My self isolation list..

Forget food or loo rolls, I am preparing a list of all those annoying little jobs that get put off for more interesting stuff or going out somewhere. 

A period of staying home and we can knock them all on the head.

• Replace sealant round bath and washbasin.
• Replace and re-site pole for front door curtain
• Take the layers of paint off the banister up the stairs
• Hang some pictures
• Level the conservatory floor with self levelling cement
• Re design the layout of pots and tubs just outside the kitchen window.
• Put new springs in the settees where they have failed and we sit in a dip!

I could go on and on. Don't need much delivered in the way of food as we are fast putting in seeds etc for season of own grown fruit and veg to see us through the bat-flu "delay" stage to summer. But I may need deliveries from Amazon or B&Q!!!

Then we have our list of new things to learn. Husband is learning to use his ipad to fly a drone. He's started making a new bookcase (been 5 years on the "I must" list) while I have to learn some new stuff to do more on YouTube (Grow to eat) channel. I am starting some new painting techniques in acrylics. Planning some new sewing ideas - fitted Bermuda shorts are my aim this season.

Been to the library today and stocked up for this month. TV will be as boring as ever so we are looking for some new You Tube people to follow and enjoy other peoples adventures round the world. I have become fascinated by Magnetic George. lad who fishes in rivers and canals in midlands and gets out all sorts of metal objects - worryingly a lot of guns!  Husband is watching people going to Antarctica, Norway and Faroes to photograph landscape. Could he not watch somewhere warmer?

Have you got your list of "what I can do" if forced to stay home ready?

A creative productive start ot 2020

We have a few creative days to start 2020.

I have managed to make two balls in crochet using YouTube instructions. Toys for Jack the cat at son's house.  Ends of left over wool used.

I made a case for my husband's i pad  as he may want to take it on holiday next week and says all electronics have to go in hand luggage. Made it bright so he can spot it in the security trays! Left over fabric used.

My husband made me a nice big cutting board from a bit of left over kitchen top.

And I bottled 2018 brewed wine!  Not sure why I did not do it in 2019; perhaps we were still drinking 2017 and did not make any more? Its a bit like jam - some years you make so much you can't get through it.

Husband is out making/creating space in his workshop for all his planned activities in woodworking in 2020 and I am going to leap on Movie software and make another video for YouTube channel Grow to eat about hedging and shelter belt. Then we are going to do some guitar playing practice. 

 Our new year resolutions:  We are going to be creative in 2020. But it will have to thrifty stuff as there is not going to be a lot of spare money this year with some planned house improvements needed.

Loosing weight

In June my husband decided he was too heavy and it made his arthritic ankles worse. So overnight we decided to:
Not eat toast at breakfast time. Cereal only and check the portion size.
Not eat 2 (or is that a sneaky 3?) biscuits with coffee at 11am
Not eat a little something on toast at lunch time  - scrambled eggs for example
Not eat a slice of home made cake with afternoon tea at 4pm
Not have seconds at dinner time even if they were there. The extra would do for lunch the next day.
Cut meat down one more notch - 180gms between us rather than 200gms planned recently.
Cut out pasta. At least down to once a week.
No supper snacks like crisps and dips, a cake, a cheese and cracker plate.

There were days when I thought my tummy was eating me from inside but mostly it was OK.
We cook from scratch nearly 95% of the time, eat loads of fruit and veg we grow,  don't eat out much (once a month if that), don't eat sweets except at Xmas and don't eat much processed food anyway.

Results
I went from 13 stone 10 lbs to 11 stones 10 lbs. (87kg to 74kg)
Husband from 15 stones + to 14 stones 2 lbs. (95 to 89 kg)




Or from the NHS orange zone down to nearly in the green!
Can't wait for my next check up and blood tests when the Nurse can, possibly, "stuff" her disapproval and early diabetic advice (I hope).
But we are now stuck. Last 2/3 weeks we are on same weights. And it is getting colder and I want dumplings in my stews, etc!  Any suggestions to get to the ideal NHS weight of 11 st 2 lbs for me and 13st 3lbs for husband  - its not a lot!

Also how can I persuade the children at Xmas to stop trying to feed us up!!! Rotters are determined to show us a good time!

