Making Good Use

Use It Up

Three very manky, over-ripe bananas have been transformed into a Banana Loaf this morning.  It's a lovely recipe from the excellent Rose Elliot (vegetarian recipe writer extraordinaire) and is a fantastic way of using up really black bananas.  You need:

2oz margerine or butter, 2oz dark brown sugar, 2oz golden syrup. Melt these three ingredients together im a pan over a low heat and when liquid add to 8oz self-raising flour, a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt (although I never bother with the salt) which have been mixed together in a bowl.  Stir well, then add one beaten egg and two over-ripe bananas (although I went for over-kill and used all three that were lurking in the fruit bowl today.)   Pour into a greased and floured loaf tin (or in my case an enameled baking dish as I don't have a loaf tin) and bake in the oven for one hour at 180 degrees - although it's probably best to check on it after approx. 50 minutes otherwise it can end up a bit well-done on the top.

This makes a wonderful moist cake which is delicious on it's own, with butter on, or, if it goes a bit stale, as the base for a banana custard trifle (especially if liberally sprinkled with some alcohol!!)

Whilst on the 'use it up' vibe, I whipped up some slightly-out-of-date double cream, blitzed a jar of organic sweet cherries and added both to some ready-made custard to make a cherry fool for pudding this evening.  The jars of Biona organic cherries were 2 for £1.00 in the local farm shop - a fantastic bargain.  (If anyone is in SE Essex, I can highly recommend Barleylands Farm Shop (on the Southend Road between Billericay and Wickford) for some amazing bargains, and at the moment they have tons of Biona organic products at unbelievably cheap prices - and they're not even close to their sell-by dates.)

Food Waste Bin

Look what's been delivered by the council this morning - six months later than originally stated - yup, the dreaded food waste bin (aka a slop bucket.)  I've had quite a lot to say on this matter before (but, darn me, I can't find the exact blog post where that particular rant took place.) Suffice to say, I shall not be using it.  HOWEVER, before I get shot down in flames about not doing my bit for recycling, let me clarify a few points.

This new food waste bin is only for kitchen use and should be emptied into the green wheelie bin (previously only allowed to contain garden waste) when it is full. Said green wheelie bin will now be emptied once a week instead of once a fortnight.  I've decided to skip the whole food waste bin step and just resite the wheelie bin to outside the back door where I can easily chuck fruit and veg peelings and any stale bits of bread etc.  Allegedly you can also put in any meat, fish or dairy bits of leftovers too (I say allegedly as how on earth can you make compost from animal products?). This I shall most certainly not be doing because a) I really really don't want a maggot-infested wheelie bin and b) I hardly ever have meat or dairy scraps anyway (fish is something rarely eaten in this house) and any scraps I do have from meat goes out for the local fox (or more likely is snaffled by next door's cat before the fox gets a look in.)  Any bits of mouldy cheese (and those really are a huge rarity as I love cheese and try never to waste any) get put out for the birds (or next door's cat again) to eat.

My real criticism with this food waste bin though is that our local council is STILL making us use black plastic sacks for our refuse collection, which is a wicked thing to do in my book as plastic takes pretty much forever to break down in landfill.  Having had several discussions with the council refuse department about this over the years it seems that introducing wheelie bins for general refuse collection is too expensive. However, they can find the money to give us all slop buckets when they face huge EU fines for not recycling enough.  Somehow a council that is stuffing landfill sites with vast quantities of black plastic sacks I consider criminally negligent regarding recycling - slop buckets or not!!

What do you think?  Do you have a food waste bin in the kitchen?  Has it ever been maggot infested?  Am I just being a complete wuss about the whole matter?

Al Fresco

Tuesday and Wednesday were glorious warm sunny days here in Essex, so P and I decided to eat our evening meals on those days al fresco.  It was lovely, even if we both had to put warm jackets on to do it, but the sun sets just a little too early these days to fully enjoy an evening meal in the garden.

Solution - tea lights in glass jam and yogurt jars.  It made a really nice change to eat by candlelight - and to eat outdoors at the end of September.  I think maybe both of us have been watching too many episodes of the Swedish version of 'Wallander' but we're both hoping that, like them, if we wrap up nice and warm we can enjoy sitting out at the garden table (though maybe not eating a meal there) for a good while to come yet - especially by the light of our uber-thrifty 'storm lanterns.'

