rather not get used to the money so that if I can at all finagle my way to reducing hours, it won't be a difficult financial decision.
So much for the monthly stuff. On a more micro level, I'm going to start an envelope method again. I have signed up for a monthly Solawi* box (or at least, I'll be visiting tomorrow and plan to sign up) and that will provide the bulk of my food. Apart from that I will be withdrawing a very generous 60 euro per week from the bank in cash. That's actually how much I was planning on allocating every week before I took the Solawi box into account. I'm going to see how it goes. The idea is that I should be well able to not spend that amount of money every week and will be able to build up a bit of a buffer to start my envelopes off well.
I should think about what envelopes I want to have actually. Hmm. Here's a first list:
- Birthdays/presents incl. postage
- Clothes
- Shoes
- New coat next winter
- Meals/drinks out
- Exercise
I'm sure I'll end up changing this all a lot as time passes but it's a starting point at least. Need to just keep repeating to myself that a millionaire is made ten bucks at a time.
* Solawi is the name given to an organisation called Solidarische Landwirtschaft or literally solidary agriculture, and is similar to the CSA programs they have in the US. I pay a certain amount every month and for that get a box of food every week. Mostly veg but also meat, dairy and wheat (in the form of grain, flour or bread). Smaller amounts in winter, obviously, and if there is a disastrous harvest then it's tough luck and not a lot of food. The monthly amount paid remains the same. But it means I'll be genuninely back to having mostly local and organic food, as it really is just the one farm providing everything and that farm is located less than 7km from where I live and 15 km from where I work (my pick-up point will be close to work).
Another recipe attempt and some brain unloading
Recipe first. This involves the pork fillet that I bought at the beginning of December and have had in the freezer. Inspired by Two and a Half Men's recent post and feeling like there's a good joke about how their loin was bigger than mine but not finding it, I decided to try to do something with it. I don't have a meat thermometer though and wasn't going to be able to use that method of timing the cooking. So I read through a couple of books, thinking I might do it in the slow cooker but rejected that in favour of amalgamating a few things from a few different places, memory included. And I've added meat thermometer to the list of things I need to buy.
So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.
Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.
Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.
I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.
It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.
So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.
Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.
Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.
I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.
It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.
Potentially delicious new recipe
Just want to jot this down here because it's looking and smelling so delicious at the moment, I feel like I may have just invented a delicious new recipe.
I cooked some chickpeas yesterday but couldn't get enthusiastic about making them into any kind of a dish. So instead I took the pumpkin and leek that I cooked last week but never got around to making into danishes and made it into a pastryless quiche instead. It was about thirty seconds of active work and although I ended up overcooking it slightly, it was really delicious. Note to self: the quantity from the danishes recipes was enough for a quiche made using 5 eggs in the small white dish.
Anyway, this evening, I needed something fast so I picked up some turkey pieces and decided to just have them with some red cabbage and apple, since I knew I had a jar of that and would just need to heat it up. Aaagh, but the chickpeas are still in the fridge from yesterday. So, I put a 250g portion into the freezer, something I always mean to do but forget.
That left 300g of chickpeas. I sliced a couple of onions and sauteed them in some peanut oil and added a teaspoon each of ginger and garlic paste. Then I added a grated carrot (hooray for using up things that have been in the fridge for far too long already) and a tin of tomatoes. And for good measure, a small Tupperware container of Chinese cabbage that I had in the freezer. So pleased I thought of it, as it was the last "old" thing I had in the freezer and I'd been trying to figure out what to do with it. I add two teaspoons of ras el hanout spice and when it has all cooked for a while, I'll add the chickpeas and that'll be two very generous portions or three smaller ones, I think. Really hope it lives up to its promise now.
I cooked some chickpeas yesterday but couldn't get enthusiastic about making them into any kind of a dish. So instead I took the pumpkin and leek that I cooked last week but never got around to making into danishes and made it into a pastryless quiche instead. It was about thirty seconds of active work and although I ended up overcooking it slightly, it was really delicious. Note to self: the quantity from the danishes recipes was enough for a quiche made using 5 eggs in the small white dish.
Anyway, this evening, I needed something fast so I picked up some turkey pieces and decided to just have them with some red cabbage and apple, since I knew I had a jar of that and would just need to heat it up. Aaagh, but the chickpeas are still in the fridge from yesterday. So, I put a 250g portion into the freezer, something I always mean to do but forget.
That left 300g of chickpeas. I sliced a couple of onions and sauteed them in some peanut oil and added a teaspoon each of ginger and garlic paste. Then I added a grated carrot (hooray for using up things that have been in the fridge for far too long already) and a tin of tomatoes. And for good measure, a small Tupperware container of Chinese cabbage that I had in the freezer. So pleased I thought of it, as it was the last "old" thing I had in the freezer and I'd been trying to figure out what to do with it. I add two teaspoons of ras el hanout spice and when it has all cooked for a while, I'll add the chickpeas and that'll be two very generous portions or three smaller ones, I think. Really hope it lives up to its promise now.
Foodsharing
Just a quick one. Not long after I moved here I met a woman who is involved with the local foodsharing team. This is a voluntary organisation that collects food from supermarkets and shops that would otherwise be thrown out, and organises collection points where people can come and take some of that food. The supermarkets save a little on their rubbish charges, less food goes to landfill, and a few people get to (partially) feed themselves for free.
Yesterday, I finally managed to call to one of the collection points at a time when I knew she would have just been to a weekly pick-up. Now, I know that food waste, especially the amount of food thrown out by supermarkets is a big issue but still. actually seeing the quantities up close was a bit sobering.
Bear in mind that the organiser at already taken out quite a bit, as she has a few families who can't make it to the pick-up at the time but need the help, so she keeps stuff aside for them. So, there were a few boxes worth of stuff already gone.
I couldn't even fit it all into one photograph and although some of those boxes don't look full, there was quite a lot stuffed into each one (the fill the box as much as possible method of transferring a lot rather than the don't damage the produce method of packing).
It does leave me a little bit torn as very little of this was organic and I don't think any of it was local. However, not wasting food is so important as well. And honestly, this kind of suits my budget at the moment so I really shouldn't cavil. So I did bring home a big bag full of stuff and will have to spend a few hours in the kitchen tomorrow cooking.
Peeking out at the back, you can just see the corner of a 500g packet of organic tomatoes. Then there are two packets of two lettuces with the roots still attached in a soil plug. A basil plant (this was the only thing that is very close to past its best, with several blackening leaves. However still plenty to make a batch of pesto for freezer with). Scallions, which are absolutely perfect and nowhere close to needing to be dumped. A packet with three passion fruit. Three bananas, which will be perfect for making banana muffins in the next day or two. A huge butternut squash (1.8kg!). And another 1.2kg of loose tomatoes.
If I had been faster and less takenaback by the whole thing, I could also have gotten some carrots or broccoli.
I won't be there next week as I'll be travelling for work but I will definitely try and make it back about once a month. That feels like a good way to supplement my budget without feeling too much like I may be taking from others who might need it more. But seriously, we live in a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
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| Looks like relatively little? |
Yesterday, I finally managed to call to one of the collection points at a time when I knew she would have just been to a weekly pick-up. Now, I know that food waste, especially the amount of food thrown out by supermarkets is a big issue but still. actually seeing the quantities up close was a bit sobering.
Bear in mind that the organiser at already taken out quite a bit, as she has a few families who can't make it to the pick-up at the time but need the help, so she keeps stuff aside for them. So, there were a few boxes worth of stuff already gone.
It does leave me a little bit torn as very little of this was organic and I don't think any of it was local. However, not wasting food is so important as well. And honestly, this kind of suits my budget at the moment so I really shouldn't cavil. So I did bring home a big bag full of stuff and will have to spend a few hours in the kitchen tomorrow cooking.
Peeking out at the back, you can just see the corner of a 500g packet of organic tomatoes. Then there are two packets of two lettuces with the roots still attached in a soil plug. A basil plant (this was the only thing that is very close to past its best, with several blackening leaves. However still plenty to make a batch of pesto for freezer with). Scallions, which are absolutely perfect and nowhere close to needing to be dumped. A packet with three passion fruit. Three bananas, which will be perfect for making banana muffins in the next day or two. A huge butternut squash (1.8kg!). And another 1.2kg of loose tomatoes.
If I had been faster and less takenaback by the whole thing, I could also have gotten some carrots or broccoli.
I won't be there next week as I'll be travelling for work but I will definitely try and make it back about once a month. That feels like a good way to supplement my budget without feeling too much like I may be taking from others who might need it more. But seriously, we live in a mad, mad, mad, mad world!
Lots of veg but have lost the enthusiasm
I went to the market yesterday and, even though it still bugs me that the one guy there selling veg mostly seems to buy stuff from a standard wholesaler and is not at all interested in my questions on what he has grown himself,* I bought a whole load of veg from him.
None of it is organic and he definitely seems to go for the sell lots for cheap mantra. Such a change from the farmers' market in Dusseldorf, where nothing could be sold that wasn't produced within an 80km radius and there were two organic farmers who were passionate about what they did and, if they did sell anything they hadn't grown themselves, were selling it on behalf of neighbour farmers who didn't grow enough to justify the cost of a market stall. Still, I suppose it did still make for a pretty picture.
That lot cost me €9.80, with the two cartons of free-range eggs and the turkey breast costing another €8.30. I only wanted one salad but he gave me two for the price of one. That made sense at the beginning of the summer when they were still very small but these ones are big enough that one barely fits into my salad spinner. So, as well as the salad there are onions, carrots, red cabbage, cauliflower and kohlrabi. I plan to slice the kohlrabi and fry it to eat with salad. Sometimes I get tired of just cold salad and like to have something warm to go with it. The turkey will mostly be used for the same thing, although I may use some of it to have a stirfry on Sunday. A couple of the carrots will be used to make kidney bean, carrot and cumin burgers and the rest will last for a whlie. That's just over a kilo of carrots, in case you were wondering.
I want to get some potatoes and do spicy potatoes and cauliflower. Had a real craving for it for some reason although now that I think about it, I must be mad. It's cooler this week but still hot and I want to put the oven on? Madness.
The red cabbage will become it's usual, braised cabbage with apples. There is a little place on campus that sells fruit and veg grown in a community garden not far from the university. I'm going to call in there on Monday and see if maybe that will offer a good alternative for me. And hopefully get some local apples and potatoes while I'm there.
And all of that was really an attempt to get me enthusiastic enough to want to do any of that. After a really excellent week in terms of food, where I actually cooked/prepared and ate good food for three meals a day, five days in a row, I went totally off the rails yesterday. And if I wasn't feeling a bit under the weather today, I think I'd be down the supermarket stuffing my bag full of more crisps and chocolate to do the same again today. But I think I'm starting a cold, I have a bit of a headache and am generally not feeling too good. So I think I'm going to have a duvet day and just stay put.