Brain Activity

I was listening to a Radio 4 programme the other day about us "older people" keeping the brain active to ward of the dreaded dementia.  I was half thing "yada yada ya!, same old - do more exercise, eat healthy, etc etc and then they said something new and interesting.  Apparently there is some new research (possibly German) that as you get older parts of your brain technical "die off" but they have discovered you can re grow your brain cells   by doing completely new (to you) and creative stuff outside of anything you had done in your previous adult working life and to make it something that makes you stretch yourself to feel uncomfortable..

Now that is interesting.

• I have set my target to do something creative everyday, to include to do something NEW creatively or something that is demanding and difficult for me. 
• I am going to try to learn a new fact everyday.
• We are going to work together on crosswords, polyword puzzles, or a TV quiz every week (mastermind, university challenge, type thing).

Day 3 of January 2019 - how are we doing?
We watched University Challenge - husband got 9 answers, I got 2 more, literary ones. with us even beating both teams on one answer. We are competing on "who wants to be a millionaire" - keeping scores.
I have learnt 3 facts
1. Dust blows off the Sahara desert and lands on the Amazon Basin. You can see it from space.
2. My grandson has a G instead of a C in his DNA that makes him lactose intolerant. Genetically his father is northern European and his mother Asian and that means Dad is lactose enabled due to Europeans developing a diary based diet over thousands of years but a diary diet is not in the racial makeup of people from the sub continent of India (mum).
3. The L train which featured a lot in episodes of the TV series ER (which I loved) is a shortened form of the word "elevated" train network. I always wondered why they called it that.

I have started a new creative project which I shall write about tomorrow.

OK I have set no targets for being more active. As they suggest. My husband's arthritis limits walks etc.  I think I am just going to try to be outside for at least 30 mins everyday in any weather and be doing something that leaves me a little puffed.  So far I am tidying and turning the surface of the garden flower beds which are already showing bulbs growing.

Lost way

I have seriously lost my blogging groove lately. Life seems very bogged down at present.  I have put a ban on the national news as that has made it worse. Just leave the EU!!!

Why such a down?  We have thought and thought but can see no economies that will pave the way to a more comfortable life in the next 6 to 12 months.  We need to decorate, want carpets upstairs (4 years of varnished and painted boards) and the lounge carpet has a bare patch, sofas are hanging their springs out the bottoms, need new duvets and a new bed. We will need new clothes next year as we have just about exhausted all the clothes left from better years and recent charity shop finds.

We have given up our river mooring and are selling our boat. That should save £30 a month?  But we don't want the capital regained to go on the "everyday".
We have been through the electric, oil and water bills and we seem to be low users and on lowest tariff. We keep an eye on things and keep as to as low use as possible and within budget.
Our food bill has remained constant for the last 4 years, we are not spending more and our absorbing rising prices by eating less, making things go further and going for basic brands.
Our Sky bill has gone up but there is no reasonable alternative. Though there are days when I feel like throwing in the towel on TV altogether - that really would save a lot.
Our council tax is £1200 a year and we have just too much savings for reductions/benefits and likely to rise in April.
Our motoring costs are stable with low car tax, insurance and no repairs expected.
We have just come to the end of an expensive round of dentists and opticians bills and that should be OK for 12 to 24 months now.

If only we were getting some income of worth from our savings!! Oh for those past years when having savings meant the high interest rates was there to help. Current politics seem to be making prospect of interest rise on savings impossible to contemplate.

So what to do? We have tried optimism and how we are lucky to be healthy, warm and happy.  Not helping. We are struggling to find the money for a load of logs and the oil tank is pretty low.  We really should not have had a holiday this year.  Only good result is duff wood we have inherited on moving here is finally hitting the fire!

Our discussions so far have been about ideas of buying a second property to let.

We could get a mortgage and a one bed flat would give us at least £1000 a year income after expenses. Is it worth the stress of tenants? One new boiler and we would not get anything out of it.
We could get a bigger mortgage and a holiday home with a higher income.  But we worked it out that it would not be much more that the £1000 for less risk.

Are we ready to throw in our lot with the kids and ask for an annex on their next moves?

Our discussions next will have to be about making money from doing stuff creatively. Not just selling odd tomatoes at gate as that did not go well this year (£25 only). I could get my Folksy shop re stocked?  Husband could use his woodworking skills?  Small investments versus risk?  We are constantly encouraging entrepreneur efforts in our children, so perhaps its time to get back in the fray ourselves?

