Making Good Use

And the Moral of the Story is ....

Never, ever throw anything away!!  I'm one of those people who are always trying to chuck things out whereas P is a terrible hoarder of cr*p (well, I think it's cr*p, he thinks it 'might come in useful'!!)  Though I've have recently made some headway with getting him to sort through the mountain of detritus he insists on holding onto and 27 shirts, 4 ties and 6 pairs of never-worn socks have recently been liberated from the depths of his side of the wardrobe and sent off to the local charity shop.  (And, in true charity-shop-donation-karma, P found eight beautiful pure silk ties for 50p each in another charity shop the other day.)

Anyway, I digress.  Last winter P snapped the head off the yard brush by attempting to clear snow with it.  I was not best pleased at the time and even less pleased when he insisted on keeping hold of the long wooden brush handle as 'it might come in useful'.  As it could stay out in the garden, I thought we might as well hold on to it for the time being.  Turns out, it proved to be very useful indeed.

On Wednesday afternoon I realised that the drain from the kitchen sink to the highly dodgy pipework that passes for drainage in this house (it has been described as 'an absolute shocker' by one plumber we had here) was totally blocked.  I managed to get the cover off the small drain near the back door and poked about ineffectively with an old garden cane.  All I managed to do with stir up some evil-smelling gunk and gunge but I couldn't clear the blockage.  Along comes P who levered up the nearest man-hole cover, grabs the old wooden broom handle and starts poking and prodding furiously.  Meanwhile, I'd gone to get the number of the local plumber / handyman and was most astonished to come back out to the garden and find a triumphant P and an unblocked drain. 

It took us significant amounts of pouring buckets of water down the drain to finally clear all the debris but after about half-an-hour of swilling and sluicing everything out, the whole system was running clear again.  So, the moral of the story is, never throw anything out as even the unlikeliest item can come in useful and can save you £20 (minimum) in having to call in someone to rod a blocked drain. 

Distraction

I really should be cleaning the house from top to bottom at the moment as we've got P's brother coming to stay for a few days this week.  He and P are off to enjoy some Olympic sporting action - P being one of the lucky ones who's managed to nab tickets for various different events.  As I'm normally a total slattern when it comes to cleaning and tidying, any guest coming to visit always means I have to go at things like a whirling dervish in order to present a (reasonably) clean and tidy home.

However, this little beauty is giving me some serious distraction from being a good hausfrau.  Yup, P and I have finally joined the 21st century and have acquired a laptop.  Seriously, I had no idea how exhilarating being able to surf the net from whereever you choose could be.  I suspect I need to get out more!!

I've even splashed out and bought half a metre of some very nice fabric to make a padded laptop case - on the off-chance that the laptop may need to go out and about with me at some point.

Dark Clouds Were Gathering ....

But it stayed dry JUST long enough for the local boot sale to take place.  Which was lucky as there is no boot sale next week, plus I managed to find quite a few nice bits and bobs.

A couple of vintage 60's head scarves, plus a paisley-print bandana.  I paid 90p for the lot and they'll all be destined for ebay at some point.  I've had a good bit of luck selling bandanas lately so I'm hoping this one will do well too.

A pair of vintage flat sheets - 50p each.  I saw some identical to this in a charity shop in Billericay recently and a) they were £3.00 each and b) I didn't want to carry them around all day with me as they are tres heavy.  So I was delighted to find these this morning.  I have sewing plans for them - eventually!!

A Welsh tapestry cushion cover - 50p - the colours are much brighter than they appear in the photo.  This one will also be ebayed at some point.

Another useful nylon bag in a purse thingy for keeping in a handbag.  I've got similar one already and it is mighty useful.  The black and white little purse has a Sanderson print with a travel-sized bar of Sanderson soap inside.  They were both 50p each.

And, for me, a sweet little vintage souvenir brooch from Interlaken - 50p. P and I visited Interlaken the first time I ever went to Switzerland (nearly 20 years ago - gulp!!)  The teeny little cow bell actually makes a tinkling sound - which is pretty ironic for me as I can find the 'clonking' of actual Swiss cow bells on live Swiss cows just a tad annoying when I'm over there.  I think P feels that this is a criticism too far of his native land so I try and keep schtum about saying how irritating those darned cow bells are!!   (The football supporters of their national team take humungous cow bells with them to 'clonk' and 'dong' loudly in support of the Swiss side - a bit like the Dutch 'oompah' band, but less musical!!)

Twelve

This year's plum 'harvest' is turning out to be almost non-existent.  The early-ripening plum tree has only yielded twelve lonely little plums.  And the other later-ripening variety tree looks equally bereft this year too.  So, what to do with a dozen quite small but beautifully ripe plums.

Make an iced plum and oatmeal madeira cake, of course.  I used this recipe from the Waitrose website - though had to substitute the orange zest and juice for lemon as that was all I had in the fruit bowl.  (Excuse the 'drippy' icing, I always seem to have that problem!!)

