Letting Things Slip

There are so many lovely vegetables available in the UK at this time of year,  not as  many maybe as in the Summer months, but still lots of choice available for us to buy.  And they are mostly homegrown.

And of course lots of lovely fruits available for us to buy in the shops, although until June we are not very self sufficient in this country for fruit.  But there are still UK grown apples available and homegrown Rhubarb is just about to come into it's own, more than enough to get us the vitamin C we need.

So why just recently have I gone down a rabbit hole of ...

Fishless Fingers on buns.

Falafel Pizza served with bacon flavoured Pringles.

Linda McCartney Sausage Rolls.

Although my saving grace here was that at least I served them with Cherry tomatoes 😁

And pickled onions are a veg ... right!!

My only excuse is Christmas, being busy and soooo many vegan foods ... or should I say easy vegan junk foods ... suddenly being available in the shops in time for Veganuary.  I've jumped onto a weird bandwagon and seriously now I feel the need to leap right back off, quickly.

I need to sit and read through my whole food plant-based cook books ... and more importantly ... actually cook from them.  I need to meal prep and take myself in hand so that when I feel the need for a snack there is one waiting for me made from good foods sat in the fridge.  No more grabbing a bun and slapping something on it, less bread makes me feel so much better anyway.

Life is busy yes, but I am able to cope with being busy so much better if I feel good and I really feel that I am at the end of my health tether at the moment.  What better time than this my 60th year to take myself in hand and come out of it feeling, and perhaps even looking a bit better.

So as Alan takes on his new 8 week diet plan, which in traditional fashion he is starting on Monday, I am going to join in but in a different way, buying, cooking and eating good foods from scratch.  Let's see if by my birthday in April I can make myself feel better.

Our plan is to round up all the leftover, still sealed Christmas food and gifts that have decent dates on them and drop them off at the supermarket Foodbank collection trolley when we go to stock up our respective larders in time for a new beginning food wise.

There ... I've committed it in writing on my blog so I HAVE to do it.

Sue xx

Too Few or Too Many ... or Just Enough

Do you have too few clothes ...

 … or too many.

The question should of course be what do you consider to be too few or too many?  I was reading online about a girl that only owns 10 items of clothing at a time, only replacing things when they wear out.  For me I think this would be too few.  

A couple of years ago I did Project 333, choosing 33 items of clothing to see me through each 3 month season, now that worked really well.  I enjoyed the pulling together of a sort of capsule wardrobe and the freedom it gave me in the mornings to choose from the just few favourite items I had available.  When I went away on holiday for a week while I was doing this, all my things fitted very comfortably into one small sized carry on bag.

When things in my 'collection' didn't work for any reason ... or wore out as a couple of things did … I could donate them to the charity shop or throw them away and pull in something else to replace them, because with this Challenge all you do is pack away all your other stuff ready to rifle through them again at the next change around date.

At the moment it feels like I have too many clothes.  Of course I have to remember that just for now I have all my clothes from both here and from the Van, as I did have to duplicate some things and have extras of other things like underwear that always ended up left in the washing basket at one end or the other.

Still it feels like there's too much.

There is a lot less than here used to be though thanks to me selling a couple of rails worth of stuff at last years car boot sales.  The middle shelf here, where the spare bedding for the two beds is sat, used to have another plastic box of out of season wear.  

Not any more  😊

As well as the wardrobe I have three drawers in the chest of drawers and Alan has the other one for his spare t-shirts. He only needs the one as his bedside table also has drawers, two of which he uses for underwear and hankies etc.  One of mine has a mix of t-shirts and jumpers, one half a dozen bulky jumpers and the other one is full of all my underwear.

Again half of this is usually at the Van, so at the moment the drawers feel very cramped as well as the wardrobe.  Although I have just noticed how wonderfully co-ordinated the things in there are.

But I still think it's time for me to have a bit of a sort out!!

