Making Good Use

Just a Small Observation

I'm sure readers in the UK will have heard about the drop in profits at Marks and Spencer, and the subsequent dip in their share prices.  In the media the fall in profits at M&S seems to be tantamount to the end of consumer spending, and the heralding of a recession. 

I was reading through some of the reader's comments about this story on the BBC news website yesterday, and was amazed to find that a few people seemed to link the fall in M&S profits directly with their withdrawal of free plastic bags in April.  Personally, I thought it was a brave move by M&S to be the first large retailer to start charging for plastic carriers in its food halls.  I very rarely buy food in M&S myself - delicious though it is their prices are a little too 'rich' for me - although I do make an exception from time to time by treating myself to one of their fabulous Hoi Sin Duck Wraps.  I certainly have no problem with putting what is a well-wrapped item into my own bag, nor would I have a problem with bringing along my own carrier bags - be they cloth or plastic - if I wanted to buy a lot of items there. 

The paradox here is that Aldi (my favourite supermarket and, luckily for me, practically my corner shop) has always charged for plastic carrier bags, and at 3p or 9p per bag they are more expensive than M&S, and their profits have soared by 21 per cent in the past three months thanks to people trying out cheaper places to shop for food. 

Most worryingly, one of the commentators on the BBC website yesterday claimed that plastic bags were not actually a problem for the environment!!  Somehow I find that comment even more scary than the idea of a recession about to come and bite us all on the bum.

On a more genteel note, I'll leave you with a photo of a rosebud from the garden which co-ordinates rather nicely with some other items on my mantelpiece. 

Finito

Despite the fact that it remained muggy and hot, I had another session on the sewing machine yesterday evening and finished up the other two pillowcase book bags that I'd cut out a few weeks ago.  These too also went together well and I'll be listing all four on ebay shortly - with the hope that people might want to buy them for their holidays. 

The blue floral one is lovely and fresh looking, just the thing for a hot summer's day.

And the stripy one has turned out much better than I though it might - I wasn't too sure that the pattern on this pillowcase would work as a bag, but I think it has.

When I put the sewing machine away last night I thought I wouldn't be getting it out again for quite a while, but this morning I found a feather-filled pillow pad in a charity shop in Billericay for only £1.50 (I'd been on the lookout for one for ages and ages) so tomorrow I'm going to have a stab at making a couple of envelope-back cushion covers using some of the lovely Amy Butler fabric Mum got me for my birthday last year.  I've never done a cushion cover before so I'm keeping everything crossed I'll be able to sew up something reasonable without ruining the lovely material.

On the Hottest Day of the Year So Far

Yup, today is forecast to be the hottest day of the year so far, with temperatures expected to peak in the south east around 28 degrees (82).  This morning was lovely with a nice breeze keeping things pleasant.  This afternoon is another story, I'm drawing the curtains to keep out the sun as it is now full on the back of the house, and have all the windows wide open, still I'm rather hot and sticky and I really haven't been doing much at all.  As you can see below, there's not a cloud in the sky - just a vapour-trail from a passing aircraft.

I did get the sewing machine out this morning and have so far sewn up two of the pillowcase book bags that I cut out a few weeks ago.  I think I might have another go this evening when temperatures have cooled a tad as I found I was getting rather hot and bothered just sitting in front of the machine and not even really moving!!  I know the weather forecast said it would be rather humid as well as hot and, for once, I think they may have been totally accurate!

I'm pleased with how both bags have turned out, especially the one with purple roses which has such a lovely summery look to it.

Rather less seasonal, I've started knitting up odd balls of thrifted wool into squares with the idea of making a blanket to keep warm on cold autumn evenings.  At the moment I'm really gung-ho about this project but it may all go a bit 'Pete Tong' and then it'll probably end up as something much smaller like a shawl.  I'm only on the third square but they knit up really quickly - nice thick wool and 5.5 mm needles - and they're just the ticket to do whilst watching telly.

