February reading…

 

I confess I’m rather enjoying documenting the books I’m reading - it’s making me think more about not only the story or subject matter of the books themselves, but also about what I’m picking up to read next. I mostly read fiction - crime/mystery are favourite subjects, I particularly enjoy series that follow a central character from book to book - Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie novels, and Mark Bellingham’s Tom Thorne, those possibly appeal because they are often set in areas I know reasonably well, Edinburgh and London. I also like a novel which although fiction, has a basis in true events as well, which brings us on to the first book of this month…

Fern Britton is a name many will know from her TV work- but she is also a prolific novelist. The Good Servant takes the late Queen Elizabeth II’s governess Marion “Crawfie” Crawford as it’s central character, and deals with her story from her appointment to the Royal Household when the young princesses were just 6 & 2 years old, following her life through until her departure from the household once the Princesses had come of age, and her fall-from-grace following the publication of a book "The Little Princesses" for which she appeared to have knowingly sold personal stories against the wishes of the then Queen. The story is fiction based on fact, and extrapolates out what is known into a story of misplaced love and broken trust - and who knows how close to the real story that is? A good read anyway - I'll set this one aside to make its way to my Mum who also enjoys Britton's books. 

A change of pace and genre next - back to old favourite Lee Child's Reacher series and Echo Burning - found in a charity shop for 50p a few weeks back. It's harder and harder to find books from this series that we haven't read previously, on this trip we actually found two, the other is still on the shelf to be read in due course. I found this a little slower to get going than some - the first third of the book felt a little disjointed somehow - but once the story started playing out it turned into the usual good read with all the classic a child hallmarks - the good guys won the day, the bad guys mostly ended up dead, exactly what you expect from a Reacher book! 

Full non-fiction for my third book of the month - Spitfire Kids by Alasdair Cross deals with those remarkably young people involved with the building, flying and maintaining the poster-boy aircraft of World War II.  An absolutely fascinating read - in good part because it deals with the stories you rarely hear, about the people who are so often forgotten. From the young employees at the Supermarine factory in Southampton, to the women of the Air Transport Auxiliary via plotters and pilots, it is at times a tough read, but for anyone who enjoys learning more about the “behind the headlines” side of World War 2  history I would highly recommend it. This one has gone onto the shelf with the other books of a similar genre. 

Elly Griffiths’  “The Woman in Blue” was next off the shelf, set in the North Norfolk area so I was back to a book where I knew the basic geography of the area if not the specific location. I’ve read at least one of Griffiths books before although she isn’t an author I know well. She writes a good story though, balancing the plot with the personal lives of the characters nicely, and including just the right amount of suspense. Thoroughly enjoyable, and I will be setting this one aside to pass to Mum. 

Finally for the month another favourite author - Val McDermid - with 1979. Picked up in a charity shop, this one was set in Glasgow in 1979, and although rather different from the other works of McDermid’s I’ve read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Lead character Allie is a Junior reporter on one of the Scottish nationals, and her determination to see success along with a chance meeting on a train leads her to hook up with colleague Danny Sullivan to work on several stories with increasing levels of danger. When the worst happens, Allie finds herself first a suspect, then turning detective in a bid to track down the culprit and see justice done. A fast paced, easy read with the added interest of looking back on how things were quite so different so relatively recently (homosexuality still being illegal in Scotland, for example!). This one will make its way to the shelf with the others! 

I managed to avoid too many additional book purchases this month but did cave in to a charity shop visit on Saturday using £2 of my personal spends for 4 additions to the To Be Read pile - including 2 Lee Child’s we didn’t already have - one of those will become my first book of March. 

Robyn

February in the Garden…

 

Well here we are again - with the garden just waking up from its winters slumber. Bulbs are popping up all over the place - our work the first two winters we were here is paying off now with daffodils, tulips, muscari and of course these gorgeous crocuses too, it's just a shame that we've seen so little sunshine to really encourage them to fully open and show their faces! 

Auntie Daphne's Pulmonaria is still flowering away cheerfully - it’s always the first colour in the garden each year and never fails to make us smile with its little pink and purple flowers and spotty white leaves. In that bed is also some of the other bulbs I mentioned, the very enthusiastic lavender which I give a truly brutal haircut to once a year and yet it always forgives me and rewards me with plentiful flowers, and over the the right there is the blackcurrant bush - still quite new but obviously settling in nicely - just take a look at the buds breaking…

Such a sign of spring! Elsewhere on the fruit-front, as it were, the redcurrant and the gooseberries are looking happy enough, although no signs of buds yet. The rhubarb though has no such reservations and as last year, showing its intentions via a lovely bright patch of pink…

Before we know it that will be taking over the garden again - and providing us with plenty of crumbles, compotes and maybe even some jam this year perhaps!   