More thoughts needed.  Last alternative is spend all our savings and then throw ourselves under the Benefit top up train.  Another reason to turn off the news - the whole benefit system as reported sounds like a nightmare!!

Oh don't bother sending any fraudsters our way; its hard work getting a penny out of us for anything but basics and a fraudster has got no chance here!

Having got that off my chest, I feel better and may be able to get back to blogging about the good things in our retirement lives soon.  Cheers.

Floating homes

During the recent visit from our best friends we discussed the next stage of retirement for us all. What do we do when we need to stop gardening and they ceased to fly their light plane all round the UK? In the next 5 years they need to downsize from their large city house and in 8 years we will need to give up our large garden.  I was astounded by everyone else advocating bungalow living. I never saw any of us being that conventional!

My current preference is for a floating home. When we were in Kew last week we saw lots of houseboats, some with little gardens on the "poop" decks!

Not all were in good repair - luckily the husband had walked on up The Strand to Kew Bridge (grassy waterside park) before he saw the state of this old steamer!

There is a programme on TV at present looking at floating homes being built in modern styles. Some of them are gorgeous and would give wonderful single storey living.  Could not afford the Thames but there must be some interesting harbours or backwaters in the UK?

Getting Cabin sorted out.

Readers of this blog will remember I have been lucky enough to have had a log cabin for sewing etc built in our garden.

Finally all the painting, inside and out, has been done, floor fitted and electrics supplied so I am able to move in finally. All my boxes and bags of "stuff" were collected up from the house and taken out yesterday and as it was raining today I was able to go and play!  Sewing stuff is on one side.

My art stuff is on the other side.

My husband is planning tables and shelves for me later.  He is busy sorting his wood working shed which has just been re wired as well.  The bill will be heavy but we want to enjoy our hobbies for the next few years and spend some time relaxing and being creative.

For light relief this week from working hard I have been  watching one of those channels with old repeats and have found "Down to Earth" again and wanted to see if it as "durable"  TV as I remembered. as it has good actors, I adored the Faith Aldiss books so i will only watch the first few series - after that it just got silly and was nothing like her life after she left the Devon small holding.

We are preparing for visits and getting away in October - some exciting plans in hand!

My craft cabin has arrived!

After weeks of prep and finding the money from savings my log cabin is built! I have been promised this as a sewing and painting leisure area - the first time in my long life that I have had my own space!

It has been dreadfully stressful and this will be the last big thing we do here. After this it is maintenance and small improvements done bit by bit.   The stress started with making a choice, which was restricted by the wish to put it on the footprint of the old (asbestos) garage we had removed. we had not realised that so many designs needed 6 inches more!  My husband dealt with the negotiations of supply and finding some people to build it.  All was in place for early the 15th or at least by lunch time.

Then it was 2 pm, then 4 pm, then 5.20 and could we pay before 5 anyway?  Meanwhile the build team were phoning every hour to see if they should set off yet?  Finally, 5.30 the lorry arrives(with more rain).

Despite being smaller than most lorries we have had down the drive this bloke could not do it. Finally unloaded next door in a yard designed for 30 ft lorries neighbour used to drive, even then he ran over the verges.  All of which meant the build team had to unpack it and carry all the bits (the top black bundle on the lorry) across two gardens.

They started at 5.30, and worked till 10 pm like the clappers! They were 4 young men, Latvian or Romanian or something which we could not quite catch. Two of the team came back at 8 am and worked non stop till 8 pm the next day. They were extremely neat and tidy and the job was superbly done.

It is our task to treat the wood inside and out. We are using an oil based clear preservative on the outside, which is a pain as you can't see where you have got to, so you have to concentrate!  Inside has to be water based - so no smell. Then I can plan benches and things! The top triangle is for a clock - it will have to be solar powered as my husband hates heights and will not want to climb up there to change batteries.

It sits really well in the garden and I am planning some flower beds or tubs round it.

Silly I know, but it is really exciting! My space!

BUT not as exciting as being told today I am going to be a granny again early next year! 

