The freezers - yes, there are 2...

The river Stort, yesterday... 

Some years ago we decided we wanted to enable the purchase of meat in bulk. Not in a “buy it cheap, pile it high” sort of way, but more “find a nice farmer who cares for their animals, makes sure they have good lives, a dignified death, and then takes care in the butchering”. Our freezer capacity at the time was limited to the bottom half of our fridge/freezer - a reasonable size but not huge, and, by the time all the usual frozen veg/bread/ leftovers/ ice cubes/ fish fingers sort of stuff was taken into account, without a vast amount of spare space. Coincidentally we also had a pretty much perfectly “freezer sized” space being used for assorted “stuff” - all of which could be found homes elsewhere. We added 2 + 2 together and “freezer 2” was ordered and duly installed.

Initially freezer 2 was home to “Herbert” - our first whole lamb purchase. Herbert provided an astonishing number of meals for the two of us  - the cost of a whole beast feels high but you can get so much more from it when it is butchered to your requirements, and it is this, combined with the lower per-kilo price of buying in more quantity, that makes it cost effective if you have the space.

We don’t always have freezer 2 switched on. Until the early part of last year it had been turned off - door carefully propped open for airflow - for some time, but lockdown 1 and the panic buying underlined the benefits of having additional freezer space for either yellow stickered bargains or simply to give more capacity for things like additional frozen veg. Currently, the top drawer holds home made rolls for lunches, plus sandwich fillings. Drawer 2 is frozen mince plus the ice-packs we use in the cold box when camping, or going to and from the Hebrides. Drawer 3 - MrEH’s coffee stash, and every second week a 2 pint bottle of milk for me - decanted from the larger 4 pint bottle I usually buy. The bottom drawer varies. Often a bag of oven chips and some battered fish for fakeaway F&C. Maybe a tub of ice cream.

Freezer 1 meanwhile is below our fridge and lives - as you might expect - in the kitchen. Not the same fridge as when freezer 2 first came about, but a similar sort of size. 3 drawers - the top mainly home to things frozen in plastic tubs - home grown fruit frozen as purées, batch cooked stuff like bolognese, fish fingers because the packet is exactly wide enough to sit in the front of the drawer. Drawer 2 houses main central meal components - sausages, white fish fillets, meat for stews, or for roasting. Stornoway Black pudding brought back from the Hebrides (worth a mention all on its own). The bottom drawer is frozen veg and fruit. 

As and when a whole lamb is bought for a time at least that will make our main components of meals, and essentially we need the whole of freezer 2, plus some capacity in freezer 1 for the overspill. The only way of accurately estimating the available space is to gradually start making room to transfer the contents of freezer 2, into freezer 1. A job for this week will be to start moving things across - then we’ll start to know where we stand. 

If you have the space then additional freezer capacity is a gamechanger. And so is buying a whole carcass. When you just have a couple of chops, the tendency is to grill them, a single roasting joint? Pop it in the oven and serve traditionally with roast potatoes and veg. When you have a whole rack of chops though it opens up the possibilities - hotpot, grilled, curried. You escape the tendency to be constrained by the safe option. A selection of roasting joints to choose from fires your imagination towards tagines, deliciously slow roasted pulled lamb, or a rolled breast stuffed with dried apricots, herbs, and breadcrumbs... add in the liver with deliciously creamy mash and  stickily sweet onion  gravy, or the chump braised slowly with chunks of onion, whole baby mushrooms, and enough garlic to see off a whole platoon of vampires...and THAT is worth clearing space in the freezer for. 

Robyn

Weekly planning for the freezer challenge...

Resident of Loch Skipport - South Uist. 

So - we have a meal plan!  This is a key part of our “eating down the freezers” challenge - although I meal plan most weeks anyway. The plan was written this morning - and also fed into the writing of a shopping list, we shopped this afternoon on the way back from our daily exercise. Because of the point at which the plan was written it includes today’s meals as well. 