I worked very late yesterday and came up to find that there was a Seelsorger having a cigarette break outside my front door. A Seelsorger is a type of pastoral worker, literally a "soul carer" and they get called out when someone has died, for example. I didn't think it was appropriate for me to ask her what had happened so we just chatted for a minute or two when she asked me not to close the front door and that was it. But once I was in my apartment I realised that all the noise was coming from next door. I've never met the guy from that apartment. He uses it as his office and lives in another apartment downstairs. Or lived, I should say, as it turns out that he died yesterday. I peeked out the spyhole in my door once or twice to see what all the noise was about and saw them bringing the body out. So once they were gone I waited for a few minutes until I heard someone else and then I opened the door to ask what had happened. The policeman who was just locking up simply said that he had died but at least confirmed that it was the guy who rented the apartment that died. I didn't really have much of a reaction yesterday but it did keep me awake a bit last night and it's bothering me now that I don't know how he died because I'm finding myself dwelling on it a bit. September is, of course, suicide awareness month and in a couple of weeks it'll be my sister's third anniversary. So that's all mixing itself up in my head in strange ways. Would be something of a relief to just know exactly what happened to him, I think but given that I never met him, I'm not likely to ever know. It's very sad though, I don't think he was very old. Am trying hard to translate all of these thoughts and feelings into more impetus to get myself healthy!
*He does grow stuff himself and you'd think he'd want to sell more of that stuff but that doesn't seem to be the case. The most I can say for yesterday's purchases is that it's all German. Can't even say it's all regional. Really, I could have just gone to the supermarket.
None of it is organic and he definitely seems to go for the sell lots for cheap mantra. Such a change from the farmers' market in Dusseldorf, where nothing could be sold that wasn't produced within an 80km radius and there were two organic farmers who were passionate about what they did and, if they did sell anything they hadn't grown themselves, were selling it on behalf of neighbour farmers who didn't grow enough to justify the cost of a market stall. Still, I suppose it did still make for a pretty picture.
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| I put a pencil in the shot so that you can get an idea of how huge those kohlrabi are, I only asked for two because the ones at the front of the pile were fairly small |
I want to get some potatoes and do spicy potatoes and cauliflower. Had a real craving for it for some reason although now that I think about it, I must be mad. It's cooler this week but still hot and I want to put the oven on? Madness.
The red cabbage will become it's usual, braised cabbage with apples. There is a little place on campus that sells fruit and veg grown in a community garden not far from the university. I'm going to call in there on Monday and see if maybe that will offer a good alternative for me. And hopefully get some local apples and potatoes while I'm there.
And all of that was really an attempt to get me enthusiastic enough to want to do any of that. After a really excellent week in terms of food, where I actually cooked/prepared and ate good food for three meals a day, five days in a row, I went totally off the rails yesterday. And if I wasn't feeling a bit under the weather today, I think I'd be down the supermarket stuffing my bag full of more crisps and chocolate to do the same again today. But I think I'm starting a cold, I have a bit of a headache and am generally not feeling too good. So I think I'm going to have a duvet day and just stay put.
I worked very late yesterday and came up to find that there was a Seelsorger having a cigarette break outside my front door. A Seelsorger is a type of pastoral worker, literally a "soul carer" and they get called out when someone has died, for example. I didn't think it was appropriate for me to ask her what had happened so we just chatted for a minute or two when she asked me not to close the front door and that was it. But once I was in my apartment I realised that all the noise was coming from next door. I've never met the guy from that apartment. He uses it as his office and lives in another apartment downstairs. Or lived, I should say, as it turns out that he died yesterday. I peeked out the spyhole in my door once or twice to see what all the noise was about and saw them bringing the body out. So once they were gone I waited for a few minutes until I heard someone else and then I opened the door to ask what had happened. The policeman who was just locking up simply said that he had died but at least confirmed that it was the guy who rented the apartment that died. I didn't really have much of a reaction yesterday but it did keep me awake a bit last night and it's bothering me now that I don't know how he died because I'm finding myself dwelling on it a bit. September is, of course, suicide awareness month and in a couple of weeks it'll be my sister's third anniversary. So that's all mixing itself up in my head in strange ways. Would be something of a relief to just know exactly what happened to him, I think but given that I never met him, I'm not likely to ever know. It's very sad though, I don't think he was very old. Am trying hard to translate all of these thoughts and feelings into more impetus to get myself healthy!
*He does grow stuff himself and you'd think he'd want to sell more of that stuff but that doesn't seem to be the case. The most I can say for yesterday's purchases is that it's all German. Can't even say it's all regional. Really, I could have just gone to the supermarket.
A new month
Payday today and I have been totally on top of keeping my budget spreadsheet up to date since last payday so everything was all ready to go for the new month. I'm going to try and track absolutely everything this month, I need to start having a proper handle on normal expenses as well as extraordinary expenses and for more than just a month or two at a time. Let's see if I can keep it up throughout August first and then I can worry about the following months.
So, I cleared out the loose change from my purse and will put that into my Sealed Jar and I took thrity euro out of the bank to do me for this week. I actually had fifty budgeted for this week but I'll see how far I get with thirty first. Ideally, I'd like to have that money to do my weekly shop next Thursday at the market rather than dipping into next week's money a day early, which I do far too often. I did go to the supermarket this afternoon and bought some treats so I've already spent just over ten euro.
From the supermarket:
From the little Turkish shop:
And I also topped up my phone, which cost 25 euro. They've changed their plans though, so I may switch to a different one next month. Will have to see if I can keep data down to less than 750mb per month. The plan I have now costs 19.95 per month and gives me 3GB. I usually use just about 1GB. Previously the next lowest option was 9.95 for 500MB per month but they've upped that to 1GB now. However, they've also introduced a 750MB option for 8.95, which adds 300 minutes of calls/texts to all German networks. At the moment I only have free calls and texts to my own network and since starting to work as a freelancer, I have been using the phone much more so this would be a very practical tariff for me. Either way, I think I will definitely be changing my plan at the end of the month.
So, I cleared out the loose change from my purse and will put that into my Sealed Jar and I took thrity euro out of the bank to do me for this week. I actually had fifty budgeted for this week but I'll see how far I get with thirty first. Ideally, I'd like to have that money to do my weekly shop next Thursday at the market rather than dipping into next week's money a day early, which I do far too often. I did go to the supermarket this afternoon and bought some treats so I've already spent just over ten euro.
From the supermarket:
- 1 lt. milk (99c)
- 1 carton of quark (35c)
- 1 tube of smarties (1.69)
- 1 packet of crisps (1.99)
- 1 x 330ml Tannenzaepfle beer (89c + 8c deposit)
- 1 x 500ml Export beer (49c + 8c deposit) - typically, having thought I'd really like to have a beer this evening, once I got home I ended up drinking a mug of milk instead but the beer will keep in the fridge for a while so it's all good
From the little Turkish shop:
- 1 punnet of strawberries (1.49)
- 1 punnet of raspberries (2.99 - expensive as always but I ate the entire thing for my dinner,)
And I also topped up my phone, which cost 25 euro. They've changed their plans though, so I may switch to a different one next month. Will have to see if I can keep data down to less than 750mb per month. The plan I have now costs 19.95 per month and gives me 3GB. I usually use just about 1GB. Previously the next lowest option was 9.95 for 500MB per month but they've upped that to 1GB now. However, they've also introduced a 750MB option for 8.95, which adds 300 minutes of calls/texts to all German networks. At the moment I only have free calls and texts to my own network and since starting to work as a freelancer, I have been using the phone much more so this would be a very practical tariff for me. Either way, I think I will definitely be changing my plan at the end of the month.
Let's try to focus on the positive
Everything has been so lovely since I moved here (once I started getting over the moving part of moving that is) that this week's setback is kind of knocking me for six a bit. I hate feeling like if I had the financial means rights now, I would prefer to move house. I've all but completely forgotten about keeping up with my list of simple things that make me happy because, well, just about everything has been so great it felt a bit like there wasn't much of bad to be mitigated. So, now that there is negative stuff, I really need to try and put some of the tools I have learned about over the years back into practice.
With that in mind, here are a few positive things from the last couple of days:
With that in mind, here are a few positive things from the last couple of days:
- Got my renewal notice for house insurance. My insurance premium went down when I moved to this area (hooray). The insurance perios runs from August to July and this year's renewal also included a deduction for the difference for the few months since I moved here until 1 August. So as well as the savings for the next 12 months, I didn't have to pay 6.89 of the bill that I did get.
- Receiving that renewal notice reminded me that the renewal notice for my personal liability insurance came in last week. That'd be one of the things my guest from hell tidied out of sight out of mind on me so at least I was able to go searching for it and get that paid as well.
- I may not have paid off the moving costs yet but I did have money put aside for these two bills and was able to pay them without stressing.
- Despite an extraordinarily unproductive day in work (spent two hours not actually working, just surfing the internet), overtime that I worked last week means that I haven't actually gone into minus hours. Being solely responsible for tracking whether or not I have worked my 20 hours, with nobody tracking it at all, is just so great and it's really keeping me honest, which is, y'know, one of my favourite feelings.
- I can hear thunder rumbling in the distance so am hopeful that the heat might break a bit and I'll be able to sleep properly tonight.
- Tomorrow I'm going to go and buy turquoise/blue paint to paint the remaining bookshelf and get some colour cards to decide what colour red I want to paint my dresser.
- There's a half-packet of maltesers in the fridge.
- I found local, organic produce at a supermarket that's on my way between work and home. So I have courgettes, salad and tomatoes waiting for me to eat over the weekend.
- This morning started off with a lovely phone call with a good friend.
- I managed to get through to a podologist who lives just down the road from me and have an appointment next week. I really hope she's good because it would be so convenient. And her rates are very, very reasonable.
Saturday shopping
A post not about BSDing and it's a boring shopping one. Don't worry, I'll find other things to ramble about soon I'm sure. Obsessing a little is helping me keep on track at the moment so I'm going with it. Luckily for me, if your eyes are glazing over at this stage, I can't see it and can continue on in happy obliviousness. :)
I had four things on my list when I headed out this morning and bought six. Not too bad. One of those two items was a packet of lentil for the storecupboard and the other some fish, as it turned out the supermarket was doing 50% off all fresh fish today. For this month and next, while I'll do my best to stick to my usual regional, organic, fairtrade, sustainable methods of choosing groceries, price will have to play a bigger role. I've been mostly avoiding fish for a while now, as it's such an environmental minefield. I did get some tins of tuna and sardines to stock up the storecupboard a while back but that has been about it. But for the duration of the BSD at least, I'll have to be a bit less discerning - when all is said and done, fish is a very good source of relatively low-calorie protein. I'm also trying to make sure that I have plenty of variety at the moment, which isn't something that's always at the top of my priority list.
Today, I even managed to remember to bring my empty bottles with me so after a quick stop at the bottle bank for the non-deposit ones, I continued on to the market.