Birthday Crafting Booty

I received some lovely presents for my birthday, and amongst them were some great crafting items. 

My sister got me the Betz White book 'Warm Fuzzies' which gives 30 patterns to 'transform cast-off sweaters into sweet felted treats.'  It seems to be a really great book with some excellent ideas for making felted items and straight-forward easy-to-follow instructions and patterns.  Mum managed to find the 'Transfer Motifs for Children' book in a charity shop which was incredibly fortuitous for me.  There are 358 iron-on transfers which although aimed at children could easily be used for adults too.  The book is in pristine condition with not one of the transfers having been used.

There was also some fabulous Amy Butler fabric in vibrant Caribbean colours, and the sweetest Cath Kidston fabric featuring elephants and giraffes which, as Mum pointed out, will make a fantastic bag.

Two skeins of beautiful Colinette wool in a shade called 'Gaugin'.  I'm not sure the photo does the colours justice as they are a mix of purple, mauve, turquoise, azure, green and grey. 

And a selection of Rowan cotton yarns - the two shades of pink being naturally dyed organic cotton, and the tangerine being a cotton / milk protein mix.  I feel a few more knitted face cloths coming on!!

Thanks Mum and S - they are such lovely thoughtful presents - as were the others I received too.  Only 12 more years to my bus pass!!

Gonna' Use It Up

Having got back home to Essex on Friday afternoon, I was left with the dilemma of whether to brave the supermarket hordes this morning, or whether to try and make do with what was lurking in the fridge and on the pantry shelves.  Having recently followed with interest The Shopping Sherpa's Fiscal Fast (www.theshoppingsherpa.blogspot.com) for June, I thought I'd try and make do with what is around.

Luckily, I'd made sure that there was milk that was still in date in the fridge and there was some fresh pasta and pasta sauce also still within date in there too.  Other than that I'm making do with mainly tinned foods from the pantry.

Last night for my evening meal I had a pack of noodles with roasted Sosmix (a vegetarian powdered sausage-substitute that you mix with water and then fry or bake) tickled up with some bottled Satay sauce which needed finishing.  Dessert was an apple, of which there are two left for today and tomorrow, and which needed eating up.  It wasn't haute cuisine but it certainly filled a hole and was pretty tasty for a 'scratch' meal.  For lunch today I had a home-made soya pate which uses soya flour, dried herbs and spices, chopped garlic and tamari, all of which I happned to have.  The recipe is better when you add fresh lemon juice but as I didn't have a lemon in the house I made do without.  The pate went very nicely with some tortilla wraps I had.  I've also got a loaf of bread baking in the breadmaker which will mean something on toast or sandwiches are also available for tomorrow's lunch.

Tonight I'm going for a tuna pasta salad which calls for tinned tuna, tinned kidney beans, tinned sweetcorn, and fresh tomatoes - of which there are about half a dozen still in the fridge which definitely need using.  The recipe also calls for hard-boiled eggs - no eggs so scrap that - and a chopped red onion which I have omitted as I don't really get on with raw onion in things.  The pasta was in the store cupboard and I've got oil, wine vinegar, mustard etc to make the dressing.  That should last me for two evening meals which means in theory I've still got the fresh pasta and sauce for another meal later in the week, plus I've got some tinned stewing steak and small salad potatoes knocking about which only need some fresh greens to make yet another meal from the pantry.

Considering I don't have a freezer so am unable to fall back on the usual frozen goods, I'm surprised that, in theory, I could feed myself fairly well for the next week or so purely on tinned or dried goods or food in the fridge.  I do have to say that I've got a fairly substantial shopping list for when I do venture to the shops on Monday so I don't think that in the long-run I will save much money by eating from the store-cupboard, but it has opened my eyes to what can make a good meal when push comes to shove.  And with the price of food rocketing weekly (or so it seems), it may be a useful tool in the near future.

Insulation

It may not be entirely seasonal to be thinking about insulation in the middle of summer, but my Mum's front door has really been letting in the wind lately so we've spent a very useful half an hour trying to filll the gaps around the edges with insulating foam tape. 