Messing about waiting

Funny week we have been tackling a lot of small jobs as we can't get stuck into anything mentally. Our big purchase of a log cabin (which will be our craft space) will be here later this week. It is sort of exciting and stressful at the same time.  They are bringing a big crane and a build team.  We have made sure the drive is clear of rubbish, the base is ready and arranged for our car to be parked next door out of the way.  We even cut a bit of the tree at the top of the drive so it would get by without branches getting in the way.

Running out of jobs now and it is hot and windless. So my husband is checking the sails and rigging on his Drascombe lugger in the garden.  I have completed a dress for my grand daughter's 2nd birthday.

The pattern said 2 to 4 years - but she is a sturdy little thing and very tall. I have already made the neck larger by changing the round neck to a square and making the back opening twice the recommended size.  

Thank goodness its raining

After 3 days of 20C plus and the ground baked to a hard crust we are glad to wake to a gentle persistent dampness. Not enough to refill the two water butts over night we had emptied in the last few days but enough to soften the ground. We stood and stared for a while this morning and we could have sworn we could see the weeds and grass growing!

We are waiting for the rain to help settle the soil in our latest project.

The area between the house and the sheds was once a horse ménage (a badly built one with rubble and carpets in the foundations) and we flattened it last year and covered in a thin layer of soil and established the grass. It stabilised the sand blowing around but in summer it is like walking across dune grass - it hardens to a crust on top of the sand and then dries out in sun. So we are putting raised beds in when we can afford the wood which is hellish expensive. It will break up the area, provide some broken shade and allow us to concentrate on improving a smaller area of grass over all.

This took 17 wheelbarrows of soil we had saved from various other projects and half last years compost pile to fill this. When the soil is settled we will put in some shrubs we have nurtured from cuttings to give some structure and for this year probably a load of snap dragons we have grown from seed (cheap and cheerful).

Just as we had finished a neighbour came by and suggested a reclamation yard about 20 miles away that might have cheaper timbers. We will explore that option before ordering more wood for the other 5 proposed beds.

Off to the village in a mo, on my bike, to post youngest son's birthday card - he's how old? How did that happen??

Retro fit conservatory

Despite the slight pasting of snow the men came to replace the conservatory windows and alter the door.
From this:

To this:

We have lost the silly inset doorway which made you do a jig every time you came in and out trying to open one door, slide round, close it and open the other one.

We watch a lot of house improvement programmes (and done a lot in the past, but this time in retirement we went for simple and sturdy. This house will never be "pretty" so there is an upper limit to its value and doing anything fancy will never be worthwhile.

Still got to sort the ceiling and floors adding more insulating.  I do like tidy workmen, and these were very, very good not just taking all the debris, but sweeping and taking care not to harm anything.

Will be interesting to see if it helps with heating bills as it was a cold damp area before.  I was a bit tempted this afternoon in the one glimpse of blue sky to move my sewing and craft activities in!

Just listening to the new health campaign to get healthy in middle age - I think the best advert today has been Dave whatsit, the Hairy Biker Chef on Breakfast TV. He really looks well now and his transformation over last 2 years (?) is truly a remarkable.

Weather forecast says warmer here at end of week - cant wait.  Can't say I saw the aurea bora thing last night, but when I did look out about 11 pm the sky/clouds had a funny colour over The Wash, was that it?

WASPI

Have you heard about this campaign? Women Against State Pension Inequality.  It was mentioned on our local news and I went on line to check out the petition to Parliament and the articles. Mainly because something like the quote below from the Independent happened to me.

"the Government waited more than fifteen years to inform people personally: it recently admitted that the first time it wrote to women was between April 2009 and March 2011. That means a woman born in March 1953 could have found out for the first time at age 58 that she was not going to get her State pension until age 63. "

Luckily we had been working hard through selling house and downsizing to pay off mortgage and have no debts to retire together rather than wait till I was 65. I could have gone on, I had a good job and was wanted for my skills, but that extra 2.5 years I had to wait after I was 60 was  pain enough and I had no enthusiasm for working on. Apparently the main changes in 1995 were not communicated well, and I must admit if I had known more from 1995 I would have made very different arrangements.

What I enjoyed about the local interview was the lady of a certain age trying to explain to a "young" radio presenter the cultural difference in attitudes to women working in the 1950s generation. He struggled.

I don't want the compensation some MPs are talking about, apparently it would cost billions to pay the pensions of the 1950s generation, but I would like an apology or recognition that lots of us worked hard for many years to change this country and support our families. 

