Making Good Use

Off to be Pampered and Cosseted

One way or another, it's not been the best of times these past six months or so but as much of it has not been my story, I've not said anything about it on the blog.  Hopefully, when it all gets resolved, I'll be able to say more.  Anyway, P and I have been talking about having a holiday for ages but somehow life and stuff has got in the way.  Last week, we decided that we would take ourselves off to Champneys at Tring and have a few days being pampered, cosseted and totally relaxed.   We got a good deal on a five-day four-night break and are off tomorrow until Sunday. 

I am so looking forward to being totally indolent and lazy and having a few nice massages, beauty treatments and swimming in their lovely pool.  We thought a spa would be a good idea because they can also cater for a low-fat diet - an absolute essential for me at the moment.  I stupidly ate some boiling bacon on Saturday evening and have been suffering nasty twinges in my gall bladder ever since.   And I so smugly thought I'd got topsides of that little problem - seems not - b*ggerations!!

Junk Shop

As I had to pop into the bank this morning, and as the new junk shop is most conveniently located just behind said bank, I thought I'd call in and have a good look round.  My first stop, as always, was their excellent selection of second-hand books.  I only came away with three today - two hardbacks and a paperback for £1.00.  One has been listed on Amazon, one on Greenmetropolis and one looks like it could be quite useful as a reference book for us.

 
I also had a rummage through their pile of old bedding and linens.  It was all a bit precariously stacked - plus it was mostly on a very low shelf which is awkward with my hip at the moment - so I couldn't poke about as much as I would have liked.  However, out of the corner of my eye, folded up very neatly on another shelf, I found two vintage half-aprons. 

 
 
The colours are very vibrant on this one

 
 
And sweetly pastel on the other (the fabric of this one reminds me of a nightie my Mum made me when I was little.)  They were 50p each and will be destined for ebay once the light improves enough for me to get a decent photo.  (I tried really hard to get a 'full-length' photo of both aprons but had to admit defeat with the leaden skies and gloomy grey wet weather we've got here today.  Roll on Spring!!)

The new junk shop is fast becoming my favourite bargain-hunting spot - they've got tons more stuff than the charity shops plus their prices are much better too.  If anyone is Wickford way and fancies checking out the junk shop for themselves, they're located just behind Nat West bank near the Market Place.

Just wanted to add: I've come across a couple of new-to-me charity shop bargain-hunting blogs recently which are really good - Faith, Hope and Charity Shopping and The Vintage Knitter.

Not Too Many Billericay Bargains

 
'Tis true, I didn't find much at all in the charity shops of Billericay this morning.  Best bargain was a large unopened bottle of Charles Worthington Shampoo for 70p (£5.99 in the shops apparently) and I was also pleased to find this Paris: Made by Hand book for £1.00.  There are some gorgeous photos in it and some great inspirational craft ideas - though it's not really a craft book, more about craftspeople and their shops in Paris.  I also found a couple of other books - one for re-sale and a Kathy Reichs thriller for me, 50p and 60p respectively.

 
Also found this vintage wedding dress sewing pattern (handily dated 1972 on the envelope) for 49p - I'll have to check that all the pattern pieces are there before listing it on ebay,

 
And a rather spiffy hand-embroidered little tablecloth for 75p.  Not sure whether to try this on ebay or keep hold of it to make some more gift bags. 

Most importantly of all though, I managed to stock up on lots of low-fat and very tasty Quorn items from Waitrose - definitely not bargains but very very necessary at the moment.

January Buying and Selling Roundup

I'm finding the record I'm keeping of all my charity shop and second-hand buys - and any subsequent sales - a very useful tool.  It'll be even more useful when I eventually transfer it from a Word document into an Excel table as then I can just add the columns up by pressing a button and won't have to resort to getting the calculator out everytime I need to add things up!!  (Having thought we didn't have Excel on our computer, it turns out that we do - so transferring the data over will be a small job for me at some point.  And one I'd better get round to doing before the boot sale season starts, and I'm buying lots more things, or it will become quite a big task.)

Anyhoo, I spent £40.04 during January buying items in various charity shops - some of which were for me and some of which were for re-sale.  From the re-sale items I made £130.01, so the profit was just short of £90.  I have to say the vast majority of the profit came from these Laura Ashley curtains (a whopping £55, I was delighted,) but I've also had some other reasonable sales too, and there are still a few items listed on ebay that were included in the £40.04 spend which haven't finished as yet, so the profit should increase a bit more.

 
In my quest to 'speculate in order to accumulate' I took a bit of a punt and spent £3.00 on this new Crabtree & Evelyn boxed set in the charity shop yesterday.  I knew Crabtree & Evelyn items sold fairly well on ebay but I was really pleased when I found that the Freesia Eau de Toilette alone sold for £21 recently, and this boxed set also has the Freesia body lotion in it. 

