It's All About the Beans - Part Two

 

Last week I posted on here about my bean shortage and the letter I received from Heinz in response to my politely worded email pointing out their short-changing a nation of bean lovers on a regular basis.  I apologise to any of you who are now obsessively weighing the contents of all your cans to see if you too are being short-changed ... and reading some of your blogs it would appear that you are!!

In response to my 'complaint' ... I was polite, honest I was ... they sent me six pounds worth of vouchers to spend on Heinz/Kraft products.  It didn't take me much looking around at the range of their items in the shops that I have access to, to realise that the best use of the vouchers would actually be on baked beans.

And then when I spotted them this morning as we passed the end of the aisles to go upstairs to the café in Booths for a coffee after my hospital appointment, and they were just £3.50 for four cans ... just I say, that is a lot of money when I am used to buying 28p tins of beans from Aldi !!  I decided over my coffee that I would buy two four packs with my vouchers.

Now as I am living on WWII rations at the moment and beans have to be purchased on the Points system these are going to last me a long time ... possibly into January.  😄

One pound spent = beans for months.  

Thanks for all the lovely comments on the last post.  💖

Sue xx

It's All About the Beans

I have beans on my menu twice this week over on my Getting Ready for Rations on Retirement blog, usually when I am splitting a can of baked beans I upend it for an hour or so before I open it, just so that the sauce distributes evenly throughout the can ... this time I forgot.  So to get an even distribution of beans and sauce I decided to tip it into the pan and then spoon out half.  I thought I might as well get a perfect split so I weighed the pan.

I was pretty shocked really that a good brand such as Heinz is still short-changing it's customers.  I have complained to them once before when I was doing a challenge and had cause to weigh my beans, they sent me a £2 voucher.  I have also complained many years ago to Asda about their Smartprice beans, they were seriously underweight, they too sent me a £2 gift card.

Now I didn't do this for any reward but more because I was really annoyed.  

Branded beans are now quite an expensive thing to buy, these Heinz beans were bought on offer at £3.50 for a four pack, usually they are £1.40 per can each ... obviously I was feeling flush that week whenever it was ... as I'm someone who usually buys the supermarkets basic lines at under 30p a tin this price is astonishing.

Anyway I ate my lunch, half a can of beans on two slices of toast, and then jumped on the computer to send a politely worded message to Heinz via their website.  Just pointing out that as beans are cooked in the cans there should be no room for any discrepancy of weights and if they knew that somehow beans magically lost weight on cooking they should start the process with more weight in the cans and then left it at that.

On the way to Mum's yesterday, with the car boot loaded up with Alan's carpet cleaner ready to clean Mum's carpets we were chatting away about all sorts of things and I mentioned the low weight of my beans and of the previous cans from this batch and Alan started doing the maths, as only an engineer would.  He worked out that if they are making millions of cans of beans per year and a good percentage of them are actually underweight the company is making huge profits from selling 'missing beans'.

Yes, we often have these sort of conversations!!  😄

And this was where this blog post was going to end, but ...

... I have just received this letter.

I only contacted them on Tuesday, so this is very quick work on their part.  I am now the proud owner of two £3 vouchers, I didn't do any of this for that but nevertheless I am happy to have them.

The big questions is now do I buy more beans with my vouchers?

Checking the prices of the Heinz beans and Sainsbury's own brand beans as I was a few minutes ago to get things right for this post, has thrown up that the packs of six Heinz beans are currently on offer in Sainsbury's at just £4.75 if you have a Nectar card, I'm tempted, but maybe that's their plan ... get me hooked on Heinz baked beans as I used to be many years ago.  😀

Sue xx

Bringing Home the Rhubarb, Snaffling the Blueberries and Old Photos

 

We only planted this rhubarb plant in Spring of this year.  You're not really supposed to harvest from a newly transplanted bush, instead you leave all the goodness to go back into the roots ready for a bumper harvest the following year.

Our rhubarb has had other ideas, it was this big a couple of months ago and I carefully pulled out the largest of the stems and made some rhubarb crumble mixes for mine and Alan's freezers.  Over the last few weeks the plant has gone rampant ... there is no other word for it. 