When Dad was alive he made sure the door was practically hermetically sealed with foam tape because he really felt the cold, the house is on the top of a very high hill, and the front door faces north.  Rather foolishly, Mum and I decided to strip all the tape off the summer after he died - when the temperatures rose to 38 degrees (approx. 96) - somehow forgetting that it would be much colder that following winter.  Oddly enough, it's only been the last few weeks that Mum has decided that enough is enough with the draughts from the front door, and with the cost of gas and electricity forecast to rise by 40 per cent next winter, it was time to take some action.  For the £2.99 cost of the tape (and there is still some left over) we're hoping that a good proportion of the gaps have been plugged.  At least we can no longer see daylight down the side of the door which has to be an improvement.  I think I shall be visiting my local Wilkinsons when I get back to Essex and having a go at the incredibly draughty french windows in our dining room.  I have had a go at plugging the gaps on them before, but I think with the cost of heating our homes set to rise so dramatically that I'd better make sure every single last gap is plugged.  When Mum and I were in Wilkinsons on Saturday I noticed they sold long foam tubes for insulating pipes, I'm hoping they'll be just the thing to fix to the bottom of my french windows as a form of draught excluder.  I had been thinking about making an extra long draught excluder for the french windows but wasn't sure how I would be able to stuff it economically, hopefully the foam tubes will do the job just as well for a fraction of the cost.  If they look too utilitarian at the bottom of the door I could always cover them in fabric instead.

Also on the lines of keeping warm, I found a rather nice long-line cardigan / jacket in one of the charity shops this morning.  At £4.00 it was incredibly reasonably priced for the charity shops around here.  It's a rather pleasing black chenille yarn and will work both as a jacket in the autumn and as an extra layer of warmth when I'm at home in the winter - especially if we have to keep the heating off for longer because of the extra cost.

Of course, if we all had the non-stop energy of a five year old we'd never feel the cold.  If it's there, he has to climb it!

It's All Down Hill to Christmas

This was a favourite saying of my Father's - every 21st of June he would say the same thing - 'it's all down hill to Christmas'.  In some ways I know exactly what he meant, from now on the days will get shorter and shorter, although it will be the end of July before we really notice the difference.  Both he and I were / are 'summer' people - I love the sun as much as he did, and we both struggle with the long, dark winter days.

The summer solstice - the day I dream about when in the midst of grey, dark, dank winter.  Although oddly enough, apart from the fact that it is still not totally dark at almost 10.00pm, this evening has been just as grey, dark and dank as any mid-winter afternoon - except there has been approx. 12 hours more daylight.  It's certainly not been the sunniest or hottest midsummer's day ever but it is the day the sun begins its creeping journey southwards again. 

I've had a very nice summer solstice, as I'm in Bristol visiting my family, and being treated to a delicious Italian early birthday lunch.  Hope you've all had a great summer / winter solstice too.

I Wasn't Expecting That

One of DN's favourite questions at the moment is 'were you expecting that?'  The question usually follows him blowing a loud raspberry in your direction, and your answer has to be 'no. I wasn't expecting that'. 

Yesterday evening I saw something in my garden which I really was not expecting.   It was just before 9.00 pm and I'd gone out into the kitchen to make myself a cup of Rooibos tea before settling down to watch Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's 'River Cottage Spring.'  It was a nice evening and dusk was not even really beginning as yet.  I wandered over to the kitchen window to have a look out and was amazed to see a large-ish hawk sitting on the grass totally engrossed in tearing something fleshy to shreds.  I went to fetch my camera and did take a few photos but I was too far away and the light was just too dark to get a decent picture.  I had wondered why the lovely robin, who sits on the top-most branch of the pine tree in our garden and signs his little heart out every evening was totally silent yesterday - now I know why.