Currently keeping us fed through the “hungry gap” is the kale we planted last year, although annoyingly it has gone through the entire winter with cabbage whitefly! Nothing that a bit of a shake and a good wash won’t cure though, and it’s been ever so nice to have some fresh home grown veg all winter. 

All in all, it’s starting to feel like we’re not a million miles away from being able to get the new growing season underway, so it’s probably time to start getting the seed list finalised. Our plans are as usual to so far as possible use the free seeds we’ve got via our magazine subscription, but as always that will be topped up with purchases of any specific varieties of things we want. Time to make a list! 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

Food spending was budgeted to be up quite a bit this week as it was our favourite local farmers market, and having not gone last month there were some bits we were low on. 

First up was Peter for lamb - £1.75 for a bag of “bones for stock”, but these as usual have plenty of meat left on them and will make a fantastic stew. Also sausages, a pack of meatballs (I do have some in the freezer still but those are already featured on the meal plan) and his final pack of liver - always popular and it makes a delicious liver, bacon and onion tea!  We had our usual treat of a sourdough loaf from lovely Adrian, then popped back outside to see Catherine on the other meat stall. I made the decision to buy the big 2kg pack of beef mince, plus a smaller pack of pork mince for a change - those have been portioned up before freezing. A piece of haslet for lunches - our weekday rolls frequently feature yellow stickered bargains so this is significantly more spendy than usual but it’s something we absolutely love so we’re very happy to buy it! I grabbed a minute steak too - so good for stir fries. Total spend at the market was £53.10 - and for great quality food, and especially meat where we are happy with the provenance, I’m very happy with that. One of the reasons I can squeeze a lot of meals out of a relatively small amount of meat is that meat this good has so much flavour- so you actually need less of it in a dish. Of course we are aware that we’re fortunate to be able to afford to buy like this, and certainly that’s a privilege that not everyone has, but often simply because you do end up using less, it really isn’t that much more expensive than a standard supermarket budget option.

Elsewhere the main weekly shop cost £24.69 - in Lidl again this week, and I claimed a free bakery item from the spin to win and chose a big punnet of mushrooms as my coupon plus threshold spend reward. Not the best value thing I could have had, I usually opt for the 7.5kg sack of potatoes but we still have enough of those from the Christmas veg wars so the mushrooms were chosen as something which I was going to buy anyway. A separate trip to Aldi for tomatoes saw a spend of £1.38 - and the rarity of having literally just bought the thing I went in there for! 

Spending elsewhere has been mostly guided by necessity- we have both been hit by the nasty lurgy that’s doing the rounds - and various over the counter medications have been purchased as a result. We’ve plans for a project in the garden which will require a fair bit of sanding - so a pack of basic face masks are winging their way to us, and my car has had a tank of fuel - although both MrEH’s diesel and oyster credit have been stretched by him sensibly electing to work from home for much of the week to avoid infecting his colleagues! Well, at least there is some benefit! 

Robyn 

Looking back…

In 2006 I joined in with an interesting photographic project called “26 Things” - essentially, you were given a list of prompts for 26 themes, and you produced a photo relating to each of them - the idea being that it promoted thinking creatively and taking a different look at what might otherwise be a pretty straightforward subject. Looking back now I produced some stuff I am still really proud of around that time, particularly around candid and street photography, something which I’ve never done that much of, but when I did, always enjoyed. 

The stairwell in question here is I believe the one at Canary Wharf tube station - and like the majority of the infrastructure for the Jubilee Line Extension it is stunningly beautifully designed. The symmetry, the way the light falls and the way the lighting on the escalators themselves more even than the perspective draws your eyes upwards are all key players for me on this one - I imagine that I still have the original file somewhere and it’s one I may search out at some stage and reprocess. Sadly at the time I tended to upload files in fairly low resolution and size - which fitted with the speed of internet available then but stacks up less well now with devices tending to be larger! 

No reprocessing right now though - as I have kit to sort out ahead of some rugby photography later on - MrEH’s original team he joined not long after we had moved to the town we live in now are reforming  for a final hurrah - and as I was their photographer for several years back in the day, I’m resuming that role today. Should be fun - although I bet some of the players concerned won’t use that word when they get up tomorrow barely able to move! 

Robyn. 
 

Frugal February…

"Story Telling" - Devon. 