Sorry I am not usually political but this one issue is close to home!

Menu planning

Welcome to new followers! I will be dropping into your blogs to get to know you in the next few days.

After three or four dull wet days (total of 17mm of rain recorded in our rain gauge) we had a brilliant start on Friday with clear blue skies and a low clear sun that lit the fields brilliantly. We went to the waste tip with bits of metal for recycling (not exciting but needed to be done) and then to the butchers.

Our meal plan for the week is to have:
Three chicken breast meals of 300g (brought 950g of chicken breast chunks at £8.25 per kg)
one large pork stew that will stretch over 2 days from 526g of diced pork (£6.95 per kg)
one large shepherds pie for 2 days from the 400g of beef mince in the freezer from last week
Meat is bulked out by using mushrooms, beans and lentils and we are still harvesting leeks, sprouts and spinach from the garden. Frozen veg is dispersing fast as are the frozen packs of tomatoes I am using in cooking instead of expensive canned toms.

For lunches we have fresh local eggs from the farm shop (£1 for 6), half a kilo of bacon and half a sausage meat pack left over from Xmas. There are enough potatoes left from the Xmas sack for baked spuds too. With veg soups we should be able to stretch the food till next weekend.
That should be enough for 7 days.  We may call at the fish wholesalers next week and get a kilo of fresh cod or haddock for the freezer - that usually lasts for 3 or 4 meals and is a welcome change to meat.

I am keeping a food diary to see how my plans and the actual food is working out, as I vary meals a lot at the moment as husband still has a strange re-occurring tum ache and is trying to loose weight. He is nearly down to 14 stone from over 15. We are working on reducing wheat and portion control.

Meanwhile in the dull days we are both working on small creative projects to cheer ourselves up as we prepare for Monday morning and the funeral of our neighbour.
My husband spent a day in his shed and made a bird box from wood scraps and half an old shelf bracket which he has put out in the sheltered shrub bed at the side of the house.

I finished experimenting with a new pattern for a sort of "coverall" loose top for next summer, it was suppose to be size 16 which should have been a bit tight on me, but it has turned out very loose and a bit low in the V neck. Ideal for topping over a t-shirt in the garden. I used some slippery but quite firm polyester given to me to make this one with old thread from the sewing box.  I will do some pattern re drawing before making another one in a firmer cotton or cotton jersey. 

My order for jersey fabric arrived today and I am planning to use that for T shirts. It is one of my 50 to do things to learn to sew with jersey fabric.

I have decided on number 10 in my list of 50 things to do.  Two years ago I had my wedding ring cut off as it was far too tight and painful.  I have been struggling down from nearly 14 stone then to 12 and half now and promised myself when I was thinner I would have the ring mended.  So my husband is delighted that I have chosen as number 10 to do in 2016.

10. Have my wedding ring repaired and refitted.

Trying to find something cheerful

Have been making a summer top in bright summer blue to cheer myself up in the damp gloom of a Norfolk wet day. Also it helped me put off getting the black/grey outfits from the wardrobe for a funeral next Monday. Our lovely neighbour lost her fight with cancer over the Christmas weekend.

Slippery, light, polyester material but the design is very simple, may be my most useful pattern of summer 2016. Meanwhile I have ordered some T shirt cotton jersey to experiment with for summer wear.

We had a pair of good binoculars for Christmas and were delighted yesterday to be able to see clearly a flock of 10+ curlew two fields away.  They were having a good time in the winter wheat fields.  I see there is a big bird count at the end of January - which we must do.

(pix from web)

Been adding to my 50 things to do in 2016.

7. Read four 19th century classic literatures - Thackeray, Dickens, Elliot, Wilkie Collins. No Russian stuff the unit in my degree killed any desire for Russian classics!

8. Paint an A4 canvas - I keep sketching and playing around but have a mental block on going the whole way on a picture.

9. Ride the local bus all the way to the last stop - an hour away in Spalding! For free!

My 50 things to do in 2016

So far  I  have thought:

1. Have fish and chips on Wells-next-the-sea harbour wall this summer (have to save up last time it was over £12 for the two of us).
2. Go into the Kings Lynn museum to see the "henge" removed from Thornham beach(before March its free!).
3. Visit the hills of Derbyshire - we have seen this area so often on TV and read a lot of books set in the area.  Its not far physically.
4. Go to at least one local music event. Preferably folk music.
5. Visit Kew Gardens ( wanted to do this for years!)
6. Learn how to sew in jersey knit fabric


Trying not to include things that are are "resolutions" like lose weight - that never works!