Eclectic

One of the great joys of thrifting (apart from the cheap prices), be it in a charity shop or at a car boot sale, is never knowing what you are going to find.  Yesterday was no exception as I left the local charity shop with a madly eclectic selection of purchases.

Anatomy for the Artist book - which turns out to have been a very good choice for re-sale (and I don't find many of those these days,) £1.00.  Two large sample pieces of upholstery fabric which are lovely quality and should make lovely bags at some point in the future.  There were lots of these sorts of sample there yesterday but many were quite small and not all the prints took my fancy - though somebody could probably make a stunning piece of patchwork from them.  None of the pieces were priced but I only paid 50p each for my two which I thought was an excellent bargain.  On the counter was a large box of home-grown veg,all priced at 60p each.  As I needed to buy tomatoes anyway this large punnet was just the ticket.  I can't think of many other shops where you could buy fabric, books and tomatoes all at the same time.

Across the road in WH Smith I spotted the launch issue of Making Magazine.  Normally, I don't ever buy magazines but this one looked right up my street so I went mad and spent £4.99.  I've only glanced through it so far but it looks to have some really interesting projects and ideas in there.

Spuds

I'd never attempted to grow potatoes before this summer, but the lure of a pack of seed potatoes for 99p (in the 99p shop, naturally) gave me the impetus to give them a go.  As we have absolutely no bare earth in our garden - it's all grass with a few fruit trees - they had to be planted up in large containers.  Two went into a hideous but extremely roomy grey plastic flowerpot I found at the top of the garden (it may well have blown over from somewhere else as I'd never clapped eyes on it before) and two went into a plastic growing bag.  Both lots were planted in the same compost and fed and watered identically but in the end the two plants put into the hideous plastic flowerpot produced 100% more than the ones in the growing bag.  No idea why, but I know what I'll be planting my seed potatoes in next summer.

I can't pretend it's a stunningly large crop of spuds but there are some that are a lovely big size and digging them out of the compost was like searching for lost treasure - very exciting to see what was coming to light with each spadeful of soil.  I'm going to use some of them in a homemade potato salad this evening - in honour not only of our first-ever home-grown spuds but also because it looks like this will be the last day of warm weather for the foreseeable future.

Whiteladies Road

If you ever find yourself in Bristol with a couple of hours to spare, I can highly recommend a trip to the Whiteladies Road / Cotham Hill area. There are eight charity shops in the area plus a couple of specialist charity book shops, lovely little cafes and restaurants, a fabulous wholefood shop and an out-of-this-world craft shop that I'd never been in before.  I had a lovely afternoon mooching around the shops and then meeting up with my sister and nephew to have a look at his new school (and very nice it is too.)

A few bargains were found in the charity shops, including a lovely large vintage black and white ticking bolster case.  I'm not sure whether to hold onto it for the fabric - which is gorgeous - or to try selling it on ebay.  I also got a really unusual raw linen vintage tea towel that has a pattern of Pennsylvania Ditesch Hex Signs.  I'm not totally sure what these are but have a feeling they may be something to do with the Amish (anyone know for sure?)  Oh, and a weird little china coaster that I just couldn't resist - a coaster is always a useful item.

Scarily, there were already a lot of charity Christmas cards on sale and much as I don't normally buy Christmas cards in September, I really liked these Ruper Bear ones and they only cost £3.75 for 10.  A visit to Creativity resulted in a very restrained purchase of only three little spotty felt squares but if I'd had more time (and more money) I could have spent a fortuen in there.

I also called in to Wild Oats, the most fab-u-lous wholefood shop, to see if they had organic coconut oil and arrowroot (which, indeed, they did) as I'm going to try my hand at making some home-made deodorant using this recipe from Sew Green.  P has the most dreadful allergy to most deodorants and is even allergic to Tom's of Maine.  He did find an Arm and Hammer Baking Soda one that suited him when he was in Hong Kong but it is not available in the UK so we're both hoping that the home-made variety might be less irritating on his skin.

The afternoon was rounded off with a cool drink in one of the many cafes there and a lovely trip back to east Bristol on the local train - something else I can highly recommend.

Frighteningly Out of Touch with Prices

One of the few downsides of buying most things second-hand - the first being the lack of carrier bags with which to line the kitchen bin (a problem now sorted by having a new HUGE kitchen bin that the council-provided black bin bags fit) - is perhaps becoming just a tad out of touch with the actual retail cost of things.  I was truly shocked this morning to find a tube of Soap and Glory Facial Exfoliator. which I picked up for £1.00 at a boot sale in June, costs £8.00 to buy new in Boots!!!!   It is lovely stuff and as I only use it a couple of times a week it's going to last a nice long time, but seriously £8.00 for it - nah, no way.

