One year later.....positives

OK, the positives are harder to think of!! lol

I'm closer to my sister now.  She was fantastic when we had the pub and through some of our other problems.

Dave doesnt have to work in his own job anymore.  It changed him, he wasn't a nice person at times when he was there, due to all the problems and stress.

We have a new dog - Ollie.  Another Golden Retriever, we fell in love with the breed :-)

Hubby got me a greenhouse and made me some raised beds, the darling.  I'm in absolute heaven when I'm in there.  I can't believe how successful I've been so far with the seedlings etc.

My younger daughter is as wonderful as ever (but her school is a whole different matter!!!!!)

We have a cruise/stay holiday to look forward to in October.  Paid for before Dave lost his job, we're going to make the most of it. It may be the last holiday we get for a while :-(.





Hmmm...I'll keep working on this list!

xx

One year later.....negatives

Well....it's over a year since my last blog post.  And it's been a crap year.  Seriously.

My daughter's uni course fell through, so she's pretty much had a wasted year.  She starts uni this September now, fingers crossed nothing ELSE goes wrong!

Our dog Jorge died - we took him to the vets with what we thought was arthritis, turns out it was a tumor on his spine and had to be put to sleep straight away.  Walk in with a dog expecting Metacam tablets, walk out with just his lead.

Hubby lost his job.  So we are now down £34,000, but at least he doesn't have to work somewhere he hates anymore.

We took on a pub!!  Stayed there for three months, then left because of the total lack of support from the brewery.  We would have been haemmoraging money if we'd stayed.

My mother-in-law died - this was pretty much the final starw for hubby. She'd had altzeimers for a long time, but we think it was her kidneys in the end.

A massive blow up argument with hubby's family.  Enough said.

Then finally, our beloved cat Henry disappeared two weeks ago.  We've done everything we can to find him, and I think I have to accept that he's not coming back.

So I'm going to try the blog again, maybe it will give me something positive to concentrate on!!

xx

One small step for man.....or frugality !!

I have phases of being really good at keeping costs down, then totally forgetting and blowing money on a really unnecessary huge shopping trip to the supermarket. Since I've been working at Sainsburys I've been able to take advantage of staff offers - eg a 4 pack of yogurts that has one of the pots burst - we can buy the remaining three at dirt cheap prices. I've built up quite a lovely freezer full of reduced meats, but I always forget that they're there, and then buy more !! We are in the fortunate position of being able to keep our heads above water. Dave works full time, I work sixteen hours a week plus occasional overtime. We manage. However I really want to make the most of my wages - I want to stretch them to do so much more, so I'm making a concerted effort to reduce my costs. Some of the frugality blogs I've seen astound me - I'm in awe of some of the wonderful people, and of how much I can learn from them. And I really will learn - one small step at a time. Today's small step - our tea of chicken breasts roasted in those lovely oven bags with herbs, with garlic potato cubes and veg I cooked one breast too many. Instead of just finishing it off as 'seconds' (they were lovely !!!) I've chopped it up along with some tomato and cucumber, added some low fat mayo from Approved Foods and made my husband's sandwiches for tomorrow. One small step......one lovely lunch for hubby !! Clare xx

(Strawberry and Ice Cream) Pancake Day

Lemon and sugar is fine for my pancakes - I'm a traditionalist. However, my older daughter and my husband prefer theirs with chopped strawberries and Carte D'or Vanilla ice cream.

Spoilt, I tell you, spoilt !!

Clare xx

Missing the big yellow thing in the sky.....

The cold I can cope with. The rain I can cope with. However I'm struggling at the minute to cope with the lack of colour!

Everything seems so grey, so colourless. I went through some files on my computer and found the photo above, taken from the garden of a gite that we rented near Bergerac a few years ago. It actually makes me ache for the sun again, and the green of the fields! We were surrounded by grapevines everywhere we went, along with sunflowers, fruit trees and sweetcorn.

When can we have the big yellow thing back in the sky please ??????

Clare xx

Double Chocolate Muffins

I must have made these Double Chocolate Muffins over 200 times in the past few years! I've tweaked the recipe a little over time and played around with changing flavours, but this is a recipe that I absolutely love. I've made over 200 in the past for a friend's daughter's wedding, and I'm always asked for them by friends and family at any party I attend. I even keep my mechanic sweet by keeping him supplied with them !!

Recipe

10oz plain flour

5oz granulated sugar

1 tbsp baking powder

4 heaped (and I mean heaped) tbsp cocoa - not drinking chocolate

200g chopped dark chocolate (cheaper than chocolate chips and I prefer finding a few large chunks in my muffins!)

8 fl oz milk

2 eggs

4oz butter

Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Melt the butter and combine first with the milk, then with the eggs (to cool the butter a little and prevent scrambling the eggs!). Then carefully mix the wet ingredients with the dry until the batter is only just about ready - never overmix muffin batter as you lose the wonderful texture that you never get with supermarket produced ones.

Fill 12-15 paper muffin cases about two thirds full. If the batter gets a little floury towards the end of the bowl, then add a little milk (a couple of tablespoons) and lightly incorporate it.

Bake at Gas mark 5 for about 20 minutes, checking from 18 minutes onwards to see if they're ready. The tops should be dark and glossy, the bottoms very soft and squidgy - the essence of a good muffin! When they're done, the whole kitchen smells of chocolate :-)

The other muffins in the photo above are Strawberry and White Chocolate. Replace the chopped dark chocolate with chopped white chocolate, and leave out the cocoa powder. Add a punnet of chopped strawberries and sprinkle with demerara sugar before baking as before. The sugar gives a lovely crunch to the cakes.

Happy eating :-)

Clare xx

Pie maker, pie maker

I bought an AWT Pie Maker in the sale at work (Sainsburys) yesterday, having wanted one for a long, long time. I couldn't justify the £40 that they are usually priced at, but at £23 - I used my Nectar points for it, so it was virtually free!!

Lucy and I have just spent a lovely day together, the last couple of hours using the pie maker. We made cheese, potato and onion pies - I didn't want to use meat whilst I was 'practising' in case I messed up and wasted the whole lot.

I shouldn't have worried - they're lovely !!

I used my usual 1lb plain flour/8oz baking marg and 10 tbsp water for the pastry, which was just the right amount for two lots of four pies. For the filling I used some Basics Mashed Potato Flakes, grated some cheese in and sauted a sliced onion and mixed together. I can honestly say they're as lovely as the cheese pie I used to enjoy at the pub where I used to work.

We also made a few batches of Strawberry and White Chocolate Muffins, and Double Chocolate Muffins as I sent some in to work today (but left plenty for hubby!!), and I tried another recipe from The Takeaway Secret. This time it was Chicken Chow Mein, and everyone said it was absolutely gorgeous! It's a bit of faff whenever I do chinese meals so I try to break it down into stages. First, chop/slice vegetables into one bowl, Lucy made the sauce and I made the marinade for the chicken. I left the noodles in a saucepan ready to just cover with boiling water when Dave was nearly home.

Then when we were ready to eat, brown off chicken, stirfry vegetables, add sauce, finish off noodles, then combine everything together and serve with rice and prawn crackers. It's very fiddly, but well worth it - it's a lot easier when Lucy helps, because at times I had three saucepans/frying pans on the go !!

We also used Lucy's sewing machine to turn some old towels and faceclothes into cleaning mitts. Just folding over and sewing up one long side and one short give me a mitt that's fantastic to slip on a hand, spray on some Flash and clean.

So busy, and this is my day off !!

Clare xx