At the moment we only have two charity shops in Wickford (although there is a HUGE Sue Ryder shop due to open shortly - trouble is, they're notoriously expensive so I'll reserve judgement on how useful it'll turn out to be) so in order to keep 'uping the ante' to find re-sale items, I'm going to take myself over to Billericay tomorrow morning.  They have seven charity shops in the High Street and I usually find one or two good items whilst I'm there.  Plus they have a Waitrose so I'll be able to buy some smoked tofu, korma curry paste and some decent Quorn items - which turns out to be things I'm unable to buy at all in Wickford and I need them for some low-fat recipes I want to try.  

Probably the Oldest Item I've Ever Thrifted

 
I spotted this rather ancient magazine in amongst several piles of much more modern magazines at the 'Coffee and Jumble' this morning.  I picked it up, flicked through it to check all the pages were present (it is a rather 'thin' publication) and paid 20p for it.  When I got outside and had a proper look, I realised it dates from 1884!!  Good grief, it's over 125 years old - I don't think I've ever thrifted anything as old as that before.   Considering its age it is in very nice condition,  I wonder where it has been kept all these years in order to have stayed so well preserved.  It seems quite sad really that something so old could change hands for as little as 20p.  What's the oldest item you've ever found whilst thrifting?

Linked to Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share post.

Low-Fat Living - Ten Days In

For the past ten days I've been trying to cut as much fat - especially dairy and saturated fats - out of my diet as possible, in order to calm my grumbling gall bladder.  So far, so good, and I've not really noticed a great deal of difference in my food, but have noticed a huge improvement in how I've been feeling.  I do still have a scraping of butter on my toast in the mornings - probably a tenth of what I used to have, and yesterday, for the first time, I had the merest touch of grated parmesan in a salad wrap for my lunch.  Mashed potato has been made with semi-skimmed milk instead of with butter and milk or cream - if I had any in the fridge (hang my head in shame - no wonder my gall bladder was annoyed!)  And you know what, I couldn't really taste the difference at all.

Chocolate has been left well alone (have you seen how much saturated fat is in it? - what an eye opener!) but I have discovered that there are all sorts of sweet things that are fat-free instead - jelly babies, marshmallows, crystallised fruit or ginger, and even liquorice allsorts are pretty low in saturated fats, so I don't feel deprived at all.  'Bought' desserts like cheesecake or trifle have gone by the board in favour of stewed fruit, fresh fruit or fat-free (and aspartame-free) yogurt.  I've found that the low-fat Rachel's organic vanilla yogurt makes a wonderful substitute for cream on stewed fruit.  Bananas have become a big hit with me too as they are ideal to eat as a snack and full of energy - and are easy to buy organically as even Aldi have organic bananas (and, I was delighted to find, aspartame-free fat-free yogurts.)

This lunchtime was a bit of a test as P took me out for a pub lunch.  I was somewhat limited to what I could choose on the menu but ended up with a salmon fishcake with sweet chilli sauce as a starter and a warm duck salad with hoi-sin dressing for a main.  The pudding list totally defeated me and I thought £4.80 for a fruit salad, when I wasn't going to have either the cream or ice cream with it, was a bit much so I settled for a coffee, although had to send the cream back and ask for milk instead.  It was a lovely meal and should be gall-bladder friendly!!

A couple of very useful Low-Fat Cookbooks were found in the junk shop yesterday and there seem to be some interesting new dishes I can try from the recipes next week.  Yup, ten days in - and a lifetime to go - and it's all working out quite well and I am so relieved to be free of that awful pain in my ribs that I don't even what to think about eating a lot of fatty foods ever again.

Little and Large

I picked up a vintage tablecloth in the charity shop a couple of weeks ago which had a lovely folk-art print on it.  I was hoping to be able to resell it on ebay but when I got it home I noticed that part of the edging on one side was coming apart and there was a large mark right in the middle of the cloth too - and that just would not come out no matter how many times I washed it.  I did still love the little folk-art style figures on it though and it was pure cotton so I decided to cut it up to make a couple of simple drawstring bags.

 
To avoid the mark in the centre of the fabric I ended up with one little bag - approx. 16.5 inches wide x 13.5 inches high - with a red ribbon drawstring with little brown buttons on the end

 
And one quite sizeably large bag - approx. 16.5 inches wide x 21 inches high - with a ribbon drawstring and two mis-matched large brown buttons sewn onto the ends.  This one is big enough to use as a laundry bag, for storage or as a large knitting / crochet project bag

Reading the Labels

I've never bothered to read the labels of food I've bought before but now I'm on the lookout for how many grams of saturated fat are in each product, and I've been totally shocked by what I've found so far.  I had no idea that a Weight Watchers single portion quiche (on special offer at Co-op, so thought I'd check it out) would have so much fat in it (and the carton proclaims that as it has no crust it's lower in fat - goodness, what was the fat content before then?)  Or that Quorn products (of which our Co-op has a woefully poor selection) would be higher in fat (only a little bit, but still) than Cauldron veggie sausages, and Quorn pride themselves on being a low fat product. 