The chippings disappeared under a blanket of huge leaves and the plants behind were invisible unless you peeled back a leaf and had a look..

So today I bit the bullet before the garden totally disappeared under a swath of huge leaves.  The dogs will be pleased to see their chipping area back, I can finally see my Fern and Rosemary plants again ... and the compost bin is full right to the top with all the leaves.

Meanwhile in the kitchen, the rhubarb stalks are all trimmed, soaked and ready to be cut into chunks and frozen ... alongside a few apples that came easily off the tree.  There will be some lovely homegrown fruit to help out with my rations over the Winter.

I could have had some Blueberries as well if I hadn't been eating them all the minute they turn blue enough.  Not a single one has made it as far as the kitchen.  Well, all gardeners deserve a tasty little treat don't they.  😄

When we met up with my cousin at Mum's house a few weeks, ago she brought with her some old family photos to see if we wanted them.  I of course had to say yes to most of them and Mum had some too.  I love old photos, especially black and white ones.  I managed to find this old frame in an antique centre with a mount that I just knew would compliment it perfectly.

It's just Mum, Dad and me on the day of my christening.   I'd say happy memories .... but I don't remember it at all. 💖

Sue xx

Early Morning by the Canal, Family Visits and Getting My Ration Head On

It was lovely first thing this morning and Ginger came to tell me as much at 6.20am.  He wanted to go out and looking at the positioning of all my floor length curtains he had had a peep at all three usually available exits before deciding that he needed his own personal door person to facilitate this.  He went out and half an hour later, after a breakfast snack at Alan's he was back to mine to claim his usual morning treat of Dreamies and fall asleep once again on the armchair.

By this time I had put the first load of washing on and was sat clutching a mug of coffee and watching some YouTube.  It was just so nice outside that once the washing machine had done it's thing, I pegged the clothes out on the line and took myself canal side for a walk on the towpath.

The boaters were still tucked up in their huge beautifully decorated metal tubes, the paths were clear and the sun was shining, what a brilliant way to start the day.

I love the stillness of early morning. and as it was still barely past seven o'clock I only saw one other person to say 'Good Morning' to, a lady with two excitable Spaniels.

As I got closer to home the water was sparkling in the early morning sunshine, I have fingers firmly crossed that we have another good day all day today.  Yesterday was lovely, sunny and warm and as Alan's sister came to stay for the weekend we enjoyed sitting in the garden catching up on news.  Earlier she too had enjoyed the early morning towpath, going for a jog in sunshine but getting pretty muddy as she burned up the miles along the canal-side after Saturdays heavy rains.

Later we left all three dogs ... our two and her German Shepherd Tia ... back at home snoozing and had a pleasant wander around the sleepy Sunday High Street, with Alan and Alison comparing property prices between here and Peebles, before stopping for a coffee and a slice of cake in Booths café.

I love that our High Street has shops that virtually all still close on a Sunday, even in retail you need a day off and our shops are virtually all small independents. Of course the supermarkets are open and our new Factory Shop was open although pretty deserted.  Our little town is like a step back in time occasionally ... in a very good way.

And speaking of stepping back in time, it seems I already have my 'rationing head' on, I have started saving my citrus peels and popping them into the freezer, first this lonely little Easy Peeler skin at the start of last week ...

... and then the squeezed out ends from the lemon bought this week for my early morning drinks.  

Once I have added the skins from the other six that I have in the fridge and the cores from the two apples in there I will have a bag of bits and bobs ready to add to some Compost Heap Jelly, which will make good use of my sugar ration when rationing begins at the end of this month.

In the meantime I have been sorting through my food cupboard, donating a couple of things that just won't get eaten and getting things organised on shelves so that I know what is available to eat and when, during my rationing months.

I need to finish my narrowboat book this week and then start reading up on rationing again to get my head in the right space for this ongoing money-saving personal challenge.

What did you get up to at the weekend?

Sue xx 

Frozen Assets ... and Retirement

 

The freezer drawers have been bugging me recently, it would seem with me they are either super organised or a complete mish mash of half opened packs thrown in any available gap.  So I decided to stock take yet again and go from the latter to the former in the space of a few hours.  