I had taken €20 out of the bank and had 64c to put into my sealed pot and 50c for my 50c pot when I got back. For that, I got the following:
From Bio Thees
Oakleaf lettuce, 2 small heads (312g @ €10/kg): 3.12 (but the round down so only paid 3.10)
Red lambs' lettuce (100g @ €22/kg): 2.20
From Naturhof Etzold
Onions (1kg at €3.50/kg): 3.50
From SuperBIOMarkt
2 tins cannellini beans (€1.49 each): 2.98
1 packet yellow split peas, not lentils after all, I picked up the wrong packet. Sigh. (€4.98/kg): 2.49
Refund of 30c for two returned bottles
From Kaisers supermarket
2 salmon fillets (416g. normal price €19.90, today €9.95/kg): 4.14
250g butter: 75c
Refund of 30c for two returned bottles
I've already left the salmon poaching, will have a small bit now perhaps and them have the rest cold tomorrow or Monday.
I had four things on my list when I headed out this morning and bought six. Not too bad. One of those two items was a packet of lentil for the storecupboard and the other some fish, as it turned out the supermarket was doing 50% off all fresh fish today. For this month and next, while I'll do my best to stick to my usual regional, organic, fairtrade, sustainable methods of choosing groceries, price will have to play a bigger role. I've been mostly avoiding fish for a while now, as it's such an environmental minefield. I did get some tins of tuna and sardines to stock up the storecupboard a while back but that has been about it. But for the duration of the BSD at least, I'll have to be a bit less discerning - when all is said and done, fish is a very good source of relatively low-calorie protein. I'm also trying to make sure that I have plenty of variety at the moment, which isn't something that's always at the top of my priority list.
Today, I even managed to remember to bring my empty bottles with me so after a quick stop at the bottle bank for the non-deposit ones, I continued on to the market.
I had taken €20 out of the bank and had 64c to put into my sealed pot and 50c for my 50c pot when I got back. For that, I got the following:
From Bio Thees
Oakleaf lettuce, 2 small heads (312g @ €10/kg): 3.12 (but the round down so only paid 3.10)
Red lambs' lettuce (100g @ €22/kg): 2.20
From Naturhof Etzold
Onions (1kg at €3.50/kg): 3.50
From SuperBIOMarkt
2 tins cannellini beans (€1.49 each): 2.98
1 packet yellow split peas, not lentils after all, I picked up the wrong packet. Sigh. (€4.98/kg): 2.49
Refund of 30c for two returned bottles
From Kaisers supermarket
2 salmon fillets (416g. normal price €19.90, today €9.95/kg): 4.14
250g butter: 75c
Refund of 30c for two returned bottles
I've already left the salmon poaching, will have a small bit now perhaps and them have the rest cold tomorrow or Monday.
Blood sugar diet - day 5
Well, after a difficult day 3, yesterday turned out really well. I was quite nervous as I have choir rehearsal on Wednesday evenings and wasn't sure how that would work out. My friend had to cancel lunch so that made my day a whole lot easier, I have to admit. I'd had porridge for breakfast an cleaning the floors and clearing up the sitting room were shelved. After a quick trip to the market for some salad (they had oakleaf lettuce! Small heads of it admittedly but that, more than anything, makes it feel like spring has truly sprung), eggs and quark, I chopped up some apples for my snack/lunch and headed off on the tram again for another long walk. Half an hour later, I got out and walked down towards the river, passing a small market which also had a fish stand. They're there every Wednesday so I might take a trip back next week to buy some fish.
I walked back home, this time pusing myself a little to walk to the bench past the big bridge before taking a break. It's not a big difference really but I want to try and push myself a little bit from time to time. Otherwise, I just walked along, enjoying the occasional ray of sunshine through the mostly white clouds. I walked the last bit a slightly different way simply because the traffic lights were against me and so I walked on to cross over at a later stage and I actually cut a short distance off the walk but it was still just over 11km and I am very pleased that I've done two long walks this week. I'll do another shorter one today. I wasn't really hungry by the time I got home, even though I hadn't even finished all of the apple. I rested for a while and then before going to choir I fried the chicken I had bought, as well as some bacon bits I wanted to use up (fried the entire packet but only used a small amount) and made up a huge salad with the meat on top. Totally delicious and it really filled me up. I even went for a drink after choir (water, obviously) and wasn't feeling too hungry at all. I was kind of glad that everyone decided to have an early night though. Once I got home I had the rest of the apple. It turned out to be a great day foodwise.
Today is presenting challenges once more. It's actually related to something I was contemplating the other day: I'm not sure how well I would be managing the blood sugar diet if I had to be going out to work every day. As it is, I have far more flexibility in when and what I eat at the moment, which is a big help. I did get in a translation job yesterday evening, however, which means that today, I'm at my laptop working. And within a few minutes of sitting down, I found myself getting something of a craving for sweets. Not a bad physical craving but more like a force of habit kind of thing. I'd just eaten a late breakfast of two scrambled eggs with cress and thought I just needed to let that digest properly and I'd be fine. But after a while (about forty-five minutes, I was keeping an eye on it to make sure) I was feeling hungry so rather than risk the craving getting worse, I decided to have the rest of the chicken. I just ate it cold as I was working, it was delicious and seems to have satisfied me better than just the eggs had. I suppose every day is different and I'm going to have to be careful to pay attention to what my body (and my psyche) needs at any point in time.
Browsing the Irish Times earlier I also noticed a photo of some Easter eggs and I'm glad I'm here and not in Ireland. I think resisting the type of Easter eggs I grew up with would be far more difficult than resisting the various things they have over here for Easter. Don't get me wrong. I love German Easter stuff, from the chocolate bunnies to the amazing pastries, breads and cakes. I just don't feel the same connection to it as to, for example, a Button's egg (Jesus! You really can find anything on youtube!).
So we'll see how the rest of the day goes. Dinner will be another big salad, although with fewer extras since I've already eaten the chicken. Perhaps I'll make another small portion of spiced dahl. I also want to put on some beans to soak so that tomorrow I can have beans and rice. Really looking forward to that.
And just to finish off so that I have written it down somewhere, yesterday and the day before I noticed a strange pain. Almost like the beginnings of stitch except higher up and more to the centre of my body. I wondered if I had strained something. For a brief second I was worried that maybe I've left it too late to lose weight and get fit and my heart was complaining. But it's too low down to be my heart. It has gone away today but if it comes back, don't worry, I will go and check with the doctor. What I thought was interesting though, is that I checked a diagram to see what exactly is in that part of my body. Biology lessons are a very long time in the past and never one of my best subjects and I really just couldn't remember. At any rate, it seems to be the area that my liver is in that was hurting. The interesting part is remembering the following from the BSD book: "Once your visceral fat levels start to drop (and this happens within days), the fat clogging up your liver will also beging to melt away like snow under a hot sun." It may be a bit fanciful but I'm wondering if my liver is protesting having to relinquish the warm and cosy layer of fat it has been encased in for years now (even though I don't think visceral fat is so much fat around the liver as it is in the liver, that just doesn't work as well for my fanciful image). So there you have it. I weighed myself yesterday on the way out. I had weighed myself in the early afternoon of day 2 (chemist that has the scales I use wasn't open on Sunday) and by yesterday late morning, I was 1.1kg down. That's pretty good going and was definitely good motivation to keep me walking yesterday.
I walked back home, this time pusing myself a little to walk to the bench past the big bridge before taking a break. It's not a big difference really but I want to try and push myself a little bit from time to time. Otherwise, I just walked along, enjoying the occasional ray of sunshine through the mostly white clouds. I walked the last bit a slightly different way simply because the traffic lights were against me and so I walked on to cross over at a later stage and I actually cut a short distance off the walk but it was still just over 11km and I am very pleased that I've done two long walks this week. I'll do another shorter one today. I wasn't really hungry by the time I got home, even though I hadn't even finished all of the apple. I rested for a while and then before going to choir I fried the chicken I had bought, as well as some bacon bits I wanted to use up (fried the entire packet but only used a small amount) and made up a huge salad with the meat on top. Totally delicious and it really filled me up. I even went for a drink after choir (water, obviously) and wasn't feeling too hungry at all. I was kind of glad that everyone decided to have an early night though. Once I got home I had the rest of the apple. It turned out to be a great day foodwise.
Today is presenting challenges once more. It's actually related to something I was contemplating the other day: I'm not sure how well I would be managing the blood sugar diet if I had to be going out to work every day. As it is, I have far more flexibility in when and what I eat at the moment, which is a big help. I did get in a translation job yesterday evening, however, which means that today, I'm at my laptop working. And within a few minutes of sitting down, I found myself getting something of a craving for sweets. Not a bad physical craving but more like a force of habit kind of thing. I'd just eaten a late breakfast of two scrambled eggs with cress and thought I just needed to let that digest properly and I'd be fine. But after a while (about forty-five minutes, I was keeping an eye on it to make sure) I was feeling hungry so rather than risk the craving getting worse, I decided to have the rest of the chicken. I just ate it cold as I was working, it was delicious and seems to have satisfied me better than just the eggs had. I suppose every day is different and I'm going to have to be careful to pay attention to what my body (and my psyche) needs at any point in time.
Browsing the Irish Times earlier I also noticed a photo of some Easter eggs and I'm glad I'm here and not in Ireland. I think resisting the type of Easter eggs I grew up with would be far more difficult than resisting the various things they have over here for Easter. Don't get me wrong. I love German Easter stuff, from the chocolate bunnies to the amazing pastries, breads and cakes. I just don't feel the same connection to it as to, for example, a Button's egg (Jesus! You really can find anything on youtube!).
So we'll see how the rest of the day goes. Dinner will be another big salad, although with fewer extras since I've already eaten the chicken. Perhaps I'll make another small portion of spiced dahl. I also want to put on some beans to soak so that tomorrow I can have beans and rice. Really looking forward to that.
And just to finish off so that I have written it down somewhere, yesterday and the day before I noticed a strange pain. Almost like the beginnings of stitch except higher up and more to the centre of my body. I wondered if I had strained something. For a brief second I was worried that maybe I've left it too late to lose weight and get fit and my heart was complaining. But it's too low down to be my heart. It has gone away today but if it comes back, don't worry, I will go and check with the doctor. What I thought was interesting though, is that I checked a diagram to see what exactly is in that part of my body. Biology lessons are a very long time in the past and never one of my best subjects and I really just couldn't remember. At any rate, it seems to be the area that my liver is in that was hurting. The interesting part is remembering the following from the BSD book: "Once your visceral fat levels start to drop (and this happens within days), the fat clogging up your liver will also beging to melt away like snow under a hot sun." It may be a bit fanciful but I'm wondering if my liver is protesting having to relinquish the warm and cosy layer of fat it has been encased in for years now (even though I don't think visceral fat is so much fat around the liver as it is in the liver, that just doesn't work as well for my fanciful image). So there you have it. I weighed myself yesterday on the way out. I had weighed myself in the early afternoon of day 2 (chemist that has the scales I use wasn't open on Sunday) and by yesterday late morning, I was 1.1kg down. That's pretty good going and was definitely good motivation to keep me walking yesterday.
Blood sugar diet - day 3
Just a quick one tonight as I want to try and keep a record of a few things. Third day today and although it felt like I cooked and ate a lot more food, I was hungry in the afternoon and again this evening. I did go to the cinema this evening though and although I ate not long before I left, not getting home until just after midnight means it's a later night than usual and enough time for me to have gotten hungry again. I walked home though and feel slightly better for that. I'm not so hungry that I won't sleep but definitely feeling some hunger. I'm going to leave porridge soaking overnight and have that in the morning. I'm enjoying eggs for breakfast but don't want to just keep having the same thing and I think the porridge will be a good psychological boost.