Having drawn a near blank in the Co-op, I thought I'd take my hunt for low-fat foods into the health food shop.  Now that was a nasty surprise as all the vegetarian meat and cheese substitutes - eg Cheatin' Ham, Cheatin' Pastrami and Sheese (fake cheese) are loaded with saturated fats.  Not what I was expecting to find at all. 

Nor did I know that low-fat or fat-free yogurts are all stuffed with aspartame, which is horrible stuff, terribly bad for your innards, and gives me an instant migraine.  Thank goodness for Rachels Organic low-fat vanilla yogurt which is, very sensibly, made with organic sugar.  The delicious M&S fat-free yogurts are likewise quite high calorie,being full of sugar,but are fat-free and a nice alternative to fresh fruit as a dessert.

It's not surprising that my gall bladder has been grumbling of late with all the saturated fats I've been chucking down my neck - and much of it was without me realising too.  I can see me fast becoming a bit of a food-label bore but, honestly, I had no idea what was in some of the food I've been eating!!

Little Things

I must have been feeling better on Saturday as I had a sudden urge to go out (despite the arctic feel to the weather) and have a good look round the local junk shop and charity shops.  The junk shop is a fairly new discovery for me (it was recommended by my lovely next-door neighbours who are people who love a good bargain, and a good boot sale.)  The junk shop is in one of the back streets so I'd never have come across it by chance.  They have a ton of stuff jammed into a little shop, and their prices are good too.  There are shelves of bric a brac, china, racks of clothes, shoes, bedding, toys, DVDs, CDs - you name it, they've probably got it somewhere.  They also have shelf upon shelf of books - which are the main attraction for me.  At only 40p each, I was happy to buy four paperbacks on Saturday - one of which was, amazingly, good for re-sale on Amazon, two have been put on Greenmetropolis and one 'Cooking in a Bedsitter' by Katharine Whitehorn, I'll have a leaf through and then pass on to the charity shop.

 
In the one charity shop that was open Saturday afternoon I found this teeny weeny little wooden mushroom house.  It's only about an inch tall and was in a basket with assorted china thimbles.  At 25p I've brought it home and added it to my small mushroom collection.

 
This vintage sewing pattern was lurking in amongst a pile of uber-naff 80s sewing patterns.  I love the purple highlights in the illustrations - just by chance, does anybody know when sewing pattern illustrations gave way to the much-less-artistic photographs which are now on the pattern envelopes?  The pattern was 50p and will be destined for ebay once I've checked that all the pattern pieces are in the packet.

Off to See the Quack

Like my father, I don't have much faith in the medical profession and tend to avoid them at all costs.  However, after having had another agonising episode on Tuesday, another pretty much sleepless night because of the pain, and feeling really under the weather - yet again - on Wednesday, I felt it was perhaps time to consult the quack. 

Despite having lived in Essex for seven years, I've never signed on with a GP here and officially I was still registered with a Health Centre in Bristol.  After much persuading by P I finally phoned the nearest GP's practice (handily placed just around the corner) to ask if I could sign on with them and see a doctor asap as I was feeling really rather unwell.  I swear they breed GPs' receptionisits to be particularly unpleasant and unhelpful - I've had some nasty run-ins with them in the past - and this one was cut from the exact same mould.  She snootily informed me that I would have to go round, collect a form, complete it, bring it back, allow 48 hours for the doctor to decide if I was good enough for him to accept, make an appointment to see the practice nurse, and then, after all that, an appointment to see the doctor.  I was not impressed when I asked how long all this was likely to take and was told a week!!  A flippin' week, I'm feeling totally cr*p right here, right now!!

So, long story short, they were open until 8.00 pm that evening so P went and collected the form for me, I filled it in immediately and he took it back round.  I phoned at 11.30 yesterday morning to find out if I was an acceptable candidate for the GP to take on, was told I was indeed acceptable, asked for the next available appointment to see the nurse - which was in an hour's time - hastily accepted that.  Saw the nurse, who was lovely and who told me my blood pressure was perfect (something that always seems to amaze medical folks as they see this lumbering great fat woman arrive and must be expecting my blood pressure to be off the chart - and it never is.  Thank goodness some part of me isn't cracking up!!)  Anyhoo, I have an appointment with the quack at 9.40 am today.

I think my Mum (who used to be a nurse and is ace at making diagnoses, even over the phone) was quite correct when she said it was my gall bladder that was the problem.  P looked things up on t'internet for me and it seems the gall bladder processes the fat we eat.  That makes perfect sense, as although I don't eat fatty meats, deep-fried foods or a lot of junk food, I do (or should I say did) eat humungous quantities of butter, cheese and cream.  I think we need to look no further for the problem.  Needless to say, my intake of dairy products has become non-existent these last couple of days - and me and my gall bladder are feeling much better for it.  I'm still interested to hear what the quack has to say but am pretty sure my Mum's diagnosis was spot on.  Who knows, with my new fat-reduced diet I may even manage to lose some weight!!