I'm down in Bristol for a few days, staying with my Mum, so there may be a paucity of posts for a little while.  Though I am going to be visiting my nephew's new school on Friday and whilst in the area will be checking out the many many charity shops they've got there - I'm hoping there may be a few gems to be found.

Spanish Omelette

I'm not a great one for omelettes, and am never very successful in making one either, but faced with half-a-dozen two-days-out-of-date organic eggs, a green pepper, a few mushrooms, half an onion, two slices of parma ham, and a couple of really ripe tomatoes as the basis of an evening meal, I had to bite the bullet and try making one.  I found a really useful recipe here which gave lots of hints, tips and ideas for making a decent Spanish omelette and we ended up with a very tasty evening meal.

 
Served up with what was left of an iceberg lettuce this was a great way of using up lots of tiddly bits and pieces that were floating around in the fridge.  I suspect this recipe (or something like it) will be making several re-appearances in the not too distant future.

Another great way for using up all sorts of bits and bobs that I've started doing lately is stuffed cabbage leaves.  I suppose it's loosely based on the Greek dish of stuffed vine leaves but uses up the outside cabbage leaves in a really tasty way.  I stuffed the par-boiled cabbage leaves with some cooked waaaay-out-of-date wholemeal rice (best before March 2010, ahem) with a bit of fried onion, a few mushrooms and a jar of not-very-nice-on-it's-own cream cheese and pepper spread and a bit of tomato puree and then the whole lot was covered in a cheese sauce.  It was tres tasty and did us two evening meals - although the second meal had the addition of a couple of sausages on the side too.

Having been totally shocked by the rocketing price of meat in the local Co-op supermarket, I think there''ll be a lot more veggie dishes on the menu over the coming few months.  Anyone have any nice, warming veggie recipes they'd care to share?

Sorted

To paraphrase the incredibly irritating (and to my mind patronising) current Tesco advert, that's my toiletries 'sorted' for the coming months.

As I bought them bit by bit at the boot sales, I'd been stacking them precariously up and up on the edges of some shelves in the built-in wardrobe.  But every time I opened the doors to find something else, bottles and tubes kept cascading down so I thought it was time to take them out, take stock, and then store them away somewhere less troublesome. 

 
I'm certainly well stocked with shower gel of all different makes and scents.  Most of these bottles cost between 20p and 60p and all of them (with the exception of a pack of five mini shower gels from M&S) were boot sale buys over the past few months.  I suspect that ounce for ounce I could buy shower gel cheaper in the 99p shop but I like nice toiletries and buying them at boot sales is a lovely, and cheap, way to indulge myself.

 
There is also a small stock of body butter, body lotion, moisturiser and hand cream - although I do have more bits and pieces that are already in use in the bathroom - and these should see me through most of the winter.  The only thing I'm not so well stocked with is shampoo - although there the 99p shop can help as they sell some really good quality hair-care brands.

Sales

I don't know whether it's because it's the start of a new academic year, or whether people are just buying more books because it's nearly autumn, but I've had a big increase in the sales of books this past week.  I've sold two books on Amazon (ah, I remember the glory days when I used to often sell two or more books a day!!) and another four on Greenmetropolis.  Whatever the reason, I'm really pleased to make a few more book sales as a) it adds to my rather depleted coffers and b) it makes a bit more room in the bookcase!

I've also had a couple of really good sales on eBay this past week or so too - oddly enough, both of them being tea cosies.

This lovely little Poppy Treffry embroidered tea cosy was picked up for £1.00 at the Thursday boot sale a month or two ago and sold this week for £22.54.  I'd come across mention of Poppy Treffry on a few blogs and recognised her wonderful style of embroidery as soon as I saw it.  I thought for £1.00, and the fact that it had never been used, it was a good gamble to take and it proved very lucrative indeed.

And this never-taken-out-of-the-packet Portmerion tea cosy - also bought for £1.00 - sold for £13.78.  Another excellent result.  Needless to say, I'm now keeping a very keen eye out for any other tea cosies that I come across in my travels!!  Anyone else had any great sales of thrifted items lately?