A friend is coming over for lunch tomorrow, which I had completely forgotten about. So, I need to get my ass in gear tomorrow to get the place cleaned up a bit. I decided to do a salad with chicken. I might buy a couple of bread rolls so that she can have that with her salad if she wants and if not, I can chop them up and pop them into the freezer for using as croutons at a later stage. That means that I do need to get up early tomorrow and get out to the market. My veg box delivery is coming a day early this week because of Easter, which would have worked out perfectly if I had remembered that that also meant the deadline for adjusting or adding to the order was a day early. Salad, unfortunately, wasn't one of the picks for this week so I'll get that from the market and need to be back in time for my veg delivery.
I'm curious to see how this plays out over the next few days. I was surprised that the first two days seemed to go relatively easily, with few cravings or hunger pangs. The book, or perhaps the website, mentions it taking a few days or even a couple of weeks for cravings to fade away so perhaps I'm just going through some of that. Regardless, for tonight, my plan is to keep going tomorrow. And then we'll see.
A friend is coming over for lunch tomorrow, which I had completely forgotten about. So, I need to get my ass in gear tomorrow to get the place cleaned up a bit. I decided to do a salad with chicken. I might buy a couple of bread rolls so that she can have that with her salad if she wants and if not, I can chop them up and pop them into the freezer for using as croutons at a later stage. That means that I do need to get up early tomorrow and get out to the market. My veg box delivery is coming a day early this week because of Easter, which would have worked out perfectly if I had remembered that that also meant the deadline for adjusting or adding to the order was a day early. Salad, unfortunately, wasn't one of the picks for this week so I'll get that from the market and need to be back in time for my veg delivery.
I'm curious to see how this plays out over the next few days. I was surprised that the first two days seemed to go relatively easily, with few cravings or hunger pangs. The book, or perhaps the website, mentions it taking a few days or even a couple of weeks for cravings to fade away so perhaps I'm just going through some of that. Regardless, for tonight, my plan is to keep going tomorrow. And then we'll see.
Blood sugar diet - day 2
After reading the book, The 8-Week Blood Sugar Diet (website here), at the end of January and thinking it was just what I needed to get kickstarted again, I've made it past the middle of March and only now actually started it in earnest. I decided yesterday was the day as I knew I'd be feeling very much like having some clean living following Paddy's Day last Thursday and the last day of the 6 Nations on Saturday. As it turned out, Thursday wasn't as late or as boozy a night as previous years and on Saturday, although I did spend the day in the pub and did drink a fair amount, I left at eleven and resisted the temptation for "just one more".
It took me a few hours to actually get out for the walk I had planned to really get me going yesterday morning, but I did it eventually. And I went to the pub quiz last night and stuck to drinking water. Had my dinner as late as possible before leaving for that so that I wouldn't be tempted to get pizza or chips during the break. I have to admit I did need to go outside for a few minutes during the break when someone else at my table got chips.
Today, I planned to go for a shorter walk but kept somehow getting delayed and then decided I really needed to finish some work and get it sent out before distracting myself from it with a walk. It was five o'clock before I actually got out but I'm thrilled that I did it. I'm hoping tomorrow to get out much earlier. I'm going to a friend's house at two o'clock so ideally I'll go out walking first thing and then come back and have a big brunch omelette to see me through the afternoon. We'll see.
I received a beautiful notebook as a birthday present last December and hadn't yet found a use for it so it has been called into service as my (very old-school) tracking device. I'm glad that I'm not working at the moment as it gives me plenty of time to look up calories and try and plan what I'll be eating. I wasn't quite organised enough to do a full meal plan and it will take me a couple of weeks to get used to not deciding which starch (potatoes, rice, pasta, bread) I want most and planning my meal around that. Although a small amount of alcohol is included in the BSD guidelines, I'm going to go off it completely until June. I never feel good drinking alcohol on a regular basis and I think in future I'll probably continue with some variation of abstaining completely for a couple of months at intervals throughout the year. One thing I'll be doing is using up some things that I have already prepared (bolognaise yesterday, and bean burgers I have in the freezer, for example) and I will be guessing calories there to a certain extent. But I'm also not going to stress too much if I don't quite make it to just 800 calories in a day. I haven't managed it in the first two days but I still think I'm doing pretty well.
It's half-nine now so I think I can safely say that the first two days are done and, while it hasn't been easy-peasy, it hasn't been too difficult either. I was hungry yesterday at the quiz, or seemed to be, but actually, it was mostly the fact that I knew I needed to have a difficult conversation with somebody afterwards that had my stomach in knots. I ate a Silvermint and that was enough. The conversation went off okay - I didn't get any response I really wanted but I was glad that I had brought it up rather than allowing something to fester and potentially destroy a friendship. Whether that friendship will survive the breaking of trust, I'm not really sure but at least I was able to say my piece. I wonder if I'll ever get over feeling like honesty is the most important thing there can be.
At any rate, this afternoon, because I left for my walk so much later than planned and am currently walking a bit slower than I used to, which meant I took longer than planned, I was hungry by the time I got home and sort of starting to feel a bit panicked that I'd get too hungry and derail myself before I managed to get dinner ready. Then I remembered I'd bought a new jar of bouillon powder recently and when I got in the door I just put the kettle on immediately and a couple of minutes later I had a steaming hot cup of something tasty to tide me over. It was more than enough to see me through sitting down and resting for a while and then preparing dinner. I haven't really drunk enough water today but I'm going to go and make myself a herbal tea now and that will be that. There's trying to drink plenty of water in a day and there's having to get up three times in the night to pee and I know which of those things annoys me most!
 |
| Detail from front of notebook |
Today, I planned to go for a shorter walk but kept somehow getting delayed and then decided I really needed to finish some work and get it sent out before distracting myself from it with a walk. It was five o'clock before I actually got out but I'm thrilled that I did it. I'm hoping tomorrow to get out much earlier. I'm going to a friend's house at two o'clock so ideally I'll go out walking first thing and then come back and have a big brunch omelette to see me through the afternoon. We'll see.
I received a beautiful notebook as a birthday present last December and hadn't yet found a use for it so it has been called into service as my (very old-school) tracking device. I'm glad that I'm not working at the moment as it gives me plenty of time to look up calories and try and plan what I'll be eating. I wasn't quite organised enough to do a full meal plan and it will take me a couple of weeks to get used to not deciding which starch (potatoes, rice, pasta, bread) I want most and planning my meal around that. Although a small amount of alcohol is included in the BSD guidelines, I'm going to go off it completely until June. I never feel good drinking alcohol on a regular basis and I think in future I'll probably continue with some variation of abstaining completely for a couple of months at intervals throughout the year. One thing I'll be doing is using up some things that I have already prepared (bolognaise yesterday, and bean burgers I have in the freezer, for example) and I will be guessing calories there to a certain extent. But I'm also not going to stress too much if I don't quite make it to just 800 calories in a day. I haven't managed it in the first two days but I still think I'm doing pretty well.
It's half-nine now so I think I can safely say that the first two days are done and, while it hasn't been easy-peasy, it hasn't been too difficult either. I was hungry yesterday at the quiz, or seemed to be, but actually, it was mostly the fact that I knew I needed to have a difficult conversation with somebody afterwards that had my stomach in knots. I ate a Silvermint and that was enough. The conversation went off okay - I didn't get any response I really wanted but I was glad that I had brought it up rather than allowing something to fester and potentially destroy a friendship. Whether that friendship will survive the breaking of trust, I'm not really sure but at least I was able to say my piece. I wonder if I'll ever get over feeling like honesty is the most important thing there can be.
At any rate, this afternoon, because I left for my walk so much later than planned and am currently walking a bit slower than I used to, which meant I took longer than planned, I was hungry by the time I got home and sort of starting to feel a bit panicked that I'd get too hungry and derail myself before I managed to get dinner ready. Then I remembered I'd bought a new jar of bouillon powder recently and when I got in the door I just put the kettle on immediately and a couple of minutes later I had a steaming hot cup of something tasty to tide me over. It was more than enough to see me through sitting down and resting for a while and then preparing dinner. I haven't really drunk enough water today but I'm going to go and make myself a herbal tea now and that will be that. There's trying to drink plenty of water in a day and there's having to get up three times in the night to pee and I know which of those things annoys me most!
Using up vegetables
I'm really making an effort to use up all the veg I'm getting delivered every week. I think I'll have to take a break for a couple of weeks soon, but for now I'm getting through things and, most importantly, not throwing anything out. Of course, I haven't helped myself by making the mistake of ordering 1 kilo of Chinese cabbage last week instead of 1 Chinese cabbage. Chatting to my sister the other evening about that, she mentioned a recipe that involved stuffing cabbage leaves with mince and rice and cooking in a sour cream sauce. So I've spent a fair amount of time yesterday and today down the internet rabbit hole that appears when you type golubtsy into the search engine. Not to mention typing "is it possible to freeze cabbage rolls".
I did stuffed cabbage rolls before to use up some veg that I'm not fond of (turnip!) by mixing it with something I do like (potatoes!) and stuffing the whole lot into cabbage leaves and baking it all under a cover of cheese. Enough to make anything palatable. I was sure I had posted about that, complete with photos, but all I can find is a mention of it in this post. So I can't check exactly what I did. Pity. I really need to get back to blogging this stuff. It might not be the most interesting read for others but these are the kind of records that are a huge part of the advantages of blogging.
So, this week I had ordered the Chinese cabbage specifically because turnip and parsnips were both in my veg box. I can change anything I want to each week but I do try to just take what they're suggesting as that's usually what they have most of.
However, I'm really not much of a fan of parsnips or turnip and thought that mashing them with potatoes or sweet potatoes and stuffing cabbage leaves with them would be a good idea. I also got some black radish this week, which I've never cooked before. It's supposed to be a bit more like horseradish or daikon than like the small red radishes, which seems perfect for my purposes.
I'm currently roasting the radish, parsnips and turnip along with 3 carrots, an onion and 8 gloves of garlic. I've just seasoned with a bit of salt and plenty of black pepper. I think I'll add some nutmeg to the mash at the end but I might end up adding my favourite chilli/smoked paprika mix instead. Time enough to think about it tomorrow when I make the finished dish. I bought 300g beef mince to add in but am thinking I might leave out the rice that seems to be traditional.
On Friday evening I made pork in the slow cooker and added in loads of veg, too. Two onions, three leeks, two carrots and three apples and then a Chinese-inspired braising liquid. For that I used lots of soy sauce, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, some honey, some maple syrup, 5-spice powder, ginger, coriander, cumin, small amount of spicy smoked paprika and vegetable stock. After five hours of cooking on low the meat had shrunk a lot and there was a lot of liquid left so I added in some brown rice and left it on for another hour and a half or so. I also left it to cool overnight so by yesterday morning I had a moist dish but no excess liquid. Not really what I had originally planned but actually perfect. I've just re-heated and demolished a huge portion of it for my 'brunch' and I have three more portions in the fridge.