Saturday: scrambled eggs and toast for lunch - using up the last of the big box of free range eggs we bought for 22p last weekend. They were on the very end of their date today so it seemed sensible to eat them sooner rather than later. The toast was from the sourdough bread I made yesterday. Tea this evening was jacket potatoes (cheap potatoes also bought last weekend - I think those were 12p for a good sized bag) with beans, cheese, bacon & mushrooms. The mushrooms were the last of last week’s punnet, and the bacon came from a pack which has already contributed to a pasta bake and last nights “breakfast for dinner”. The last few rashers will be used in the week.

Tomorrow: A half shoulder of lamb has come out of the freezer to defrost and will be roasted v-e-r-y slowly tomorrow morning with lots of garlic and rosemary. The final 2 potatoes from the bag will go with it, along with some fresh veg. Tea tomorrow will be cheese and crackers - a good old easy, lazy weekend favourite. Pudding will be a rice pudding with fruit compote - the fruit is from the freezer. 

Lunches on weekdays are always the same - a filled roll, with fruit. MrEH has a bag of crisps too. Similarly breakfasts are a choice of cereal, or a banana, or porridge. So the meal plan only accounts for evening meals. 

Monday: Risotto with bacon & mushrooms (yes - that will be the 4th meal that single pack of bacon has gone into. We buy decent quality bacon which has plenty of flavour so just a few rashers at a time make their presence felt). It will also incorporate some additional veggies too. 

Tuesday: Lamb couscous - some of the leftovers from the Sunday joint. With dried apricots, roasted chickpeas, roasted pepper, coriander leaf. 

Wednesday: Thai inspired fish stew with rice. This will use fish, shellfish and veggies from the freezer alongside tinned tomatoes, Thai curry paste and an onion. Highly inauthentic but very tasty! 

Thursday: pasta bolognese. I’ll probably make this on Wednesday and let it sit overnight. Mince from the freezer, and probably some veg too. 

Friday: will either be fish & chips from the freezer or a takeaway depending how we feel at the time. 

To declare: into the freezer - a pack of crumpets and a pack of fruit bagels - the bagels were yellow stickered and will do us for breakfasts at weekends. The crumpets because - well, it’s winter and sometimes only crumpets will do! 

We shopped at ThaT supermarkeT this afternoon spending just over £21. I’ll be adding a second shop for the week at Aldi on Monday morning as Mum also needs some bits from there and with the current Covid situation in the town it’s not safe for her to venture there herself at the moment. I expect that one to cost in the region of £10. 

This one was always going to be a slow-burn. We’ve done it before, and it’s about planning, thinking ahead and remember that sometimes it’s silly NOT to take a seemingly backwards step when good deals come up that need freezing. Ideally we’d like to be able to talk to Peter who we buy our lamb from at the farmers market next weekend about buying a whole butchered carcass - but realistically we will probably hold off on placing the actual order until February. Which is a shame in some ways, as we’re currently researching haggis recipes... 

Robyn 

This week....

 

The week started of course with our trip back from the Hebrides - a 17 hour door to door epic from cottage to ferry to home. Would have been better without the liberal applications of ice that the roads in both South Uist and the Highlands had gained, but ran reasonably smoothly. 

Obviously the big news of the week is being back in Lockdown. Not in any way a surprise, but still a big blow to deal with at the start of the week. In some ways it’s almost a relief - numbers are completely out of control here. It now actually feels as though the majority of people round here are taking things seriously - which is a relief as that was definitely not the case when we went away! 

I’ve managed a fair amount of walking - my monthly total so far stands at 41 miles which is decent for 8 days in. I’m still hoping to be able to add some running but right now that’s looking less than hopeful. I’ve also started the Alice Liveing challenge as planned - with a lower body workout on Tuesday and upper body on Wednesday. As of now my muscles are still screaming and there was no chance of me doing any more this week! Next week will hopefully be better! I’m also 4 days in to the Yoga With Adriene challenge - It really is all a bit “woo” for my tastes, but I’m hanging in there! 