It was totally delicious and gave our meagre plum harvest a starring role.  I can't really complain, I've still got quite a stash of plum vodka from last year's mega harvest yet to get through.

Birdie Brooches

A Thrifty Mrs had some great craft supplies ebay links the other week, and the resin cabochon link really took my fancy.  I didn't buy the ones she'd linked to but came across another ebay seller who had a really gorgeous 14 piece resin bird cabochon set for sale.  Cue £3.20 later for the birds, another £2.95 for the brooch backs (I could've sworn I had a bag of them knocking around at home but, no, couldn't lay my paws on them), and a half hour or so with a tube of Bostik et voila,

I've got me 14 different coloured bird brooches to jazz up any number of plain T-shirts and jumpers for a little over £6.00.

This Should Prove a Challenge!!

With a lot of encouragement from P, I've decided to have a crack at learning a teeny bit of basic Icelandic.  Icelandic is a notoriously difficult language to learn - it's a pretty-much-unchanged-for-a-thousand-years West Norwegian dialect (imagine if we were still speaking old English similar to the original Beowulf and you get something of the idea.) 

Plus I am a total dimwit when it comes to learning foreign languages.  I am the woman who managed to get an ungraded 'O' level for French (still my 'finest ever' exam achievement.  Though I recently read Jack Dee's autobiography and he managed a stonkingly impressive result of three ungraded 'A' levels - way to go, Jack!!)  I also managed to fail my Latin 'O' level - twice (a D grade both times as I knew a heck of a lot about the Roman way of life but frankly b*gger all about how to translate Latin into English or vice versa.  As a form of consolation prize I did get a grade A 'O' level in Roman Civilisation - how useful an 'O' level can you get!!)

P - who is a native German speaker - and I have lived together for nearly 17 years and still, I'm totally ashamed to say, my ability to speak German is only at the 'smattering' level.   P not only speaks German (obvs.) but is also fluent in English and French, taught himself very passable Norwegian in three months and is now teaching himself Mandarin!!  My sister - who is also much better at languages than me - is currently teaching herself Swedish, having had a go at Spanish a couple of years ago.

Me, I'm a total foreign language klutz.  I'm pretty sure it stems from never having grasped the basics of how the English language works.  Sure, I know what is right and what is wrong but I don't know why.  I also only have very a vague notion of what an adjective, verb and noun are.  I know, totally shocking!!  I'm not sure if it's because I went to a junior school that was only interested in teaching maths and PE (so not my thing.)  Or if it is because my teacher for the final two years of junior school was a native Welsh speaker who had only learnt English at the age of 10.  Or maybe it's just the way my brain is wired - who knows. 

I have watched an inordinate amount of Icelandic-language films and TV series lately (with English subtitles of course) - thanks to a very generous birthday present from P consisting of three Icelandic film DVDs, two Icelandic TV series DVDs and an Icelandic documentary DVD.  Which when added to the films and TV series in Icelandic we already had probably means we've got the biggest Icelandic-language DVD selection in Essex!!  Thanks to all that DVD watching - and with the hope of another visit to Iceland in the not too distant future - I'm pretty enthused to try and speak a few words, or even sentences, myself.  Progress will no doubt be slow but I'm looking forward to at least giving it a go.

At Last - A Sunny Sunday Morning

Finally, a sunny Sunday morning which means the boot sale was on - yay!!  I'm surprised they didn't cancel again as we had apocalyptic-force rain right up until late Friday night - and the ground was very wet and muddy in places as a result.  Never mind, a bit of mud on the old hind paw never hurt anyone!!  I came home with:

A lovely little wood and metal hook - featuring a Fab ice lolly image - 50p.  I was very fond of a Fab ice lolly from the ice cream van when I was little, especially the chocolate / sprinkles layer on the top - yum! 

A great book about Sixties style with some truly mouth-watering photos - 50p.

Oil cloth and a Scottie dog - two of my favouritest things combined in this little cosmetic purse.  I love the little bone detail on the zip too.  This was also 50p.

A vintage faux fur hat - funnily enough, also 50p.  This one'll be destined for ebay in the autumn.

A rather nice barkcloth cushion cover - 20p.

And from the same seller - two cushion covers featuring Frida Kahlo - also 20p each.  I also found a couple of good books for reselling on Amazon and five Disney T-shirts (50p each) for my nephew.  A pretty good haul and well worth getting muddy feet for.

Another Cheap Eat

I usually do my main food shop on a Monday morning as it fits in nicely with the 'Coffee and Jumble' and means I can post off any ebay items that have sold over the weekend too.   Trouble is, by the following Sunday I'm usually a bit short of ingredients to make a main meal - not having a freezer doesn't help with this, nor does having a fridge the size of a small cardboard box!!  (Our kitchen is waaaaaay too small to cram a decent sized fridge / freezer in.  It's certainly too small for the two of us to be in there together!)
Anyhoo, last Sunday I came up with the idea of stuffed cabbage leaves.  Fortuitously I'd saved four ginormous outer leaves from a cabbage we'd had with a chicken earlier in the week and I just popped them in some boiling water for a few mintues to soften them up.  I've always got plenty of rice and I chopped up all the 'tired and emotional' looking bits of veg that were still lurking in the fridge and added them to the cooked rice.  A teaspoon of rose harissa paste (left over from goodness knows when) added just a hint of spice to the mixture. 