During the week I braised a red cabbage with some onion, apples, red wine, cinnamon, some lingonberry compote, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. That was fun. Even when I was chopping the cabbage it smelled very woody/cabbagy. I remembered reading somewhere that means it can make you particularly flatulent. When I had the whole thing cooking I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that a small spoon of bread soda will help with that. So I sprinkled a very small amount over the cabbage. Completely forgetting that I'd only just added the vinegar. And the lesson that day was that sprinkling bread soda on top of vinegar on top of apples and red cabbage will make the apples turn blue. And about five minutes later I remembered that that bread soda trick wasn't a preemptive strike against cabbage-induced flatulence but meant for cooking beans! Yep, apparently Blazing Saddles might have been an entirely different film if they'd only had some bread soda around (I cannot tell you how much I have always hated that scene but there's the link for those of you otherwise inclined). At any rate by the time I was reheating the cabbage for my second portion the next day, the blue colour was gone again. All's well that end's well. As is often the case in my cooking, it tasted lovely, even if it wasn't terribly pretty.
So, there you have it. I still have 2.5kg of potatoes to use up but I've cancelled my standing order for them so that I can do the low-carb thing for a while. I have some raclette cheese in the fridge, too, so will probably invite people over for raclette next week, which would use up most of those potatoes.
Otherwise I also still have some Jerusalem artichokes, a white cabbage, four Chinese cabbages, plenty of carrots, two leeks and a medium-sized pumpkin. If I can sort the freezer out a bit, I'll blanch most of the cabbage and freeze in it portions. It's handy to have it like that. Just cooking all the food isn't enough though, I need to sit down and do a meal plan. Somehow I've skipped that the last week or two and I should know better. First though, it's off to the pub to watch the rugby. Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday.
I did stuffed cabbage rolls before to use up some veg that I'm not fond of (turnip!) by mixing it with something I do like (potatoes!) and stuffing the whole lot into cabbage leaves and baking it all under a cover of cheese. Enough to make anything palatable. I was sure I had posted about that, complete with photos, but all I can find is a mention of it in this post. So I can't check exactly what I did. Pity. I really need to get back to blogging this stuff. It might not be the most interesting read for others but these are the kind of records that are a huge part of the advantages of blogging.
So, this week I had ordered the Chinese cabbage specifically because turnip and parsnips were both in my veg box. I can change anything I want to each week but I do try to just take what they're suggesting as that's usually what they have most of.
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| 1 peeled + 1 unpeeled black radish, 3 parsnips, 1 small turnip |
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| Black radish, turnip, parsnips, carrots, onion and garlic |
On Friday evening I made pork in the slow cooker and added in loads of veg, too. Two onions, three leeks, two carrots and three apples and then a Chinese-inspired braising liquid. For that I used lots of soy sauce, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, some honey, some maple syrup, 5-spice powder, ginger, coriander, cumin, small amount of spicy smoked paprika and vegetable stock. After five hours of cooking on low the meat had shrunk a lot and there was a lot of liquid left so I added in some brown rice and left it on for another hour and a half or so. I also left it to cool overnight so by yesterday morning I had a moist dish but no excess liquid. Not really what I had originally planned but actually perfect. I've just re-heated and demolished a huge portion of it for my 'brunch' and I have three more portions in the fridge.
During the week I braised a red cabbage with some onion, apples, red wine, cinnamon, some lingonberry compote, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. That was fun. Even when I was chopping the cabbage it smelled very woody/cabbagy. I remembered reading somewhere that means it can make you particularly flatulent. When I had the whole thing cooking I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that a small spoon of bread soda will help with that. So I sprinkled a very small amount over the cabbage. Completely forgetting that I'd only just added the vinegar. And the lesson that day was that sprinkling bread soda on top of vinegar on top of apples and red cabbage will make the apples turn blue. And about five minutes later I remembered that that bread soda trick wasn't a preemptive strike against cabbage-induced flatulence but meant for cooking beans! Yep, apparently Blazing Saddles might have been an entirely different film if they'd only had some bread soda around (I cannot tell you how much I have always hated that scene but there's the link for those of you otherwise inclined). At any rate by the time I was reheating the cabbage for my second portion the next day, the blue colour was gone again. All's well that end's well. As is often the case in my cooking, it tasted lovely, even if it wasn't terribly pretty.
So, there you have it. I still have 2.5kg of potatoes to use up but I've cancelled my standing order for them so that I can do the low-carb thing for a while. I have some raclette cheese in the fridge, too, so will probably invite people over for raclette next week, which would use up most of those potatoes.
Otherwise I also still have some Jerusalem artichokes, a white cabbage, four Chinese cabbages, plenty of carrots, two leeks and a medium-sized pumpkin. If I can sort the freezer out a bit, I'll blanch most of the cabbage and freeze in it portions. It's handy to have it like that. Just cooking all the food isn't enough though, I need to sit down and do a meal plan. Somehow I've skipped that the last week or two and I should know better. First though, it's off to the pub to watch the rugby. Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday.
Freezer filling up
Fed myself for yesterday and today and have lots of soup left over to fill the freezer with.
Six very generous portions of vegetable soup and two of pumpkin soup. I could have gotten seven or eight portions of veg soup but I wasn't sure I'd fit it all into the freezer. It's very thick soup so these portions will actually be even bigger when I've added a bit of water. These are 400ml containers. My favourite basic Tupperware, by the way, but being discontinued. Not sure why I dislike the new version so much but there it is. I think it's the lids. And then I think I'm definitely getting too old, or something, because that's a really silly thing to have a reaction to.
Anyway, I am at least getting somewhere with using up the veg. Will need to have another big cooking session next week - that'll be either Tuesday or Wednesday since Monday is the big Karneval day and I'm going to go and watch the parade. First, I need to go and wash all those pots.
Anyway, I am at least getting somewhere with using up the veg. Will need to have another big cooking session next week - that'll be either Tuesday or Wednesday since Monday is the big Karneval day and I'm going to go and watch the parade. First, I need to go and wash all those pots.
Soup
I've had a cold over the past week or so and cooking went out the window. I've even ordered takeaway three times in the last ten days, something that is highly unusual behaviour these days. The forced inactivity over the weekend was what needed to happen though. Having struggled through the first few days of the bad stage of the cold because I had things to do that couldn't be put off, it was time to just take to bed and stay put. I should be seeing my friend who is going through chemo in three weeks and I don't want to risk still being sick then.
All of the not cooking, however, means that I've developed a bit of a backlog of vegetables. I thought about cancelling my box for this week but in the end decided one good big session of soup-making might be what was called for. So, taking a leaf out of Sue's book, I've just put the following into the oven to roast. I've used sesame oil, just a small amount, and sprinkled a teaspoon of cumin seeds over it all.
I liked the idea of roasting the veg first to intensify the flavours. It's not a new idea to me but just seemed to somehow hit the spot for me when I read it yesterday. I've often found that in various aspects of life. You can be aware of something, you can even have heard of something often but it's not until you happen across it at the right time/right place/right frame of mind that it clicks and you take the idea on board.
So, the first soup will be a mixed vegetable soup. As well as the roasted stuff, I'll add some cabbage, a leek and a few potatoes. I might also throw in a couple of small Jerusalem artichokes, which arrived in my box this morning.
I still have two small pumpkins to use as well and another larger one arrived this morning, so pumpkin soup is definitely on the cards. And I have lots of carrots so I'm going to make some spicy carrot and lentil soup. Need to buy more garlic but Karneval started about half-an-hour ago so most shops will be closed for the rest of the day. Since it's raining and grey and miserable, I'm just not that bothered about trying to get out. I might fish some of the roasted garlic out of the pan above when it's done and put that to one side to use. I ended up roasting the entire head of garlic I had as it was very soft and starting to mold on one side. I really should get in a couple of jars of the minced stuff, it really is one of those things that is just so convenient.
Most of that soup will have to go into the freezer, obviously, but that does give me a good basis for future quick meals. I'm kind of feeling like a soup month wouldn't be a bad idea anyway. I'm not interested in too much effort at the moment but am desperately craving lots of vegetables and soup's a good way to take care of that.
And then I'll just have some Jerusalem artichokes left, some carrots, a couple of leeks, plenty of potatoes, a red cabbage, a white cabbage, half a Savoy cabbage, onions and half a celeriac. I see a lot of soup in there. And colcannon. Yum.
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| 4 carrots, 2 onions, a small head of garlic and half a celeriac |
All of the not cooking, however, means that I've developed a bit of a backlog of vegetables. I thought about cancelling my box for this week but in the end decided one good big session of soup-making might be what was called for. So, taking a leaf out of Sue's book, I've just put the following into the oven to roast. I've used sesame oil, just a small amount, and sprinkled a teaspoon of cumin seeds over it all.
I liked the idea of roasting the veg first to intensify the flavours. It's not a new idea to me but just seemed to somehow hit the spot for me when I read it yesterday. I've often found that in various aspects of life. You can be aware of something, you can even have heard of something often but it's not until you happen across it at the right time/right place/right frame of mind that it clicks and you take the idea on board.
So, the first soup will be a mixed vegetable soup. As well as the roasted stuff, I'll add some cabbage, a leek and a few potatoes. I might also throw in a couple of small Jerusalem artichokes, which arrived in my box this morning.
I still have two small pumpkins to use as well and another larger one arrived this morning, so pumpkin soup is definitely on the cards. And I have lots of carrots so I'm going to make some spicy carrot and lentil soup. Need to buy more garlic but Karneval started about half-an-hour ago so most shops will be closed for the rest of the day. Since it's raining and grey and miserable, I'm just not that bothered about trying to get out. I might fish some of the roasted garlic out of the pan above when it's done and put that to one side to use. I ended up roasting the entire head of garlic I had as it was very soft and starting to mold on one side. I really should get in a couple of jars of the minced stuff, it really is one of those things that is just so convenient.
Most of that soup will have to go into the freezer, obviously, but that does give me a good basis for future quick meals. I'm kind of feeling like a soup month wouldn't be a bad idea anyway. I'm not interested in too much effort at the moment but am desperately craving lots of vegetables and soup's a good way to take care of that.
And then I'll just have some Jerusalem artichokes left, some carrots, a couple of leeks, plenty of potatoes, a red cabbage, a white cabbage, half a Savoy cabbage, onions and half a celeriac. I see a lot of soup in there. And colcannon. Yum.
Meal planning
Marisa over at foodinjars put up a post yesterday about how she approaches weekly meal planning. I thought I had written about how I do it before but can't find anything now and since I tend to go through phases of using slightly different methods it seemed like a not entirely terrible idea to make a note of what's working now. It might not work forever but it has been pretty successful so far.
Edited to add: Ha! I knew I'd written something about this before and today I randomly found it. Not a full post but just as part of a longer post on a productive evening last August.