Why when the idea of this couple of months of keeping purchases low, are our freezers currently pretty full again? Batch cooking and free food - that’s why! Batch cooking saves on both time and whatever energy source you use for cooking - even making sufficient for a second meal of a dish you enjoy and popping the spare portion in the freezer works - and the time savings are at both ends too, as it gives you an “easy win” meal for a night when just popping something in the microwave or air fryer to reheat is an absolute bonus! 

How does this translate into reality for us then? Well first up was a big batch of dried chickpeas - the well priced tinned chickpeas I often purchase weren’t available, and they’re something we eat a lot, so I turned to the large bag of dried in the cupboard, half filled the slow cooker with them, soaked for 12 hours or so then slow cooked overnight - this turned into about 8 tubs for the freezer (I freeze them in roughly the same drained weight you get in a standard tin), plus a portion that I turned into humous. The last of the Christmas “veg wars” 5p parsnips and shallots were turned into a batch of soup - 4 portions there. I planned to make cottage pie for an evening in the week, so made double, using lentils and finely chopped mushrooms to make the mince stretch further - and while I was at it cooked sufficient lentils to give 5 tubs of those for the freezer too! 

Free food has come from two different sources. First off, the Olio app - an anti food-waste organisation that takes end of life food from various supermarkets and aims to distribute that to those who will use it, in this area Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Co-op all get involved. A couple of Saturdays ago I spotted some bread going begging just half a mile away so requested it, got the nod and walked up and back - 4 loaves of various sorts stashed away in the freezer saving us from needing to make rolls for lunches for a while, and providing several weekends worth of breakfast toast to boot. Earlier this week we gained some potted supermarket herbs, a couple of sticks of lemongrass, and a pack of Lebanese flatbreads - again, all free, and will all get used!  Then my Mum offered us a couple of packs of “beige buffet” type bits she had bought for Christmas and not used, and now didn’t fancy - so those too got stashed away in the freezer! We’re quite happy to take food other people won’t eat - as long as we know the origin and it’s things we will actually use ourselves it seems to make sense to avoid it going to landfill after all. We’re also not shy about using food past its “best before” date - “use by” is of course a different matter, but best before are ultimately advisory, and if you’re confident to trust your eyes, nose and taste, you soon find out that most things last a lot longer than you expect that they will! We have a local friend who isn't as brave on this front, but she's quite happy to give us a shout and say "can you use..." - and generally, yes we can! 

If you’re interested in saving yourself some pennies and preventing some food waste, then have a look at a couple of apps - Olio I’ve already mentioned, and there is also Too Good To Go -  not free, but much reduced “surprise bags” of reduced food from supermarkets, coffee shops, bakeries and even restaurants. It works particularly well to grab food on the go sometimes - especially around stations or in town centres. You never quite know what you might get, particularly with the supermarket bags, but if you are content to be inventive in the kitchen there are bargains to be had.

Robyn 

ps - I've been really enjoying just using relatively random photos that catch my eye for blog posts, rather than taking something "for the sake of it" - and it's made me think that I may well start a "looking back" series of posts too, with the story behind particular shots that I find in my archives and think deserve an airing! 

It all adds up…

Windows - Manchester

 Trying to refocus on the finances this month has looked a bit like this…

- Opting to terminate a regular saver account a month early in order to re-open the same issue of the account right at the end of its release- this means losing a months interest on the one as closed, but then keeping the 7.5% rate on the reopened one for the 6 months of it’s term AND being able to open the new issue account once that was released.

- Remembering that I was due a £25 Amazon voucher from a bank account switch I did at the end of last year, tracking down the email and claiming it while I remembered!

- Doing the quarterly review of our savings so we can keep track of where we are in relation to our savings goals - we’re fortunate to be able to save and so try to ensure that those savings work hard for us.

- Emailing to cancel a magazine subscription I took a trial on - 5 issues for £5 was a good deal, the main subscription is more than I’m willing to pay though. 

- Renewing my car tax as soon as the reminder came through - my car now costs me £20 a year in tax, but forgetting to renew could work out a lot more expensive! I write a quick note on the reminder confirming when I renewed too in case I need to check it later.

- Remembering to check my loyalty apps for shopping coupons and offers - the 20p off milk at the co-op is always useful, I made use of reduced prices for a couple of bits in Lidl and will claim a free vegetable item next week. I don't generally specifically plan my shopping around making use of offers, but once I know what I need, I will look to see if there are offers I can use.