I’ve probably made the most progress this week in remembering to treat myself kindly. I’ve spent some time journaling - talking through on paper a situation that has been ongoing for a few years, and that I am now able to draw to a conclusion. It’s something that has proved that I was right to trust my instincts - something which I often doubt. I’ve let go of the idea that I need to be being productive and busy all the time - that’s simply not a practical aim after 10 months of this, and setting stupidly high expectations and then being disappointed when I didn’t (couldn’t) meet them was contributing to the mounting stress and anxiety I was feeling before Christmas. 

Tomorrow we’ll be putting together our meal plan for next week - aiming to make a good impact on the freezer levels. Food this week has been mostly to plan aside from a pasta bake taking the place of Bolognese last night - it served to use up lots of the cheap veg we got at the weekend and was entirely delicious! 

So far, so good! Let’s see what the next week brings!

Robyn

You’re not alone...

 

Just after dawn - Lochboisdale, South Uist. 

It’s odd, but lockdown this time initially felt somehow easier to cope with than the first time round. Maybe because we’ve done it all before, we know how it all works? Perhaps because the time of year makes it easier - shorter days, less daylight, colder and more likelihood of rainy days. It felt brutal being told we could only go out once a day for exercise in the spring, and yes, it turns out that rule has made a reappearance this time too, probably because with the “you can meet with one other person from outside of your household” aspect they want to prevent people from going out half a dozen times during a day for exercise with 6 different people. At this time of year though when being cosy indoors feels like more of an attraction? Somehow not *quite* so difficult. 

Undoubtedly though there are still challenges. Oddly enough when you’re told that you can only go out once a day for exercise it makes it far more likely that you start to feel cooped up and claustrophobic. We’ll be doing our morning walks as usual most days, sometimes I may add a run on to the end of those once MrEH has started working, and there will inevitably be odd errands to do on other days in the week too, where possible I’ll probably try to save up those for days when I need to get out a second time as I feel more comfortable making a second trip out for an allowed reason rather than simply going for a second bout of exercise - although if that is needed for mental health reasons, and allowing that I won’t be meeting anyone else or using my car, I will do that free of guilt. The scaffolding means that natural light indoors is incredibly limited and we have to have lights on for much of the day - at the best of times I struggle through the winter with the shorter days, unsurprisingly the scaffold is definitely not helping with that! Through November and December I dealt with it effectively by just going out for multiple walks most days. I was also able to run regularly through most of that time, which has a huge positive effect on me. By the time we went away though I was really starting to struggle - the combination of a period of time not running because of injury, combined with limited time outside due to quarantining ahead of the Hebrides trip - the two week reset was pretty much essential and hugely beneficial. I came back feeling I could cope with the unknown that was Tier 4 life, and now lockdown too. 

If you’re struggling then do know that you’re not alone, and there are so many resources out there that can help - the most straightforward of which is simply talking to someone. If you have nobody close to you that you feel is right to chat to about how you’re feeling, there are telephone options such as The Samaritans - but the key thing is to tackle things before they get worse. Know your triggers, and be aware if they rear their heads. Social media can be one for me - most usually Twitter. When the negativity on there gets too much I either stop looking altogether for a few days or simply retreat into notifications. Facebook has an incredibly useful “mute for 30 days” feature which can tackle those who you feel uncomfortable about  (or it’s “politically awkward”) unfriending. Remember on Instagram you can delete comments, and restrict other accounts in how they interact with you too. Twitter too has both mute and block functions too - using both liberally can make a huge difference in the feel of your timeline! Know your coping mechanisms too - and use them. This WILL end - the vaccine is the light at the end of the tunnel, but rather like the longer, warmer days of spring, it’s still just a little way away from making the vital difference. 

Robyn 

Missions underway...

 

Completely unrelated Highland sunset...