I think it was having that perfect new freezer with all it's empty drawers at the flat made mine seem all the more messy and out of control when I got home.

Taking everything out and wiping out the tiny annoying bits of spinach that were stuck everywhere took only a few minutes, so I decided to make a note of what was in which drawer and put everything back nice and neatly.

A proper stocktake. 🗠😀

It's always surprising to see how much food you have when it's usually out of sight behind a door isn't it ... and I've only done two of the drawers up to now.   I have a lovely amount of vegetables in the drawers, enough to keep me healthy for a good few weeks.  Now all I need to do is combine them with the things in the food cupboard and I should have lots of lovely meals at no extra cost to me.

Which is a good thing as we have been talking about our retirement plans over the last week or so, and Alan has finally handed in his necessary 18 months notice, ready for his actual retirement date of April 2025.  

As I am not due to retire until May of 2026 (providing they don't move the goalposts yet again), I would like to actually retire from the day job at the same time as Alan, closing the company down and finally being free.  To be able to do this I need to have a dedicated savings pot of one whole years basic salary, this way I will be able to continue to draw on that for the final year before my State Pension kicks in.

So being able to save money seems even more important just now ... time to sort out the last drawer of the freezer then!!

Sue xx

Ultra-Processed ... Me?

 

So I finally finished my book. 

Over the past few weeks it's been a case of pick it up, read a bit, think about things, check things out for myself, do more back-up reading and generally really let what I have been learning sink in properly.  This was no quick and easy read and I felt it was important enough ... to me anyway ... to read this book properly.

I liked that the book tells you right at the beginning not to throw away all your ultra-processed foods but to spend more time reading their labels and assessing how they make you feel ... and boy have I been doing this.

The ingredients for a simple cheese and onion toasty that I was making one day last week. 

 While the toasty was cooking I read the labels of the spread ...

... and the 'cheese'.

I don't find them horrific in any way but they are things that I have been re-evaluating.  I won't buy this particular cheese anymore but the spread will stay as it is one of the better ones I have found.  I do want to avoid eating so many starches, extracts, lecithins etc etc

Of course I had to look at my chocolate bars too.

Fingers crossed for good ingredients here!

The Aldi white chocolate is delicious and although the ingredients list is long I will still be eating it occasionally, perhaps just a little bit more occasionally than I have been recently.  😄

Overall I have found that virtually all the Deliciously Ella products that I have in my cupboards have been in amongst the best foods and treats ingredients-wise.  Take this chocolate as an example, just four ingredients in the chocolate and all of them very recognisable ... and it's tasty chocolate too!

What I will be doing from now on is keeping the NOVA scale in mind when I'm shopping and eating and just trying my best to cut back a bit on the foods that are in the Ultra Processed Foods category.  I doubt I would ever be as close to the 80 natural/20 UPF aim that I would like but I will be a lot more mindful for sure.

Now it's time to relax with a book that is a lot lighter reading.

Afloat

Sue xx

Tiny Garlic Breads and Tiny Jars

 

I had some of these in the freezer last week and decided to eat them over a couple of days.  

One is supposed to be a serving size ... but one little garlic bread really, they are diddy!!  I like at least two any time I have them

The first day I had them with some pesto spaghetti, Tenderstem broccoli  and peas.

The next lunchtime I decided to turn them into two tiny pizzas, gosh they were good this way. 

INGREDIENTS: Fortified Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Extra Virgin Olive Oil (16%), Garlic (4%), Flat Leaf Parsley, White Wine Vinegar, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Grape Must, Yeast, Black Pepper.

The ingredients for the little garlic breads are relatively good too, although I don't understand why there is 'Grape Must' in them.  😕

This photo shows the Basil Pesto that I was using up from the food cupboard and it highlighted to me why it's been taking me so long to work my way through everything, this tiny little jar lasted me for four different meals.  

First use on the spaghetti and then on these miniscule pizzas.

A couple of days later it was used as big blobs dotted all through a cheese, onion and tomato quiche.

 I love using it this way as it adds a real depth of flavour to the whole quiche, it works well dotted onto a pizza too, whether it be a homemade one or a store bought one and it's something that I do regularly.