One place I definitely need to have a bit of a clear out is my shoe cupboard. 

 I seem to have kept a lot of old 'dog walking shoes' that I really don't need, as now have two pairs of really good walking boots thanks to finding another pair like my favourites in the Hotter sale.  And I have lots worn out Converse style sneakers that I've worn for a couple of years that are just about okay enough to go into the charity shoe recycling container at our Tesco store.

I have some as yet unworn ones for this Summer as I watch out for them in the end of season sale in Sainsury's and Asda and get my next years supply then … usually for around £3 a pair.

Although looking at this photo from Google Images my shoe cupboard suddenly looks very tame!!

I guess we each have what we like to have, and if it gets out of control for any reason it feels good to be able to get things back to within limits that really only we should set for ourselves.

I suddenly feel a very real need to get back to P333 and see what sort of workable capsule wardrobe I can pull together now I don't need outdoor working clothes anymore.

So if you don't hear from me for a day or two … I'll be in the wardrobe  😉

Sue xx

Here Physically ...

Other peoples problems weigh heavy

They tell you them

But do they want you just to listen 

Or do they want them solved

They don't tell you that bit

I'm all zoned out

Simply can't cope with another layer

I'd daydream about chocolate 

But it's lost it's appeal

I do, however, wonder what the fuck is going on.

♥

Snippets of Home - 2

You enjoyed the last tour of our Welsh home so much that I though I would continue … so lets finish off the downstairs today then.

As you can see here in the living room this is a favourite spot of the animals, even without the log burner being lit at the moment thanks to the new doggy bed that Alan has bought them.  When it is  lit the log burner can warm the whole house.  We have the living room door closed for a while to trap the heat downstairs and then an hour or so before bedtime we open it and the heat rushes upstairs … much quicker than we do!

It's so much cheaper to heat the house with logs from our woodland and off cuts from the workshop.  Alan has been busy chopping up all the odds and sods of wood he has out there that will never be used for making stuff, hence the rectangular basket full of blocks of wood.  They burn really well and warm the house for free, as most of them are from old pallets.

To the left of the fireplace are the built in cupboards.  They are original to this 1900's cottage and although I painted them green on the outside as the wood was quite poor,  inside the shelves and walls are lovely and rustic.  The top cupboard currently contains my huge DVD collection and board games for wet Winter nights and in the bottom cupboard there is the box of Christmas decorations, a couple of electric fans for hot summer nights … and not much else since all our simplifying.  

Well apart from the internal workings for the Freesat box, a complicated wiring system as our satellite dish is on a tree in the woodland right at the top of the hill.  It's never easy living on a Welsh hillside!!

At the other end of the room is my little old table.  Functional and useful for holding the lamp, and with the leaves up big enough for four people to comfortably eat around.  It was only £50 from a little antique type place a couple of years ago and I've been tempted to paint it a few times, but it so closely matches the little chair which was one of my Nana's wedding presents back in the 1920's that it has stayed in it's original polished wood up to now.

 Here's the view from the front window, looking out on the A470, the railway line one field away and the river Conwy another field further on … with the Carneddau mountains as a backdrop.  A very picturesque outlook and one that we have spent far too long gazing at over the last six and a half years when we should have been doing something else.

But ...

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.
No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.
No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.
No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.
No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies.

The view from the side window - not quiet as appealing but here we look out onto the garage space and workshop with the net and polytunnels just in front of our fields, with the hills again in the background as the valley winds round following the course of the river.

 Another Mavis? … no she's just moved position in the time it took me to take these photos.

The door to the right of the fireplace leads to the bathroom, this would have been a huge no-no for us buying the house if it hadn't been for the upstairs toilet.  Which on moving in we found hadn't bloody well worked for years and which took us two years to eventually get sorted out!

Oh well it's all good now.

The bathroom.

It's still a bit of a work in progress as we had to have the chipped much larger bath taken out and the new one is leaking so Alan hasn't been able to get the side panel on, although he has finished the tiling.  