Are sausages really a cheap and easy meal?

Cooking from scratch all the time can be wearing, especially if you have a bad back (again) so when my husband said do something quick and easy tonight dear I thought Ah Ah time for sausage and mash.

I hate cheap sausages so I had 6 lovely Norfolk Sizzlers from the butchers and thought 5 would be enough for dinner, (2 for me and 3 for hubby) as they are very meaty (no fat or gristle in these).  It was lovely but the butchers bill was on the table as I ate and realised each sausage had cost 41p. Total over £2 and was not really a big  meal.  Everything else on the plate was home grown - potatoes, red onions, runner beans, carrots. Omelettes would have been much cheaper!

I was looking in my notebook and really it is not a cheap meal! At £2.05 for the meat and I am not sure it was that cheap either.

In comparison my notebook shows two more economic meal plans.

Shin of  Beef at £7.95 per kilogram, purchased 908kg for £7.22
Day 1 - slow cooker. a stew where I added a large onion and 6 garlic, 500gms of tomatoes (chopped fresh ones) some home-made passata, bits of celery, carrots, and spices like paprika, bay lead, rosemary, cinnamon stick. later a few dried lentils and peas added.
Day 2 - 4 ladles of left over stew reheated with dumplings.
Day 3 - 4 ladles of stew reheated with some green peppers and leftover from lunch bits of tomatoes and eaten with steamed cabbage and leeks.
Day 4 - bottom of stew scrapped into pie dish, mushrooms added and a suet crust.

Everything added to the meat was fromt he garden or store cupboard and we had BIG meals.
The meat element was £1.80 per day.

I see  in my note book some months ago I purchased a shoulder of lamb should at £7.32 (£7 per kg).
Roast
Lamb in tomato sauce
Lamb rissoles
Stew.

Not long ago Jamie Oliver was preaching having a big lump of meat and making it go far - I think that is why I was recording in the first place to make sure it really was a good strategy.

Think sausages may have to go on the luxury list!

A couple of days out sailing

We have taken ourselves off this week to the south of Norfolk to mess about in boats.  We are re learning sailing after a gap of two decades having promised ourselves we would revive this hobby in our retirement.

Its not an elegant Broads traditional boat but a good working sturdy Drascombe.  We did some more motoring checking out some of the Broads and then sailed on Hickling Broad with just the jib and mizzen (front and back sails).  We are working up to the full main sail! 

We kept out of the way of the other people under full sail, kept out of the reeds and didn't fall in - so it was all good!

Amazing number of old windmills, some with sails, and loads of cormorants to watch fishing. Loads of fishermen too but they seemed a bit grumpy and annoyed with small boats wandering by. We saw a crested grebe diving for fish too (my photo is not good enough to share).

Stayed in a local hotel (clean enough but some what sterile) and had a lovely Thai meal as it is our 44th wedding anniversary this week. Apart from the few days away I think our present for this auspicious event is a new shed!!

Travel cross country?

Two things on the TV sparked a discussion today. Firstly the early morning news about refugees finding their way across Europe and walking across countries and Michael Portillio taking trains from Pembroke Dock to Cambridge in another of his Great Railway journey programmes on BBC2.  We love "geography", traveled a lot in the distant past and are interested in learning more about the world.

Firstly we had to imagine a map of Europe and then update ourselves on modern countries and borders. At which point we decided we needed to get up and find an atlas! We saw some refugees were using SMART phones GPS to find their way by road which is something we could not do! We need paper maps!

Not quite finished watching the railway programme but we could not work out the railway routes. We want to go from the east coast to the south coast (Hampshire)  without going through London and can't find enough information to crack it!  I wonder if the programme researcher would do the leg work for us and come up with a reasonable route and cost??  Travel in England is silly - there is no easy way to go across the country by road, rail, canal, or river!  We have some friends in the south who declare they will only visit us by using their small light airplane as it will be easier!


Can't afford to go anywhere this month - car is repaired and collected at an eye watering amount.