2021 missions have started off with intent. 25 miles walking done so far this month - I’ll be aiming to increase that daily average a bit yet but that’s a decent enough start. I’ve also done a strength workout and a yoga session today (albeit the yoga overran on the timings I was expecting which meant poor MrEH got his lunch break delayed by 10 minutes - oops!) My rough plan is to make tomorrow another workout/yoga day, with a similar amount of walking to today, then Thursday will be increased walking but no strength work - I suspect I might be aching by then! I’ll still be planning to fit some yoga or mobility work in though. Friday will be back to strength work again. Weekends will mostly feature walking and some stretching but no actual workouts - on the days MrEH isn’t working I’d rather focus on spending quality time with him. 

The mission to start eating our way through the freezers will take a bit of time to gain momentum as this week’s food was already planned before we came up with that one, but I have decided to also expand that to include using up other odds and ends as well - tonight’s stir-fry used the last spoonful out of a jar of Spicy Malaysian Relish. The meal plan will in itself also attack the freezers - liver and onions one night, spaghetti Bologna’s another, a fry up on Friday night (partly to use up the last of the Stornoway black pudding bought while we were away) very likely some fruit purée will come out to add to a rice pudding or perhaps turn into a crumble one day over the weekend... I like this kind of meal planning - it forces me to stop and think, and to be more inventive. Ironically enough if it facilitates the purchase of a whole lamb then that will do exactly the same as I come up with ideas to use the various different cuts, not to mention the various bits of offal. I enjoy these sorts of challenges as regular readers will know! Later this week I’ll start planning what we’ll be eating next week - and that is when the impact will really start being made. 

We’ve now had confirmed that we’re going to be in Lockdown until at least mid February, and realistically probably the beginning of March. The only thing I have in my diary in all that time is that I have been called for Jury Service again - which I’m actually rather looking forward to. I was called before in 2007 - served and really enjoyed my two weeks and then got called back for a further week which I served at the Coroners Court - which was incredibly traumatic. I’d be very reluctant to do that again although my understanding is that having done it once, they are very much open to you asking politely not to be sent there again. I’m currently summonsed to report to the Crown Court as before anyway - although I suspect the experience may be rather different this time round. 

Robyn 

Here we go again...

 

Loch Eynort - South Uist

...back into lockdown. #Lockdown3 in fact - so we know how it works. Same rules as before - stay at home unless you need to go out for a short list of acceptable reasons. Exercise is not limited this time thank goodness unlike the first time round - seems they learned their lesson from that! In this area it will be little different to the tier 4 restrictions we have been under (although in our case personally only for 2 days since we got back from the Islands). Our local schools were remaining closed anyway because of our severely high case numbers locally, they will now stay closed for longer though. 

So - MrEH is back to the spare room tomorrow (I’ve not banished him, it’s just where the computer is!) and I’m back to trying to fill 7 or so hours a day. I’m going to try to be better this time about pressuring myself to be productive all the time, and feeling guilty when I perceive I’ve not achieved that. We still currently have our home surrounded in scaffolding, and right now the lack of natural light indoors is more than enough to deal with, without beating myself up around what I “should” be doing. I also need to continue to limit my running thanks to the foot problem I mentioned before, which is frustrating. So - instead, I’m going to focus on fitness and strength. And on getting the miles covered for my distance challenge too - I’m nearly 20 miles in already so that’s going reasonably. Alice Liveing is doing another series of strength workouts, as is Lucy Mountain on the NOBS group, and I think I’m going to take a look at the Yoga with Adriene 30 days challenge too - I have struggled with her stuff in the past but I’m more used to following the cues for the various moves now, so we’ll see how that goes. That also fits in well with my ongoing aim at doing plenty of flexibility work. 

I’ve also got photos to work through (including some from while we were away) and might even try to get out and about with the camera for some wildlife / local stuff too. I want to do some journaling, and some blogging too - but above all the focus is going to be on self-care stuff, not on guilt and feeling like I need to be in a constant treadmill of getting things done. 

Let’s see how this goes, shall we?! 

Robyn 

2020 Won...

 (Oh yes - didn’t it just!) I loved this take on the new year number when a friend mentioned it last week - the play on words just seemed so apt! 

