Nectar Ninja ... I don't think so!!

The other day PP over at Small Treasures shared her magnificent Nectar Ninja facts and figures, it makes for such fascinating reading doesn't it, when your shopping is dissected in this way.

Her post inspired me to go into my app and check out my own, which although equally fascinating are nowhere near as impressive.

Seeing it in black and white (and in many other colours) it does make you rack your brains to think back over what you've bought in the past year.  As you can see I do seem to spread the things I buy out over all the parts of the supermarket.  A little bit from each category.

The highest of which seems to have been cupboard fillers.

I think that may be because I always pick up some packs of pasta, rice and sauces to go into the Foodbank box at the exit.  Some things I don't know about at all because Alan has the same Nectar card number as me and he obviously buys his milk there on occasion .. and perhaps some ready meals too!

Between us we only shopped there 28 times over the course of last year, mainly because in our town Sainsbury's is the smallest supermarket so we tend to get most things at Aldi or Booths and use Sainsbury's for specific items or to pick up things on the way to Mum's as it is on the back road out of town.

The veg to fruit ratio seems fair as I eat way more vegetables than fruit, although I do buy the majority of them from Booths now.

It seems I am the number four purchase of Naturli in Garstang!  

This is actually the main reason that I go to Sainsbury's regularly as it's the only place in town that has been selling it up to now.  It's delicious by the way, the nearest thing to Lurpak that is dairy-free.

And yes, it's my top buy.

Closely followed by bananas and Quorn ham (delicious fried as a 'bacon butty').

Now I find all this fascinating as I had been in retail for most of my working life and loved it.  The push for sales and the financial workings out of operating a shop are in my blood.  But we have to remember that these cards are dangerous little things, the Nectar card, Tesco Clubcard et al are the retailers dream and advertisers main source of information about us, the great shopping public.

The Tesco Clubcard was trialled in two towns in the UK in 1993/94, and I happened to live near one of them ... Barrow in Furness, so I have held a Clubcard since the first day it was launched.  I remember my Dad being so excited to get his when they were rolled out nationally in 1995 and telling me about all the benefits, not realising that I had been using it for so long already.

At first I guess we were all so naïve at what this innocent little piece of plastic was actually up to.  Our shopping habits have now been monitored for years and looking back at the Nectar facts and figures above, this gives us just the tiniest glimpse of what the supermarkets actually know about us. 

They know where we live,  what we eat, how often we purchase things, how well we respond to offers and savings and how much money we spend with them.  From this baseline they can plot and plan what to offer us in the future, what to tempt us with and how to tempt us back if we stray.

It can be quite scary stuff if we think about it too much, so I guess if we have the cards we just have to get the best value we can from them and learn to use them in a way that suits us.  We should try not to be tempted to buy things just because we are offered them at a reduced rate ... unless we really need them at that time of course.  But most of all we should consider if we want our information to be held in banks of computers just so that we can save 40p on a tin of beans.

I'll be spending my Nectar points just as soon as I need to more vegetables.  😄

Sue xx

It's Nearly All About the Potatoes

 I decided last week not to add my breakfasts to the menu plan, or even all my lunches for that matter.  But some of them are still coming out of the freezer.  

Take this morning for instance, the bagel was supposed to be eaten with soup for my lunch but I just wasn't in the mood for soup and as you read further down I was messing about with my potatoes for a while and it got me in the mood to have a baked/jacket potato for lunch.  So I decided to switch around the soup and bagel and baked potato meals.

But I did have 'bagel' on my mind, so I decided that I would still have it but for breakfast and with some dairy-free cream cheese instead.  A small but very tasty breakfast, and of course according to my freezer inventory list I do still have two more bagels left to eat.

I bought these potatoes right at the start of December and they have been in the Stayfresh bags and inside a cool bag to try and keep them in a dark place, and then in the coolest place in the lodge ... which is actually my bedroom windowsill.

Yeah ... food is never where you expect it to be with me!!

Anyway they had spouted much more than I expected them to, although they were still lovely and firm.

I tipped them all out into a bowl of cold water, washed the bags ready to be used again for something else and then spent five minutes scraping off all the sprouts.  But you know me ... I couldn't resist leaving two of the smaller potatoes with their sprouts and pushing them into the soil in the middle section of the large raised bed in the garden ... it's always worth a try.  😁

I ended up with some very respectable looking potatoes.