Because I get my organic veg box delivered on a Thursday, it meant having to change up how I approached the week completely. Since you get your delivery on the day everyone else in the same area gets theirs so I can't change it. When I was still working, I used to check the order every Monday morning, make any changes (it's an excellent system and I can make substitutions online up to a couple of days beforehand) and then print out the order. These days, and not having a working printer at home at the moment, I've decided to wait and just use the delivery docket. I'm more flexible on time anyway so I can pick up anything else I need on the same day so it's not such a big deal to not have my plan ready in advance.
So here's this week's:
As well as the list of what I'm getting, I add the main things I already have in the fridge.
Then, I list the days, with two lines going from each: one for lunch, one for dinner. Even though my meal plan week really starts on Friday, I still always start this list with Monday.
This week I got lamb's lettuce, a pouch of red cabbage with apple, onions, leeks, potatoes and apples. I also run through my calendar to try and make appropriate choices for days where I might have a lot on. Being at home almost all days at the moment certainly makes this task a lot easier, though. I do prefer to eat a hot meal in the middle of the day and I can do that without having to think about flasks and heating stuff up in the morning.
Sidenote: Pru, if you're reading, my food flask is a brand called Emsa - I tried to leave a reply on Elaine's post but it wouldn't go through. Tried commenting on your blog last week, too and that didn't work either (that was a link to Dr. Doom's post on investment policy statements, which I thought you might find interesting - also links on that website to the jlcollinsnh stock series, which I've heard lots of praise for).
Where was I? Ah yes, the joys of not going to work every day. Anyway, once I have my meal plan set out, I make a list on the other side of the page with any items I might need to buy in. My store cupboard is looking fairly well-stocked at the moment so it's not much. And I picked most of this up while I was out and about this morning. I had an unexpectedly productive day, actually. I only went out for half-an-hour and ended up spending more like three hours going all over the place and getting seven or eight niggly little things done and dusted. All I'm missing now is ground cumin - I might try and make it to one of the Turkish or Indian supermarkets tomorrow. I crossed thyme off the list in the end because I remembered that I have a big jar of herbes de provence and that'll do instead. I keep a memo on the first screen of my phone with a note of anything I've noticed that I need to stock up on, too, so between that and my meal plan list, I'm all sorted.
My final step for meal planning these days is to enter what I've handwritten into another memo in my phone. No excuses if I'm not home to say, "Well, I have nothing to cook at home, I'll eat out/get chips on the way home". Not having to make a decision and not even needing to remember what I had on the list makes life just so much easier.
The main thing is to always remain flexible. So long as you're not running the risk of something going off, switching meals around or bumping them to next week is fine. Today, for example, I ended up out of the house for much longer than planned and was really hungry by the time I got home. I'd already put two slices of bread into the toaster before I'd even taken my coat off. There was no way I was going to wait for as long as it would take curry and rice to cook, no matter how much of a very quick recipe it was. I knew I still had a few slices of bread left though and tea and toast hit the spot very nicely.
I made the curry (bhuna recipe from mortgagefreeinthree except that I used beef) this evening and have just polished off a huge plate of it. And a smaller plate of lamb's lettuce, 'cos I really need some green stuff in me at the moment. It was fantastic, even if I do say so myself. I made a double portion (so it should have been four servings) but ended up eating nearly half. I'm giving myself until the end of January to get back to cooking properly all the time and then I'll concentrate on portion control a bit. I've used up the last of my curry-in-a-hurry paste though, so need to make more soon. I cooked the white beans I'll need for the Turkish bean salad this morning so they're in the fridge and ready to go. While the curry was cooking I washed the lamb's lettuce so it's easy to just grab a couple of handfuls of that for the next couple of days to go with whatever else I'm eating. And I think tomorrow morning I'll get the leek and potato soup going in the slow cooker before heading out for a walk. That way, it's done and will be also just be sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. And with that, my cooking for the week will be more or less done.
Forgot to mention that Marisa also posted a link to a page she has of recipes she likes and uses - definitely something I want to do so I'm going to add a page to my (not-used for a long, long time) food tracking blog and start making a list there.
Edited to add: Ha! I knew I'd written something about this before and today I randomly found it. Not a full post but just as part of a longer post on a productive evening last August.
Because I get my organic veg box delivered on a Thursday, it meant having to change up how I approached the week completely. Since you get your delivery on the day everyone else in the same area gets theirs so I can't change it. When I was still working, I used to check the order every Monday morning, make any changes (it's an excellent system and I can make substitutions online up to a couple of days beforehand) and then print out the order. These days, and not having a working printer at home at the moment, I've decided to wait and just use the delivery docket. I'm more flexible on time anyway so I can pick up anything else I need on the same day so it's not such a big deal to not have my plan ready in advance.
So here's this week's:
 |
| Might not be the prettiest but I find doing it by hand works better for me. |
Then, I list the days, with two lines going from each: one for lunch, one for dinner. Even though my meal plan week really starts on Friday, I still always start this list with Monday.
This week I got lamb's lettuce, a pouch of red cabbage with apple, onions, leeks, potatoes and apples. I also run through my calendar to try and make appropriate choices for days where I might have a lot on. Being at home almost all days at the moment certainly makes this task a lot easier, though. I do prefer to eat a hot meal in the middle of the day and I can do that without having to think about flasks and heating stuff up in the morning.
Sidenote: Pru, if you're reading, my food flask is a brand called Emsa - I tried to leave a reply on Elaine's post but it wouldn't go through. Tried commenting on your blog last week, too and that didn't work either (that was a link to Dr. Doom's post on investment policy statements, which I thought you might find interesting - also links on that website to the jlcollinsnh stock series, which I've heard lots of praise for).
Where was I? Ah yes, the joys of not going to work every day. Anyway, once I have my meal plan set out, I make a list on the other side of the page with any items I might need to buy in. My store cupboard is looking fairly well-stocked at the moment so it's not much. And I picked most of this up while I was out and about this morning. I had an unexpectedly productive day, actually. I only went out for half-an-hour and ended up spending more like three hours going all over the place and getting seven or eight niggly little things done and dusted. All I'm missing now is ground cumin - I might try and make it to one of the Turkish or Indian supermarkets tomorrow. I crossed thyme off the list in the end because I remembered that I have a big jar of herbes de provence and that'll do instead. I keep a memo on the first screen of my phone with a note of anything I've noticed that I need to stock up on, too, so between that and my meal plan list, I'm all sorted.
My final step for meal planning these days is to enter what I've handwritten into another memo in my phone. No excuses if I'm not home to say, "Well, I have nothing to cook at home, I'll eat out/get chips on the way home". Not having to make a decision and not even needing to remember what I had on the list makes life just so much easier.
The main thing is to always remain flexible. So long as you're not running the risk of something going off, switching meals around or bumping them to next week is fine. Today, for example, I ended up out of the house for much longer than planned and was really hungry by the time I got home. I'd already put two slices of bread into the toaster before I'd even taken my coat off. There was no way I was going to wait for as long as it would take curry and rice to cook, no matter how much of a very quick recipe it was. I knew I still had a few slices of bread left though and tea and toast hit the spot very nicely.
I made the curry (bhuna recipe from mortgagefreeinthree except that I used beef) this evening and have just polished off a huge plate of it. And a smaller plate of lamb's lettuce, 'cos I really need some green stuff in me at the moment. It was fantastic, even if I do say so myself. I made a double portion (so it should have been four servings) but ended up eating nearly half. I'm giving myself until the end of January to get back to cooking properly all the time and then I'll concentrate on portion control a bit. I've used up the last of my curry-in-a-hurry paste though, so need to make more soon. I cooked the white beans I'll need for the Turkish bean salad this morning so they're in the fridge and ready to go. While the curry was cooking I washed the lamb's lettuce so it's easy to just grab a couple of handfuls of that for the next couple of days to go with whatever else I'm eating. And I think tomorrow morning I'll get the leek and potato soup going in the slow cooker before heading out for a walk. That way, it's done and will be also just be sitting in the fridge waiting to be used. And with that, my cooking for the week will be more or less done.
Forgot to mention that Marisa also posted a link to a page she has of recipes she likes and uses - definitely something I want to do so I'm going to add a page to my (not-used for a long, long time) food tracking blog and start making a list there.
Start the new year off right
Having had a late night on 30th (but a fantastic one, catching up with most of my old group from school and laughing till we cried for hours on end), during which I may also have drunk way more wine than is good for you, I flew back home yesterday evening and more or less collapsed into bed. Stopping only to let the friends who had invited me to their new year's eve celebration know that I wasn't going to make it.
I've had a very easy day today as well, reading and catching up on sleep whenver I felt my eyes closing. About an hour ago I started thinking about food and what to cook for dinner. There are frozen chips in the freezer but I kind of wanted to eat something healthy after all the indulgence over the holidays. So I thought of the curry paste I also have in the freezer and thought maybe with a tin of chickpeas, that would do the trick. I was still thinking it'd be a bit bland though, with no vegetable or meat component. And then I looked in the freezer (actually, I had gone as far as opening the freezer to get out the chips after all) and remembered I had two small containers of cabbage. Sorted. Then I remember there was also a bag of green beans in there. Even better. And then my eye caught on the two sweet potatoes that have been languishing in my kitchen since some time in October. And so a curry is born.
I've added tumeric to the rice (tumeric is supposed to be good for your liver, isn't it? I need that after the past few days). And I sauteed the sweet potatoes in cubes before adding the curry paste discs. Of course then it all went a bit pear-shape because I came into the sitting room to start my laptop and for some reason began to look at photos on an old memory card. I was looking for the cable to attach my phone to the computer to get the photos off and saw the card in the box and the next thing you know... ... ...
So this became a bit burnt before I got back to it. Oh well. I've added some water, the chickpeas and cabbage - don't think it was so badly burnt that it'll be inedible. Smells good actually. Beans will go in in a minute and hey presto, a healthy dinner to start the year off right. Might not have managed a walk today (yet) but at least one aspect is covered.
Year in Books 2015 is still to come. And I never posted about my Sealed Pot opening either. I'm half thinking of trying to post every day in January so might see how that goes. For now, I wish you all a very happy, peaceful and joyous new year, something I'm planning on doing my best to have for myself as well.
I've had a very easy day today as well, reading and catching up on sleep whenver I felt my eyes closing. About an hour ago I started thinking about food and what to cook for dinner. There are frozen chips in the freezer but I kind of wanted to eat something healthy after all the indulgence over the holidays. So I thought of the curry paste I also have in the freezer and thought maybe with a tin of chickpeas, that would do the trick. I was still thinking it'd be a bit bland though, with no vegetable or meat component. And then I looked in the freezer (actually, I had gone as far as opening the freezer to get out the chips after all) and remembered I had two small containers of cabbage. Sorted. Then I remember there was also a bag of green beans in there. Even better. And then my eye caught on the two sweet potatoes that have been languishing in my kitchen since some time in October. And so a curry is born.
Year in Books 2015 is still to come. And I never posted about my Sealed Pot opening either. I'm half thinking of trying to post every day in January so might see how that goes. For now, I wish you all a very happy, peaceful and joyous new year, something I'm planning on doing my best to have for myself as well.