I topped it all off with some white sauce and just a teensy grating of parmesan cheese and baked the whole lot for 30 minutes in the oven.  We ended up with a really tasty evening meal for very little cost and not many ingredients. 

Rainy Day Thrifting

Once again the wet weather meant a weekend with no boot sale (it was actually dry and sunny here in Essex yesterday but the boot sale was cancelled as the ground was waterlogged - not really surprising with the amount of rain we've had lately.)  There was also a local village fete that should have taken place on Saturday but as it persisted down all day we didn't bother going.  So the upshot of all this darned rain is a definite thrifting drought.  Until today that is - today proved to be quite the best thrifting day I've had in ages.

One charity shop yielded 14 balls of dishcloth cotton.  I paid £8.00 for the lot which works out at a smidge over 57p per ball.  Not bad at all when I paid approx. £1.25 per ball the last time I bought some.  This lot should see me sorted with dishcloth cotton for years!!  In the same charity shop I also found two silk ties for P - £1.00 each. 

In the next charity shop along the high street I bought this Bugsy Malone DVD - £1.50.  I love that film and haven't seen it in years.  I wanted to buy a DVD of Flash Gordon too but they couldn't find the DVD that went with the case (they have to keep the actual DVDs behind the counter and just display the cases due to theft!!  Thieving from a charity shop - really, how low can you go??  Though having said that, I have seen people stealing from jumble sales.  Yes, really!!)  I'm stocking up on DVDs to get me through the inevitable blanket coverage of the Olympics that'll be starting oh so shortly.  I'm sure many people love watching sport on TV but it really don't float my boat.  Not interested, never have been.

Finally, the weekly 'Coffee and Jumble' yielded two very appropriate plastic rain items.  A black gents plastic raincoat - Empire Made so deffo pretty vintage - and a rain poncho which was obviously purchased at York Minster.  This one is going in my handbag as I can see it coming in quite useful.

And, just in case summer ever does arrive in the UK, a really nice summer top for me.  It's not the type of thing I normally wear and I bought it to sell on ebay but I had to try it on as someone had removed the size label (I knew it was 'plus size' as it's got an Evans label.)  Well, whaddaya know, it looks lovely on and will definitely be a keeper.  It cost me a whopping 50p and I also found a lovely T-shirt for P as well - again for 50p.  It was most certainly the best haul I've had in flippin' ages.

Cheap Eats

As our weekly food shopping bill seems to be on an ever-increasing trajectory, I've been trying to find new ways of putting cheap but tasty nosh on the table every evening.  We don't like compromising on the quality of the meat we eat - preferably organic but free-range at the very least - so we've been cutting down on the amount of meat we consume and I've turned my attention to a lot more vegetarian options.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had a lucky find of Granose Soya Mince reduced to 25p per box in Sainsbury's a while ago, I foolishly only bought one box for me and one for Mum (I was a bit wary in case it provoked a serious flatulence issue - but it was totally fine).  I really wish now that I'd bought a lot more as it turned out to be rather tasty.  I cooked up the whole box and it made two evening meals for the both of us.  The first meal was spaghetti bolognaise with mushrooms, grated carrot, onion, garlic and a tin of tomatoes all tickled up with some Marmite, Lea & Perrins and a beef stockcube.  What was left-over from the bolognaise bit I used to stuff a couple of peppers, which made a lovely meal the next day served up with stuffed tomatoes.  Stuffed tomatoes have featured quite heavily on the menu here lately, especially as Aldi have some really tasty on-the-vine British beef tomatoes at the moment.  Simply stuffed with cooked onion, breadcrumbs, basil and the flesh of the tomato, and topped off with a teeny bit of grated parmesan and some olive oil they make a really tasty, quick accompaniment to all sorts of meals.

I've also been experimenting with potato cakes - not something I'd ever made before but P said his Mum used to make them quite often, so I gave it a go.  Left-over mash with a couple of diced spring onions and a bit of tinned sweetcorn is very tasty when coated in breadcrumbs and warmed through in the frying pan.  I'm sure they'd be lovely with all sorts of left over veggies mixed up with the mash and next time I make them I'll just use up whatever's lurking in the fridge.

Finally, we've also been having a good old-fashioned lentil loaf on a pretty regular basis.  I use an ancient Rose Elliot recipe.  As I can buy a two tins of lentils for £1.00 in the local farm shop (the recipe only calls for one tin) it makes a tasty, nutritious and incredibly cheap evening meal.  It goes very nicely with the stuffed tomatoes or, to ring the changes, we sometimes have it with grilled courgettes and a white sauce.  I also like it cold the next day with a dollop of Hoi Sin sauce!!