One of the large ones was zapped in the microwave for my lunch and served with some butter and grated cheese and all the smaller ones were peeled, chopped and turned into mashed potatoes.

On my menu plan was mince and mash with the 'bonus peas', but I decided to keep it simple and just have these potatoes as they came out of the pan, so it was a very deconstructed Shepherdess Pie, and a very filling evening meal.

Once I had finished eating I mashed up the rest of the spuds and left them to cool in this container, which is now in the fridge and has enough mash for my three other planned potato meals for this week.

It's always nice to have a bit of meal prep done for the week ahead.

Sue xx

Menu Plan Monday ... and Photos from Our Journey Home from Scotland

 

This is my menu plan from last week and as you can see by the first three ticks it went perfectly to plan for the first three days, and then just like I expected with a trip to Scotland planned at the last minute, the end of the week tailed off.

Alan invited me over to his house for my evening meal on Thursday as he had something that really needed using up before we left.  As it was a Higgidy pie and a big bowl of mashed potatoes I wasn't going to say no.  The on Friday I had a minimal breakfast and then we packed and hit the road for Scotland and a weekend away staying at Alan's sister and her fiancé's house.  

The dogs love going there as they have a lovely elderly German Shepherd dog called Tia and our little dogs hero worship big dogs ... much to Tia's annoyance.  Imagine it, suddenly your house isn't your own anymore and you have an annoying little Pug following you everywhere you go ... no wonder she is always relieved when they settle down a bit after the first day.

This week's menu took shape very quickly as I first transferred the meals that hadn't been used over from last week with little change.  Hopefully this week will go more to plan as we have nowhere that takes us out of the house for longer than a few hours.

Did I hear someone say 'What are bonus peas?' ... maybe not, but I'll tell you anyway.  They are the peas that you have left over when you tip out all the peas from the bag on Wednesday night's fish and chip meal, thinking that there will be just enough for the one meal and actually there are way too many.  So, in the interests of being able to add them to another meal I spooned some of them back into the bag ready for this week.

Now just because I got snap happy on the way back from Scotland on Sunday afternoon here are some of the lovely snowy scenes.

And there's the snap happy snow photographer in the wing mirror. 😄

As soon as we dropped lower down the hills onto the roads leading into Moffat the snow vanished, there was literally a line across a hillside field, snow on one side and then grass on the other and then the town and the roads leading to it were completely clear.

We stopped on the way home for a very late lunch at Tebay Services on the M6, and while Alan was picking up our order from the counter I snapped a photo of the view from our table.  This is one of our favourite services and if we pass we usually stop either just for a coffee and a dog walk or, like in this instance, for a dog walk and a meal.  We usually have a look around the beautiful farm shop too, but this time we were both tired and there was nothing we needed ... and I especially did not need any temptation to spend any of my money!!

And with two tired and happy snoring dogs on the back seat we set off for the final forty minutes of our journey back home.  Of course the best bit of having had our meal on the way home was that neither of us needed to cook or wash up, so it was just a case of a cup of coffee and the latest episode of Vera on the television ... a very good end to a brilliant weekend.

Sue xx

Blogging Buddies, Not all Nuts on the Same Day

 I couldn't resist sharing this, I feel it sums up our growing band of long-time bloggers so well.

We all have days when we ramble, some days when we ask for help or days when we offer help to others.  We all have fun days and down days, and luckily ... and happily ... we all have them at different times to each other.  And because of that we can take it in turns to cheer each other up, sympathise when needed, offer moral support, wise words or handy tips.  And sometimes just generally be there and be known to be there.

And of course it's best for us and our readers, if we're not all nuts on the same day. 😊

Sue xx

Shopping for Gifts, Temptation

 This weeks spending = £4 for the Radio Times and £3.80 for ten eggs.

I wasn't going to buy any more eggs, but then I changed my mind at the last minute while we were in Booths buying some gifts for someone.

So that's another £7.80 spent of this years cash.