The symbol of 2020 seen on the first day of 2021!

So here we are at the start of another year,  a traditional time for looking both back and forwards at the same time, although I think a lot of people would agree that just shutting the door on 2020 would be what most folk would prefer to do. I’m a bit undecided on that - it was a pretty crap year in so many respects - being unable to do the things, and spend time with the people that most of us choose to usually. Having our everyday freedoms restricted for the good of everyone as a whole - and the frustration of watching others kick against those restrictions because they feel that their rights trump everyone else’s. Having events cancelled, seeing so many people struggling with disappointment after disappointment- and indeed feeling that struggle ourselves. If we’re honest though - I bet most of us have learned a lot from the last 9 months or so. From my perspective I have enjoyed the time I’ve gained - just small things initially like not having to do battle with the traffic on the M11 daily. The difference in MrEH too - while the drop in income caused by my furlough and his three day week early in the original Lockdown was problematic on one level, those two days each week were something we treasured and tried to make good use of. Also the opportunity to explore our local area far more than we ever had done before - we’ve walked round almost every area of the town now and a I have even resurrected my documentary “Recording Harlow” blog as a result. Feeling a greater sense of community too - although sadly a lot of that didn’t seem to last long beyond the end of the lockdown.

Some things have also surprised me too - how well I coped with the restrictions of the first lockdown, and being unable to leave the house for exercise more than once each day for example. Having to make the choice between a walk with MrEH and a head-clearing soo run was often really difficult but I managed it pretty much throughout. Also quite how much this definite introvert has missed socialising. With friends scattered across the country, and so much of our socialising involving beer festivals, pubs, and the rugby club, plus for me airshows of course, we had our options to socialise completely ripped away - and that continues now. Zoom took the place of meeting the gang at beer festivals, and socially distanced chats with rugby club pals whilst walking locally became the go-to places to catch up on the news. I didn’t miss things like the enforced jollity of New Year’s Eve - but I did miss spending time with the people I love. 

So now we look to the new year - hopefully brighter times on the horizon, but with a few tough months ahead before that. We already know that many events will be cancelled for this year as well - Yeovilton have already said that they don’t expect to run an Airshow, and many beer festivals are either deferring events until later in the year, or admitting defeat for this year entirely. As usual I’m not making resolutions - but I am giving some thought to things I want to look at, and work on. One thing got resolved early on - a person who several years ago I made a conscious new year decision to step away from due to their toxicity and repeated two-faced behaviour - not only did I not like that behaviour, but I also didn’t like the person I became when I was around them, getting roped into an unpleasant cycle of constant bitching about people behind their backs while being pleasant to their faces. I’d been beginning to wonder if I was being a little harsh, and whether I should reconsider - however, no - they have recently proved all over again that my decision was entirely correct and that they are not someone I want or need in my life. This time the break will be pretty final and very conclusive. This person is someone who I did once consider to be a good friend but I can now recognise that the “friendship” wasn’t a healthy one at all - and on that basis the removal of it can only be a good thing. The moral of this one is that someone who constantly needs to tell others how ‘Nice’ they are is very likely anything but...!

First two missions for the year then - I have a virtual distance challenge to get working on - it’s 217 miles, the length of the Thames Path, and can be covered running or walking over the first 7 weeks of the year. I was initially planning on trying to run quite a lot of it but the foot injury I’ve been struggling with probably now makes it more likely that in fact only a small proportion will be run. I’m intending to try to do with a few distance/movement challenges this year as I love the incentive to lace up and get out there. The second is a small silly one - to tackle the contents of the freezers in order to make the space to order a whole lamb again - we loved this when we did it before and this seems a good opportunity with more time for cooking and being inventive with recipes to do it again. First though, space needs to be created, so operation freezer-clear is on! 

Do you have plans or challenges to tackle for the year ahead ? Are you blogging about them if so? Pop a link to your blog in the comments so others can be inspired by your focus! 

Robyn