Collecting tomatoes from the 20 plants in the poly tunnel in a bucket now.  Will be making passat tomorrow as that will keep in fridge and be useful in a variety of dishes.

Tried a new recipe today to work through the various piles of veg in the kitchen! One branch of one of my bell pepper plants broke off this week so there as a pile of green peppers, some were a bit mis -shaped! Some of our sweetcorn are not perfect either so I stripped off the kernels with a sharp knife.  I found this on an internet search.

Soak the sweetcorn in some olive oil and then fry in a little more oil with some herbs, Put to one side. Blanch a green pepper after removing the stalk and the seeds. I cut mine in half first. I drained them and sprinkled salt on the inner side. If I had wrapped them in a cloth I think I could of got the outer skin to peel off - but it did not matter.  I then packed the halves with the sweetcorn and topped with cheese. They went in the oven to brown and cook through. Quite nice, I will try to improve on the dish next time by adding some garlic to the sweetcorn as suggested.

A nice day out

My husband has been selling some unwanted extras that came with our car - a dog guard and a rear step which had to come off when we had a tow bar fitted. On the profits we had a nice day out on The Broads.  We visited our boat at Potters Heighnam to bail out the rain but we have to sort the engine out before we can take her out. So we went on to Hinkling Broad to have lunch at the pub and explore the straithe. There was quite a wind by then so we were glad not to be sailing out on the Broad itself and contented our selves with a walk round the boat yards and the village mooring area.

The yards and moorings have several old boat houses some of which were thatched plus a bewildering set of cuts and dykes for moored boats. Chatted to someone repairing his dingy and to one of the boatyard owners but for a summer holiday period it was not crowded at all and seemed quite laid back.

Amused ourselves over lunch watching the "harbourmaster" (pub land lord) organizing the tourists in hired motor boats coming along side the quay owned by the pub.  His job was to make sure they were coming for lunch and not to go on the sailing club berths. He used a mixture of shouted advice mixed with a certain level of sarcasm - usually justified by the inept handing of the hire boats! We promised ourselves lunch there again when we are out sailing, but not in windy conditions in case we made a mess of things and incurred the wrath of the man in the high vis jacket!
By the afternoon the sky cleared, the wind dropped and the sun made the drive home rather hot. We are trying various B road routes home and got a bit lost - but we did get to see Bernard Matthews very large turkey processing factory down some side road in a little village somewhere in Norfolk!

Suitable clothes for the cold?

Having decided to get used to the 18C minimum as an average for the heating I have decided to look again at the clothing situation! Found a whole pile of revolting sports socks I brought some years ago - ah well, at least they are warm.
When we planned for retirement we knew we would be downsizing and have less storage space.  Also I would no longer need the office clothes (hurrah). If you ever read Lee Child's Jack Reacher books you will know his theory of not having luggage - if he has clothes/stuff, he needs a bag, the bag and stuff need cupboards to be put in and washing machines etc, then he has the expenses of a house, etc..
For 2 years I deliberately wore out all the clothes of management and office work.  I no longer cared if at a conference I was wearing the same suit as last time.  At annual training things at least I had the last laugh of being able to say "won't be seeing you next time"!
I have worn a formal black skirt twice in the last 3 months!
I am not saying no clothes at all just not so many and planned for those I want for our new life of lots of gardening, walking, sailing and relaxing. Just having sufficient to wash and wear - with a few best outfits (it must be my 1950/60s up bringing - it was all we had then!)
But for the cold weather I am looking at layers of old t shirts and jumpers indoors with fleeces and thermals for wandering in and out to the veg plot.. I have found the GO Warehouse range is proving most useful at present. Next winter the few I have may need supplementing but I will have a better idea of what is useful and practical.
 I have treated myself to one thing this year  - a fleece lined shirt from Tesco's. OK it was in the men's range (nothing similar in the women's section anyway) and is a bit like a builders choice,  but it is frankly wonderfully warm and it will be perfect in our poly-tunnel planting out early crops once we have finished building it.
Over the winter/spring I will be looking to sew some loose cotton tops for next summer - having destroyed the last of the office long sleeve shirts painting fences this autumn.  I am sure making my own will be most cost effective - unless I swallow principals and shop in certain cheap discount shops who have unethical manufacturing ! I will try to avoid that.  Charity shops are an alternative but  cotton is rare find and anything else is not good for outdoor lifestyle.