After writing that I am now beginning to slightly regret buying them.  I don't really need them when I have so much more food in the house ... and that is why staying away from the shops is the best idea for me.  Happily my Radio Times subscription begins this week, so it will be coming through the letterbox and I can avoid the shops once more.

Sue xx

Yet Another Treaty Breakfast, Five a Day ... and What a Lazy Pug

Sometimes using up the contents of the fridge makes for delicious birthday breakfasts. 

On Alan's birthday I took him over three of these delicious looking and tasting Cinnamon Swirls, and of course I had the other three.  😁

I have to go through the fridge sometime in the next few days and check the dates that are on everything I have left, to make sure that nothing gets wasted.  Now I know for a fact that there is a box of Pan au Chocolates in there ... so that could be yet another breakfasty treat for us both!

The good thing is that if there is anything that needs freezing I have already made space in the freezer so that will be possible.  It would have been totally out of the question just a few days ago.

Breakfast this morning was a much more normal bowl of grapefruit.  I checked the can to see how many portions you are supposed to get out of one tin and as luck would have it the answer is three portions.  Which is exactly what I have already have whenever I open a can.  And it also says that one third of a can is classed one of your five-a-day.

Which is interesting as I was literally just reading about the Five-a-Day thing yesterday in this book.

Seemingly it was never worked out by health professionals ... as I had assumed it was ... but was originally launched back in 1991 as a public/private partnership between the National Cancer institute and the Produce for Better Health Foundation and was sponsored by fruit and vegetable companies, general produce companies and chemical companies that produce seeds, fungicides and insecticides. 

 So it was essentially just a marketing campaign not a health one.  

In 2010 they tried to find medical evidence to back up the benefits but couldn't.  So your five a day are only good for you if you eat your five a day in place of junk or processed foods.  A 2010 study, called the EPIC study, involving over half a million people across Europe for over eight years, concluded that eating a particular number of any random fruits and vegetables did not show any positive effects on health or any medical condition.

Sorry to get all semi-quote-y but I find this sort of thing fascinating!

And I won't show Suky this photo that her Dad took of her yesterday!!  

That's no way to photograph a sleeping lady.  😄

Sue xx

 

Spicy Breakfast, Recipe, then Cakey Breakfast

 

It was an unusual breakfast yesterday morning, I just wasn't in the mood for anything remotely breakfast-y ... and anyway who says that breakfasts have to be toast or cereal!!

Why not have a spicy start to the day.

Sorry for the blurry photo, I must have moved as I snapped. 

 I decided mid morning to use up my last two disgracefully black and overripe bananas to make some Banana Bread.  The recipe also used up the last of the eggs and the last of my white sugar from the jar,  I had to top it up with some demerara sugar to get to the right weight.  This was a huge success by the way, the crunch and flavour it gave to the bread was wonderful.

My Banana Bread

140g softened butter

140g sugar

2 beaten eggs

140g self raising flour

1tsp baking powder

2 very ripe bananas, mashed

1tsp vanilla extract

Cream together the butter and sugar and then add everything else to the bowl and give it a really good mix.  Divide the mixture between two greased or lined 1lb loaf tins, or you can make one large loaf but this will take longer to cook and doesn't have as much gloriously crunchy edge-to-cake ratio.  

Cook in a pre-heated oven at 160 degrees for about 40 minutes.  Check after 20 or so minutes as you might need to cover the top with some foil to stop it browning too much.  I always have to do this.

My two cakes cooling on a wire tray.

Do try to let them cool almost completely before eating a piece, as they are very crumbly at first and difficult to slice.

I always cut the pieces of foil large enough so that I can use them again for something else and then fold them to sit neatly on top of the cakes.

This is delicious as it is with a nice cup of coffee,  or it can be served with custard, ice-cream or cream, or ... and in my opinion the best way ... spread thickly with butter.  

Guess what I'll be having for breakfast for the next couple of days?  

Well it's not having cake for breakfast if it's called Banana Bread now is it.  😁

Sue xx

Just a note:  I have noticed a lot of my comments on other people's blogs vanishing almost as soon as I make them, and even on my own blog occasionally ... so do check your Spam boxes for comments again if you think you haven't heard from me recently.   I am also finding a lot of peoples comments are ending up in mine too and I have been retrieving some most days.  Blogger is a pain!!