And finally I finished it off on another bowl of penne pasta, which I don't seem to have taken a photo of.  Four days to get one little jar out of my cupboard.  It will be Christmas before my cupboard is empty at this rate!!

Sue xx

Homemade Oat Milk, Menu Planning and Ingredients

 

I'm getting to the stage of the Food Cupboard Challenge where I am mostly running out of ready made things.  I say 'mostly' as there are still some pasta pot type things and I'm sure there must be some things in the bottom cupboard that I could just tip into a pan and call a meal.  But I have been concentrating on the top cupboard this past couple of weeks.  I went in there yesterday to get a carton of almond milk and found I had already used up the last one.

So with no time to soak almonds (they need at lest six hours or preferably overnight), I decided to make some oat milk to go on my morning weetabix. It's a simple milk to make:

 I just soak 60g of oats for half an hour or so in my Nutribullet cup, drain them, rinse them a couple of times and then put them in back into the cup with 450ml of fresh cold water, and blend for about 30 seconds.  Strain through a fine sieve ... I usually do it twice ... and then decant into a clean bottle and put into the fridge, it's much nicer chilled.

These measurements give you a pint of fresh oat milk.  You will have to shake it up every time you use it as without emulsifiers it does separate.  It's not my favourite sort of homemade milk but when you're waiting for your breakfast it's a nice quick one to make.

I added the leftover oat 'mush' to some scones later that day.

The original recipe is in this book, on page 20.

I haven't been shopping for a few weeks now and I am starting to miss the supermarkets, I've actually found myself watching more YouTubers than usual doing food hauls to get my fix!!  But I quite like that things are visibly finally starting to go down both in my cupboard and in the fridge.  In fact the fridge is so bare I have been wiping down the shelves as they empty ... it's like a long drawn out spring cleaning.  😄

I thought I would make a menu plan for this week to make good use of what's left in there, incorporating some things from the cupboard and the freezer too. Before anyone jumps in and says that I'm not eating enough veggies etc etc, I will be adding things to these planned out meals, but I'm not restricting myself to writing down what ... I'll wait until the actual mealtime and see what I fancy, sometimes I am in the mood for lots of vegetables and sometimes I have to make myself eat peas.

The main point of this particular menu was to space out the last four bread rolls and three slices of bread that I have in the freezer.  I want to try a week without bread next week and I know if there's some lurking anywhere in the lodge I will cave in and eat it, so what I have in has to be used up this week.

Now it's time to grab my hummus, chop some celery and carrots and have my lunch.

Sue xx

From the Potatoes That I Didn't Plant ... and the Cucumber That I Did

 

Last night, just in time for our tea, I pulled up the first of our potato plants, not one planted by me but a lovely healthy looking volunteer left unintentionally in the ground from last year.

This was it in the central section of this bed just over a month ago, by last night it was twice as tall as it was in this photo, and although it never actually flowered the greenery was starting to go yellow.

It was time to see what we had!!

There was a grand total of 3lb 2oz, which is not bad at all for what I think was two little potatoes left in the soil from last year ... and no work, other than a bit of watering from me. 😀

I washed them and divided them into half for each of us, and we both made meals that made the potatoes the star of the show for our teas last night, we also each have enough for another good sized portion tonight ... well we might as well eat them while they are nice and fresh.

I boiled all mine up last night, so I have the other half ready cooked for tonight, Alan just cooked half of his and saved the rest.

I made myself a nice simple tea, making good use of all the leftover things that I had in the fridge to compliment the potatoes.  Isn't it a good feeling when all those little tubs of bits and bobs get used up in one fell swoop.

And guess what ...

... I could not resist putting the four teeny, tiny potatoes that were too small to cook into a pot of soil.

It will be interesting to see if we get anything from them ... but hey,. waste not want not.  😉

Oh, and I forgot to mention that while my potatoes were cooking Alan came in with our first little cucumber, he wanted to have half with his tea, so I cut it in two and he went off with his portion.  I ate mine straight away while the potatoes bubbled on the stove.  It was very tasty, but it just didn't last long enough to get it's photo taken!