A not terribly successful day's cooking
Ever have one of those days where nothing turns out quite right? No huge disasters but just one not quite right after another? That was yesterday. And I'd been feeling so positive about it all. I was making bread for goodness' sake! So, here are some notes for myself for next time.
Bread
In my oven it needs longer than 30 minutes plus 15 without a lid. I should probably get my hands on a thermometer at some stage to figure out how close the dial is to the reality of what happens in there. At any rate, the bread sounded fairly hollow when tapped on the bottom but apparently it needs to sound really hollow because when I cut it open, it was, well, not really doughy but just the wrong side of gooey. I could only cut a very thick slice and I toasted that - twice through the toaster fixed it up fine. Looks good though and it did taste nice so one to try again for sure. And my 20cm, 3 litre pot was the perfect size for it.
Spiced cabbage
I made this before using sweetheart cabbage and scoffed basically a half a cabbage in one evening. Turns out, this recipe doesn't work quite so well with savoy cabbage. I think it'd be good with white cabbage, might even work with red cabbage and napa cabbage would also be okay. But the darker, looser leave cabbages probably not so much. So disappointed.
Red pork
I can tell what my sister meant when she says it tastes exactly like the takeaway version but it's not for me. It's nice enough but, I just felt like there are way tastier things to do with meat and kind of wished I'd followed by first instinct and just cooked half of the pork this way.
Pastryless quiche
Still need to grease the pan before adding all the ingredients. Looks like I will be eating this quiche with a spoon to scrape it out of the dish rather than cutting nice slices.
Muesli
Remember to put enough milk into the container with the muesli. Was in a rush this morning so didn't quite pay enough attention and ended up having a snack of muesli that had absorbed almost all of the milk - not my favourite thing.
Oh well. All very first world problems I know. Here's hoping this wasn't the start of crappy cooking streak. I do have them sometimes but things have been going well lately and it definitely makes the whole cooking at home and eating healthily much easier when there are more successes than "meh" moments.
 |
| I do love my green pot |
Bread
In my oven it needs longer than 30 minutes plus 15 without a lid. I should probably get my hands on a thermometer at some stage to figure out how close the dial is to the reality of what happens in there. At any rate, the bread sounded fairly hollow when tapped on the bottom but apparently it needs to sound really hollow because when I cut it open, it was, well, not really doughy but just the wrong side of gooey. I could only cut a very thick slice and I toasted that - twice through the toaster fixed it up fine. Looks good though and it did taste nice so one to try again for sure. And my 20cm, 3 litre pot was the perfect size for it.
Spiced cabbage
I made this before using sweetheart cabbage and scoffed basically a half a cabbage in one evening. Turns out, this recipe doesn't work quite so well with savoy cabbage. I think it'd be good with white cabbage, might even work with red cabbage and napa cabbage would also be okay. But the darker, looser leave cabbages probably not so much. So disappointed.
Red pork
I can tell what my sister meant when she says it tastes exactly like the takeaway version but it's not for me. It's nice enough but, I just felt like there are way tastier things to do with meat and kind of wished I'd followed by first instinct and just cooked half of the pork this way.
Pastryless quiche
Still need to grease the pan before adding all the ingredients. Looks like I will be eating this quiche with a spoon to scrape it out of the dish rather than cutting nice slices.
Muesli
Remember to put enough milk into the container with the muesli. Was in a rush this morning so didn't quite pay enough attention and ended up having a snack of muesli that had absorbed almost all of the milk - not my favourite thing.
Oh well. All very first world problems I know. Here's hoping this wasn't the start of crappy cooking streak. I do have them sometimes but things have been going well lately and it definitely makes the whole cooking at home and eating healthily much easier when there are more successes than "meh" moments.
No-knead bread and red pork
I was supposed to meet a friend to go for a walk this morning but as it was lashing rain we cancelled and instead I sat down to read another couple of posts from the mortgagefreeinthree blog. I'm nearly finished and honestly kind of glad because I'm starting to feel a bit stalker-ish! Great blog though and I've already tried loads of things from it - good little easy enough and don't take too long projects. I'll work up to the other stuff.
Anyway, today's first post was for a no-knead crusty loaf and since I bought flour and yeast online (convinced by Elaine's recipe for 30-minute rolls that I could possibly get back into bread baking after all without too much effort) at the beginning of the month, I decided what the hell and headed into the kitchen to whip up a quick loaf. I've been reading about no-knead bread ever since the now famous NYT article, have watched youtube videos and even got myself a cast iron saucepan a while back so it was time to just take the plunge.
And you know what? This really is one of those it took me longer to find the scissors to open the yeast packet than it did to make the dough kind of recipes. Everything dumped into a mixing bowl and mixed together to a sticky dough. I used a trick I learned from the Mary Berry book that has the only yeast bread I've made up until now (Book People bargain years and years ago) - to get warm water of the correct temperature mix half boiling and half cold water together. The resulting water is the perfect tepid temperature to activate but not kill the yeast.
Now she does this as an overnight rise, bake in the morning kind of a loaf so I reckoned if I put it to rise at about ten o'clock in the morning then I'd have something lovely to bake this evening.
No-knead bread costs
400g bread flour = 45c
Half-teaspoon yeast (internet tells me a teaspoon is just short of 3g, so 1.5g) = 1c
300ml warm water (not digging out annual bill to figure this one out!)
1 tsp. sea salt (it's so long ago since I bought salt I have no idea anymore what it cost)
I bought that particular Tupperware mixing bowl a while back on a special offer - the idea of making yeast bread has been ruminating for a very long time!
The flour I bought was from a website called backstars.de - I'm still not sure what led me to it or even to ordering stuff online but I just had a day a few weeks ago where I thought I needed to stop messing around and just get to actually doing stuff. At any rate, I got 2.5kg bread flour, 2.5kg wheat berries, 1kg milk powder, 500g instant yeast and 4 different spices (smoked paprika (sweet), smoked paprika (spicy), juniper berries and a chili spice mix (habanero, jalapeno chipotle, smoked paprika). I used that spice mix last night for dinner actually and boy, is it spicy. I had a smallish celeriac and half a large kohrabi so chopped both into chip sized pieces, blanched the celeriac and then cooked them both in the oven, along with the turkey pieces I bought yesterday. But before it went into the oven I mixed a good glug of olive oil with a generous teaspoon of the spice. I think I'll be trying to remember to keep to using it in increments of half-teaspoons in future. Just on the edge of my tolerance and that was after I added some quark to the edge of my plate to use as a dip to take the heat off. But, it's really delicious so I'm glad I bought it. And I've found a way to eat celeriac that I don't mind, so it's all good.
For dinner this evening I'm doing spiced cabbage and some of the pork belly I bought yesterday. My sister sent me this seasoning mix for red pork so I mixed up one packet of that with water as per the instructions, chopped up the pork into several strips, added a teaspoon of honey and some sliced fresh ginger to the marinade (just because - also discovered I have no soy sauce so have added that to my list to restock) and now the whole lot is sitting in the fridge for a few hours to marinate. And it looks, well, it looks kind of gross to be honest but I'm assured it will taste great. Marinading meat is never really the prettiest thing to look at. At least the colouring is natural (beetroot powder).
Anyway, back to the bread and now you'll see the special thing (or at least the special advertising point LOL) of my "Peng" bowl. With the lid on it is sealed up tightly and I like that as it means no need to use cling film or shower cap or any other kind of eventually disposable plastic. But it's not so tight that it won't come off and as the dough proves and rises the lid does, too, and eventually it will "ping" open. Here it is after three hours and not long before it popped open:
Since it's a no-knead, long rise loaf of bread, I've closed up the lid properly again and I'll leave it now for another few hours. But this evening, not including fuel costs (and I'll be doubling up in the oven later as I'll have the quiche to go in at the same time) my loaf of bread will be costing me say about 50c and about four minutes of my time so far. That's pretty impressive. Although, I just remembered that there was a €3.90 delivery charge - I bought eight items from backstars and it was a standard charge so just less than 50c per item if I wanted to divide it like that. Even if I allocated the entire 50c for the flour to this one loaf of bread I'm still not over €1 for the whole thing and that is a third of what I'd pay in any of my local bakeries. Really hope this is as tasty as I'm anticipating it to be!
 |
| 2.5 kg bread flour fits perfectly into my Tupperware "Bellevue", 500g instant yeast opened and promptly decanted into Tupperware containers and into the freezer. |
Anyway, today's first post was for a no-knead crusty loaf and since I bought flour and yeast online (convinced by Elaine's recipe for 30-minute rolls that I could possibly get back into bread baking after all without too much effort) at the beginning of the month, I decided what the hell and headed into the kitchen to whip up a quick loaf. I've been reading about no-knead bread ever since the now famous NYT article, have watched youtube videos and even got myself a cast iron saucepan a while back so it was time to just take the plunge.
And you know what? This really is one of those it took me longer to find the scissors to open the yeast packet than it did to make the dough kind of recipes. Everything dumped into a mixing bowl and mixed together to a sticky dough. I used a trick I learned from the Mary Berry book that has the only yeast bread I've made up until now (Book People bargain years and years ago) - to get warm water of the correct temperature mix half boiling and half cold water together. The resulting water is the perfect tepid temperature to activate but not kill the yeast.
Now she does this as an overnight rise, bake in the morning kind of a loaf so I reckoned if I put it to rise at about ten o'clock in the morning then I'd have something lovely to bake this evening.
 |
| That's a Tupperware "Peng" bowl, don't know what it's called in English, maybe a "ping" bowl? Note the flat lid. |
No-knead bread costs
400g bread flour = 45c
Half-teaspoon yeast (internet tells me a teaspoon is just short of 3g, so 1.5g) = 1c
300ml warm water (not digging out annual bill to figure this one out!)
1 tsp. sea salt (it's so long ago since I bought salt I have no idea anymore what it cost)
I bought that particular Tupperware mixing bowl a while back on a special offer - the idea of making yeast bread has been ruminating for a very long time!
The flour I bought was from a website called backstars.de - I'm still not sure what led me to it or even to ordering stuff online but I just had a day a few weeks ago where I thought I needed to stop messing around and just get to actually doing stuff. At any rate, I got 2.5kg bread flour, 2.5kg wheat berries, 1kg milk powder, 500g instant yeast and 4 different spices (smoked paprika (sweet), smoked paprika (spicy), juniper berries and a chili spice mix (habanero, jalapeno chipotle, smoked paprika). I used that spice mix last night for dinner actually and boy, is it spicy. I had a smallish celeriac and half a large kohrabi so chopped both into chip sized pieces, blanched the celeriac and then cooked them both in the oven, along with the turkey pieces I bought yesterday. But before it went into the oven I mixed a good glug of olive oil with a generous teaspoon of the spice. I think I'll be trying to remember to keep to using it in increments of half-teaspoons in future. Just on the edge of my tolerance and that was after I added some quark to the edge of my plate to use as a dip to take the heat off. But, it's really delicious so I'm glad I bought it. And I've found a way to eat celeriac that I don't mind, so it's all good.