You can ignore the smudge on the shower screen ... it's not … it's actually on my camera lens 🤣

The view from the loo!!

That BATH sign was here when we bought the house and we just painted it green, it's just one of those things you never get round to replacing even though it annoys you a bit.  The chair is another one of my Nana's, this time a kitchen chair rather than the bedroom chair that we have in the living room.  So because it had had more wear and tear I painted it green ... it's been a couple of different shades of green actually.

The bathroom window does not have a view, apart from being that obscure, opaque glass they use in bathroom windows, this window is literally two foot away from the rocks that form the bottom of the hill we sit on.  All that's behind the house is a small drainage channel to direct the water that runs down the hill from coming into the house.

Going back out into the living room if we cross over to the door we can see the built in bookcase, not original to the house but put in by a  previous owner.

And through the living room door to the teeniest little hallway ever.  Just a three foot square of carpet big enough to open the front door or walk over to get to the stairs.  The understairs cupboard, which holds a lot less clutter than it used to, still has it's original door.

We had all the doors dipped when we bought the house as they had been clogged up with many, many layers of paint.  I do love the natural beauty of wood, even if it is simple old pine and we have never been tempted to paint them again.

So that's it, the downstairs tour complete.  It's been good for me doing this as now I can see what I will have to tidy, change or titivate ready for the estate agents photos in a couple of months.

You want to see upstairs?

Sue xx

Ambling Into the New Year

I've ambled into the New Year slowly

When sorting out the fridge

And re-planting two planters

Takes you two days

You know you've slowed right down

 I've simply decided not to be rushed

Not to be shamed into being busy

To be the version of me that I want to be

❤

Taking Stock of the Food

So it's the 3rd of January and time for me to take stock of all the food that we have in the house.  I hate, hate, hate the thought of food going to waste and it feels good to shelf by shelf give the fridge a good hoick out and see what we have leftover from the Christmas and New Year shopping and hamper contents.

I think you can tell from the photo which two shelves I have already tidied  😉

We already had a lot of cheeses in stock ... and then the hamper came with even more tempting ones for Alan to sample.  So there is a lot leftover.  Firstly I double wrapped a couple of still sealed up wedges of Stilton and popped them straight into the freezer, then I set to grating a large block of Cheddar that had a use-by date of just one week hence.

Although you can freeze cheese in a block, it thaws slower and is much more crumbly once defrosted if you do it that way, so I always prefer to grate cheeses like Cheddar.  This way they can be used straight from the freezer in the exact quantity you want for a sandwich or a topping for something.

Never overfill your tub or bag as the little bit of air room means you can give it a good shake after it's had an hour in the freezer to keep it super free-flowing.

I had a little bit over after leaving my air space ...

... so I grated it and popped it into a tub to go back into the fridge.  I doubt it will last in there long once Alan spots it there and ready to use.  Perhaps a baked potato might be a good idea for lunch and he could use half of it then.

Anyway, now the little tub is in the fridge and the larger old ice-cream tub is in the freezer, as soon as I've posted this I'll be going downstairs to give it a shake and put the kettle on.  All this talk about food has made me thirsty ... and as you can see in the top photo there are still more shelves to sort through in the fridge so while the kettle boils I'll be doing another shelf.

Sue xx

Snippets of Home

The only part of Christmas that has not been packed away ... the weedy little Poinsettia that Alan bought me to replace the magnificent specimen he murdered last year!!  Somehow it's surviving, although the first few days we had it, it jettisoned leaves like a porcupine under attack from a rabid pack of wolves.

Anyway, this post is just a collection of photos of the kitchen and conservatory of our little Welsh cottage, as asked for a couple of weeks ago in the comments.  I can't remember who it was that requested a tour of our Welsh home but … this is for you.

This image in one arrangement or another must be so familiar to most of you.  