Sue xx

Sandwich Spread - Homemade or Bought?

 

Salad sandwich fillers are a Summer lunch that is easy, quick, tasty and delicious.

My boys used to love this stuff in their sandwiches for their school packed lunches, and I have to admit so did I occasionally.  But I doubt I would eat it now after reading Chris van Tulleken's book Ultra Processed People and then reading the ingredients list on it's label.  

Spirit Vinegar, Sugar, Cabbage (contains Preservative - Sulphites), Rapeseed Oil, Water, Carrots, Gherkins (contain Firming Agent - Calcium Chloride), Modified Cornflour, Salt, Onions, Egg Yolks, Red Peppers, Mustard, Stabilisers - Guar Gum and Xanthan Gum, Spice Extracts, Spices, Herb Extract (contains Celery), Flavourings, Colour - Riboflavin, VEGETABLES 35%

For one thing I wouldn't touch Xanthan Gum with a barge pole, especially after learning that it is also an ingredient of wallpaper paste!!

Food is just continuing to shock me at the moment!

These days I make my own sandwich fillers, and I have done for a long time.  

Experimenting with leftovers and a dash of mayonnaise is pretty much guaranteed to make a sandwich filler that is tasty, quick and much better for you than a jar of shelf stable long life 35% vegetable mush.

I tend to use a couple of tablespoons of my choppy salads when I have some in the fridge, it's easy, quick and very tasty.  Chopping the already chopped up salad veggies a little bit smaller and adding just salt, pepper and a squeeze of mayonnaise ... either bought or homemade ... and this time I added some dairy free cheese that I had ready grated in the fridge.  Within minutes I had a fresh tasting and relatively healthy lunch.

If I had to eat some of the jarred stuff I think I would load the sandwich up with lots of crunchy lettuce and cucumber and try not to think of wallpaper paste while I ate my lunch.

What is your absolute favourite sandwich filler?

Sue xx

Picking Your Poisons Wisely

I'm currently just over halfway through my latest book, Chris van Tulleken's Ultra Processed People, and I'm finding it absolutely fascinating, although there's so much to take in that it's taking me far longer to read through than perhaps it should.

One of the things he states in it right at the beginning is that you should continue to eat all your normal foods while you're reading the book, in the same way that a lot of people did with Allen Carr's book 'Easy Way to Stop Smoking'.  This worked well for a friend of mine who had tried to give up smoking for years before finally reading the book and then quitting, so I knew that it worked.  

Reading and still eating all your usual foods does make you a bit obsessed with reading the labels and I have already found a few things that I thought were the healthiest and really they are not ... the bread rolls mentioned last week for instance.  I think moving forward I will be picking my poisons carefully, keeping in my diet the ones that I love the most and finding alternatives where possible for others.

These 'No Chicken' Garlic Kievs from Aldi are delicious and make for a quick evening meal when I'm not all that hungry, so they will stay ... unless I can find a suitable alternative for them.

I usually fill the dish up with peas when I have these with either new potatoes or rice, but I just wasn't in the mood that evening.  So simple it was.

Every morning I have a cup of hot water with a slice of lemon, after drinking this the slice of lemon gets popped into a glass of water and left in the fridge for another drink later in the day.  On the days when I don't have any lemon slices left ... I can't always get unwaxed lemons in town, and even washing the waxed ones thoroughly leaves a film on the water, so you know the wax is still there ... I have been using a dash of bottled lemon juice.

I had never read the label until last week!!

My old bottled lemon juice on the right ... and my new one on the left.

This is the ingredient list from the old lemon juice bottle.

One thing really jumped out at me so I Googled it to see just what I had been consuming. 

From Wikipedia. 

This really jumped out at me:  

Safety

Potassium metabisulfite can irritate skin, eyes, and respiratory tract.

Yesterday, as you might have noticed on the last post I bought a bottle of this instead.

Ingredients:  Organic Lemon Juice.

Now that's better.  😀

I hope to be making lots of little changes like this over the course of the next few months.

Now it's time to get the vacuum cleaner out ...

Or maybe I'll just go back to my book.  😄

Happy Sunday everyone.

Sue xx