For dinner this evening I'm doing spiced cabbage and some of the pork belly I bought yesterday. My sister sent me this seasoning mix for red pork so I mixed up one packet of that with water as per the instructions, chopped up the pork into several strips, added a teaspoon of honey and some sliced fresh ginger to the marinade (just because - also discovered I have no soy sauce so have added that to my list to restock) and now the whole lot is sitting in the fridge for a few hours to marinate. And it looks, well, it looks kind of gross to be honest but I'm assured it will taste great. Marinading meat is never really the prettiest thing to look at. At least the colouring is natural (beetroot powder).
Anyway, back to the bread and now you'll see the special thing (or at least the special advertising point LOL) of my "Peng" bowl. With the lid on it is sealed up tightly and I like that as it means no need to use cling film or shower cap or any other kind of eventually disposable plastic. But it's not so tight that it won't come off and as the dough proves and rises the lid does, too, and eventually it will "ping" open. Here it is after three hours and not long before it popped open:
 |
| Slightly different angle than the photo above but I hope you can see how the lid has "risen" along with the bread |
Saturday shopping
I spent a lot of money today. Most of it in the form of lunch vouchers. This is one of the perks I get in work which I will really miss when I leave. Every day that I spend at least an hour in the office, I get one voucher. Since the value of these vouchers went up a couple of months ago from 3.07 to 4.50 each, it's a sizable chunk of change, especially for those months where I have no holidays. Normally I use these vouchers for going out to lunch or buying unplanned for stuff at the supermarket. Most supermarkets take them, some of the bakeries near work, most of the restaurants near work and so on. Yesterday, I remembered that one of the butchers on my road also takes them and since I had seen a sign outside there yesterday for a special offer on pork belly and my sister sent me a packet mix of spices to make Chinese red pork something or other last week, I decided adding a bit of meat into one or two of my meals this week might be nice. And since my vouchers had arrived last week it really felt a bit like the pressure was off and I went into Edeka and stocked up on some rubbish, too.
It was a bit of a running hither and thither afternoon though. I had hoovered and tidied up a bit before leaving the house so that was something. And I had a shower and washed my hair, even though we're having the kind of weather again that makes it feel like it's a waste of time, since two minutes after getting out of the shower you start sweating again. Still, at least it's not raining, I suppose.
First off I popped across the road to throw a bottle into the recycling and then I went into Rossmann to print out some passport size photos. Since I was there I also got a packet of washing soda. Then it was into the butcher to get some pork belly and chicken pieces and I threw in a couple of the nice spicy dried sausages they have, too. Round the corner to hop onto the scales in the chemist (5.5 kg down in the four weeks I've been properly back to doing the 5:2 fast diet) and then I jumped onto the tram to head to the other end of my street as I had a package I needed to drop off at the Hermes shop (sending my broken Kindle back - I miss my old Kindle, but that's for another post). Once that was done I stopped into the small shop with lovely meats and cheese and treated myself to 50g of a French salami with hazelnuts. And then finally it was off to Aldi and Edeka, stopping only on the way to bring two letters to the post office. One a form for my health insurance place informing them that I'll be finishing work at the end of October and so my status will change to "voluntarily" insured rather than "employed". And the other my application to join the German Association of Interpreters and Translators (which was what I needed a passport photo for). So that's two big things ticked off the list. Oh, I also found time to stop into the opticians to get my glasses adjusted, they weren't sitting quite right and it was just enough off to be a bit annoying. So it took all afternoon but I feel like I got a good bit done. And now for the food - I squished everything in but I think most of it is visible, although the buttermilk seems to have been covered by the crackers. Oh well.
Rossmann (€2.94 cash)
8 passport photos - €1.95
Washing soda - 99c
Brosi (€9 vouchers and €1.25 cash)
Pork belly (598g @ €7.50/kg) - €4.49
Turkey pieces (218g @ €13.90/kg) - €3.03
2 spicy sausages (124g @ €22.00/kg) - €2.73
Tischdame (€2.10 cash)
Salami with hazelnuts (50g @ €42.00/kg) - €2.10
Aldi (€15.40 cash via debit card)
1 lt. milk - 99c
1 kg museli - €1.49 (looking back I bought this on 25th July so looks like a kilo lasts me three weeks)
500g organic lentils - €1.55 (special offer this week is a whole load of organic stuff - not sure Aldi normally sell lentils so good to get them)
500g organic white beans - €1.55 (same special offer)
Yoghurt - 45c
Labello - 99c (near cash register - I know I'll need one soon so grabbed it)
6 fair trade organic bananas - €1.31 (you can just see one at the top of the photo - very green bananas but in the heat at the moment, these should be just nice by Monday)
1 tin tuna - 99c
1 tin tomatoes - 39c
Organic mozzarella - 89c (after taste testing both the organic and non-organic I prefer this one. The other is a bit creamier, which is nice, but this one just has more flavour, even if it is a bit firmer)
Quark - 45c
1 A4 folder - 99c
2 packets 8 wraps - 99c each (these were a special offer a few weeks ago and only seem to be selling very slowly but since they're delicious and in date until December, I grabbed another couple of packets)
2 x feta - 69c each
Post office (23c cash)
23c (one of the letters I was sending was over the standard weight so I had to add to the stamp I already had)
Edeka (€13.50 vouchers and €4.48 cash - annoyingly she wouldn't just take another voucher and keep the 2c - the till wasn't programmed to allow her to do that and if the till won't allow it there's no flexibility. I would have put stuff back but there was already a long queue behind me so I just paid the cash for the rest and moved on - no point in annoying everyone else just 'cos I was hot and bothered.)
1 lt. cider vinegar (for hair) - €1.69
1 large tin coconut milk - €1.29
Washing-up liquid - €1.49
1 lt. white vinegar (for cleaning) - 39c
1kg frozen green beans - €1.69
Buttermilk - 39c (special offer - so I think there's some soda bread on the menu for next week)
1 large packet maltesers - €2.79
Riffels crisps - €1.99
Sensations crisps - €1.69
Chips crackers - 99c
Dark chocolate - €1.09
Spray bottle - €2.49 (want to make my own cleaners to spray on tiles and so on so will be stocking up on a couple more of these over the next while)
So all told, I make that €45.31, which is a lot of money. I've gotten quite a few things for the store cupboard and enough rubbish to easily see me through two weeks, I think. Next week I should only need milk and yoghurt. In fact, I think I'm going to give myself a little challenge to not spend anything more than one €4.50 voucher next weekend. It means buying slightly more expensive milk and yoghurt (Aldi don't take the vouchers) but I have more than enough otherwise to get good food on the table every day.
It was a bit of a running hither and thither afternoon though. I had hoovered and tidied up a bit before leaving the house so that was something. And I had a shower and washed my hair, even though we're having the kind of weather again that makes it feel like it's a waste of time, since two minutes after getting out of the shower you start sweating again. Still, at least it's not raining, I suppose.
First off I popped across the road to throw a bottle into the recycling and then I went into Rossmann to print out some passport size photos. Since I was there I also got a packet of washing soda. Then it was into the butcher to get some pork belly and chicken pieces and I threw in a couple of the nice spicy dried sausages they have, too. Round the corner to hop onto the scales in the chemist (5.5 kg down in the four weeks I've been properly back to doing the 5:2 fast diet) and then I jumped onto the tram to head to the other end of my street as I had a package I needed to drop off at the Hermes shop (sending my broken Kindle back - I miss my old Kindle, but that's for another post). Once that was done I stopped into the small shop with lovely meats and cheese and treated myself to 50g of a French salami with hazelnuts. And then finally it was off to Aldi and Edeka, stopping only on the way to bring two letters to the post office. One a form for my health insurance place informing them that I'll be finishing work at the end of October and so my status will change to "voluntarily" insured rather than "employed". And the other my application to join the German Association of Interpreters and Translators (which was what I needed a passport photo for). So that's two big things ticked off the list. Oh, I also found time to stop into the opticians to get my glasses adjusted, they weren't sitting quite right and it was just enough off to be a bit annoying. So it took all afternoon but I feel like I got a good bit done. And now for the food - I squished everything in but I think most of it is visible, although the buttermilk seems to have been covered by the crackers. Oh well.
Rossmann (€2.94 cash)
8 passport photos - €1.95
Washing soda - 99c
Brosi (€9 vouchers and €1.25 cash)
Pork belly (598g @ €7.50/kg) - €4.49
Turkey pieces (218g @ €13.90/kg) - €3.03
2 spicy sausages (124g @ €22.00/kg) - €2.73
Tischdame (€2.10 cash)
Salami with hazelnuts (50g @ €42.00/kg) - €2.10
Aldi (€15.40 cash via debit card)
1 lt. milk - 99c
1 kg museli - €1.49 (looking back I bought this on 25th July so looks like a kilo lasts me three weeks)
500g organic lentils - €1.55 (special offer this week is a whole load of organic stuff - not sure Aldi normally sell lentils so good to get them)
500g organic white beans - €1.55 (same special offer)
Yoghurt - 45c
Labello - 99c (near cash register - I know I'll need one soon so grabbed it)
6 fair trade organic bananas - €1.31 (you can just see one at the top of the photo - very green bananas but in the heat at the moment, these should be just nice by Monday)
1 tin tuna - 99c
1 tin tomatoes - 39c
Organic mozzarella - 89c (after taste testing both the organic and non-organic I prefer this one. The other is a bit creamier, which is nice, but this one just has more flavour, even if it is a bit firmer)
Quark - 45c
1 A4 folder - 99c
2 packets 8 wraps - 99c each (these were a special offer a few weeks ago and only seem to be selling very slowly but since they're delicious and in date until December, I grabbed another couple of packets)
2 x feta - 69c each
Post office (23c cash)
23c (one of the letters I was sending was over the standard weight so I had to add to the stamp I already had)
Edeka (€13.50 vouchers and €4.48 cash - annoyingly she wouldn't just take another voucher and keep the 2c - the till wasn't programmed to allow her to do that and if the till won't allow it there's no flexibility. I would have put stuff back but there was already a long queue behind me so I just paid the cash for the rest and moved on - no point in annoying everyone else just 'cos I was hot and bothered.)
1 lt. cider vinegar (for hair) - €1.69
1 large tin coconut milk - €1.29
Washing-up liquid - €1.49
1 lt. white vinegar (for cleaning) - 39c
1kg frozen green beans - €1.69
Buttermilk - 39c (special offer - so I think there's some soda bread on the menu for next week)
1 large packet maltesers - €2.79
Riffels crisps - €1.99
Sensations crisps - €1.69
Chips crackers - 99c
Dark chocolate - €1.09
Spray bottle - €2.49 (want to make my own cleaners to spray on tiles and so on so will be stocking up on a couple more of these over the next while)
So all told, I make that €45.31, which is a lot of money. I've gotten quite a few things for the store cupboard and enough rubbish to easily see me through two weeks, I think. Next week I should only need milk and yoghurt. In fact, I think I'm going to give myself a little challenge to not spend anything more than one €4.50 voucher next weekend. It means buying slightly more expensive milk and yoghurt (Aldi don't take the vouchers) but I have more than enough otherwise to get good food on the table every day.
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