We've had this green colour on the wall in the kitchen and dotted throughout the house in various ways since we moved in.  It has been the only colour not refreshed during the massive refurb and redecoration of the cottage.  Therefore the shelves made from slices of leftover worktop could remain in situ whilst everything else around them was re-painted with a fresh coat of white.

The foods in all the jars are in regular use and the only changes you will ever see in photographs is varying levels as the contents are used up and the jars refilled with fresh supplies.

I'm no longer the sort of person that feels the need to change things around for change's sake, if something works well and looks good it simply stays as it is until there is a real reason for a change.  These shelves are just that, full of all my day to day needs, pleasing to the eye and just useful so I doubt that you will ever see any major changes on them.

The opposite end of the kitchen windowsill to the Poinsettia holds the Spider plant currently home with me from the Van, along with a little Puggy penholder from blogging buddy John Gray.  He knows the way to my heart and how to sneak in a bit of useful clutter.

A useful corner beneath the shelves.  

The little plug-in monitor is for the oil tank at the back of the house.  There's no need for a dipstick these days everything is done electronically, I can check the level from the reading on it.  The only thing oil-fired here is the heating and water boiler, so we don't use that much oil as the house is warmed by the Aga and the log burner.

Speaking of the Aga, here she is doing a sterling job of keeping a sleeping Pug nice and cosy.

Everything on this shelf is again in daily use ... you will be getting the drift now that we have jettisoned most of what was just pretty and kept things that are pretty and useful.  The photo of the parsnips is from blogging buddy Jack Monroe that I have had for a few years.

One of my favourite kitchen corners, the radiator cover with its top shelf that holds my cookbooks currently in use.  It is usually a bit of revolving collection on here, so at the moment it is mostly vegan books as we are just into Veganuary and I have been cooking from them over Christmas, and I'm trying to help out a bit on the Facebook page answering questions and giving advice.  I need to collect together the rest of my vegan collection and have them all in one place I think as I really like having them together this way.

If I pull back a bit with the camera you will see that this is also an alcohol storage corner and where the dogs and Gingers water bowl sits.  Don't worry things don't warm up too much as this radiator is never on.  You really don't need a radiator in a room with an Aga  😄

The reason we have so much alcohol leftover (including bottles of wine in the cupboard) is that being the contrary sort of person I am I actually gave up drinking just before Christmas.

A quick step through the open plan squared off 'archway' and you are into what we still refer to as the conservatory. 

 Long term readers of my previous blog will remember a few years ago when the plastic conservatory roof came off and a new proper tiled roof and framework was installed instead.  So really and officially this is now a 'garden room'.  A room with brick lower supporting walls, lots of windows, in our case on two sides, and a proper roof.  So it is cosier these days and much quieter on the few days we have rain here in North Wales, but we are just not posh enough to call it a Garden Room!!

Yes … I am being sarcastic … it never stops bloody raining!!

 My, I hear you saying it is all so neat and tidy … except for the manky old fleecy blanket on the table.  

That is because our puss cat Ginger is a funny puss cat and prefers to sleep on the table, whatever we put on the table he will sleep on.  Shopping bags, boxes, Alan's work clothes, table mats, piles of newspapers waiting to go out to the chicken shed.  So we have given in and simply put a fleecy blanket there.  In a couple of weeks he will change his mind and start to sleep somewhere else for a while, but he always reverts back to the top of the table … he is a cat and what he decides goes.

Although why he can't sleep on the chair with the exact same fleece on which is much cosier, or the cat bed tucked in the corner out of all draughts and light we have no idea.  This is the other side of the conservatory and just holds a chair and my old Welsh Cheese cupboard, or as we call it the jam cupboard as it's full of homemade jams and chutneys and all my jam making supplies.

If you enjoyed this little photographic journey around two of our rooms let me know and I will choose two more for you.  If you hated it also let me know ... and I'll sob into my cushion and eat some more chocolate!!

Sue xx