I do wonder where the hawk had come from, although we are not that far from open countryside (less than five minutes in a car), and presumably this one had spotted something worth nabbing in our garden.  When I told Mum about it she said having a hawk about will keep the mice down (what it was eating last night could well have been a mouse) and that it will probably return again.  If it's going to keep the mouse population down then it is more than welcome to treat our garden as an eat-all-you-want buffet for as long as it likes.

Waste Not .... Update

The TV programme last Friday about eating food past it's use-by-dates proved to be very interesting - if a little stomach churning too.  The reporter did indeed eat food past it's use-by-date for two weeks - although as far as I could see only for one meal or portion of a meal per day - with no apparent ill effects.  I personally would not want to eat sausages or chicken five or six days past the use-by-date but he said they tasted fine and laboratory tests proved that any bacteria in the meat was well and truly killed off in the cooking process.  I did think it was a bit of a con that the last few days involved the reporter eating an 11-days-past-it's-use-by-date muffin - not too much risk of food poisoning there I would have thought - and on the final day eating a piece of mouldy bread which he toasted.  I've certainly been known to eat mouldy bread when I was younger - although I tended to pick the mouldy bits around the edges off before I ate it.  I don't really think the programme was going to change the way I feel about use-by-dates on food but it was a good way of making people think about the food they throw out because it has gone past it's date.

What did interest me a great deal though was the interview with a 'freegan' - somebody who takes food out of the industrial wheelie bins at the back of supermarkets.  That really was a revelation to me.  I'd heard of freegans before but had assumed that what was thrown away by supermarkets was food that was pretty much unsaleable, or that it would be out of it's wrapper and sort of mouldering away at the bottom of a filthy bin.  The selection of perfectly good food that was well wrapped and, in some cases, still in date was amazing.  He and the reporter filled numerous carrier bags with the food and took it to Anthony Worral Thompson who then proceeded to cook up a veritable banquet with it all.  I think I'm right in saying that the food that had been 'freeganed' had come from an Iceland store and as our local Iceland store's back entrance leads on to a public car park it did set me wondering about what exactly might be available in their bins.  Sadly, I'm not sure I would ever have the 'neck' to actually start foraging around in Iceland's bins (or any other supermarkets come to that), especially at this time of year when it is daylight until so late.  Maybe in the depths of a dark winter's evening!!  But the sheer amount of food the freegan liberated does beg the question of why this food - which appeared to be perfectly usable - was not passed on to something useful like a homeless charity or the Salvation Army who could really make use of this food, rather than sending it to landfill.  The sheer scale of the waste was overwhelming and, as the freegan pointed out, this is happening at the back of every supermarket, on every high street in the UK - scandalous!

Cutting It

Today was all about cutting things.

I started bright and early this morning with cutting the grass front and back.  This time it was a relative pleasure to cut - not too long and nice and dry.  And, as always, it remains a huge pleasure to be able to empty the clippings straight into the wheelie bin and not f*rt about stuffing it in silly little 'soya' plastic bags.  As the grass cutting itself had been so easy I decided to get out the clippers and start chopping down the grass the mower can't get to - round the edges of the lawn and the base of the fruit trees.  They were only cheapie clippers that I got from Aldi a few weeks ago but they really do the job well and it makes a huge difference to get the grass cut right to the edges.  So now the garden is looking neat and tidy before the next lot of rain arrives tomorrow.

This afternoon I went to the hairdressers to get my hair cut.  I phoned for an appointment yesterday morning thinking I'd have no problem asking for a time during Tuesday morning - what with it being early in the week and the impact of the credit crunch.  Ha, I was wrong there - the earliest appointment they could give me was 1.45 pm.  I don't go to have my hair cut all that often - once every two months or so (I usually have to resort to hacking at my fringe myself in between appointments), as at £22.50 each visit I'm too 'frugal' to go too often.  They always make a nice job of it and I come out feeling much better when I've been 'shorn'.

I also got round to cutting up a few more vintage pillowcases to make four more pillowcase book bags.  I'm not sure when I'll actually sew them up, but the measuring and cutting and ironing the material seems to take longer than the actual sewing.