- Ensuring I have a reminder set for cancelling a free trial of Apple TV before I get charged for it. We’ve had a 3 month run to enjoy watching some different bits and bobs, and may pay for a month here and there in the future, but right now it’s not a priority.

- Free seeds with a magazine subscription - 10 packs this month, and almost all things we’ll use. There will be some seeds we will buy for the season, but the freebies shape what we choose to grow. Yes, we pay for the subscription, but £35 a year for 12 magazines and lots of seeds is a decent deal.

- Free kindling for the fire - we save almost all our cardboard, and use a combination of that and MrEH’s newspapers (that he would buy anyway) for the base of our fire. On top of that we use twigs and short lengths of stick (always gathered from places to where the council would otherwise clear them up, never from woodland) or pieces of broken down pallet.

- Free fuel for the fire - MrEH’s newspapers again, pulped up then squeezed into a brick shape in a former - they then get placed on metal racking to dry out. We make a big stack of these through the summer, and use 1 or 2 each night the fire is lit - they give off stacks of heat and help to make the logs we pay for last longer. It also means we're re-using the newspaper rather than recycling it. 

- Sorting out a return for the new toaster we had to buy which turned out to be absolutely DREADFUL! Think toast on one side, plain slightly warm bread on the other, then burned edges within a few moments when you try to re-toast to even things up. Were we keeping it? Absolutely not - it will be winging its way back and we're searching for a better option! 

- More goodies from Olio- flatbreads and herbs, this time. 

All these on their own are small things, but it’s those small things, and doing them consistently that makes the difference. A few pounds saved here, finding a way to do something for a bit less cost there, and before you know it that’s money freed up to improve your quality of life in other ways. 

Robyn

Frugal February…

 

A 3-tube day at Leytonstone…

A Friday with no other plans generally means I opt to get the shopping done, freeing up weekend time for far more interesting uses. This week was no exception, as we combined our usual Friday morning walk with a trip to Tesco to top up stocks of our preferred wholewheat couscous and also some branded orzo on offer at £1 a box. I don’t usually buy branded pasta but this price was very competitive indeed - and in the absence of the discount supermarkets stocking it at present it made sense to pounce. 3 packs of each = £6.90 spent, and were stocked up on two staple items that get well used in this house. 2nd stop of the day was the main shop - Lidl this week. An impulse spend of £2.99 of personal money for one of their beautiful miniature roses - a bright yellow one. We have a red one of these bought several years ago and it’s thrived, so I’m hoping this one will do the same. I made use of 2 coupons for free bakery items - one from a Moneysupermarket email gave us a free croissant, and the other was my free item from last week’s shop being over the first spend threshold on the app. That sorts out a nice treat after tea today! £25.75 spend on the shopping, with just a couple of items still to get over the weekend and a fair few bits and bobs stocked up on too. Finally for grocery shopping was Farmfoods - somewhere we visit occasionally mainly to stock up on a few particular items - this time round two big jars of MrEH’s coffee, 12 tins of tuna, 4 bags of sugar (at 2 for £1.60 this is by a long way the cheapest place to buy it, and this will stock us up ready for any preserving we decide to do) and a couple of tins of sweetcorn too, total spend £23.18 there thanks to another voucher for £2 off a £25 spend.

A planned general spend on Friday was a couple of frames needed for various pictures - some more black & white prints of my photos, and a mounted railway poster print from York last weekend (we wanted a souvenir of the weekend and this seemed perfect, and at £10, very reasonably priced too). The frames totalled £9.98. Final spend for the weekend was another £5.12 for the yogurts and tomatoes I didn’t get on Friday, plus a box of seeded oatcakes.

Part of the reason meal planning works for us is that we treat it flexibly. For various reasons the original rough plan for Sunday lunch didn’t work this week - instead I opted to get some turkey chunks and bacon bits out of the freezer along with a lurking roll of puff pastry and made pasties - two of which were eaten on Sunday, with the others getting popped into the fridge for swapping in to the plan on Wednesday evening. A flexible plan - albeit one that takes account of ensuring that food that needs using gets eaten - is far more pleasant and practical than one that is so rigid it’s difficult to stick to.

We did end up with one unplanned spend this week as our poor old toaster finally toasted its last - can’t complain, it was a wedding present nearly 26 years ago so it’s given good service! We’re replacing with a “long slot” version, better to cope with different sizes of bread - our old one dated from a time when bread came in a fairly standard square-ish size, and we’ve often found ourselves having to repeatedly turn slices round to get them evenly toasted. If the replacement lasts as long as the old one we will be very pleased! 

Robyn