Friday Links

Posted on June 17, 2016 by nicdempsey

It’s been a bad week for politics here. I like almost everyone else am shocked and horrified by the murder of MP Jo Cox. This sums up a lot of my thinking about the way politics and political discourse is going here.

It’s not just been bad here either. Trump’s reaction to Orlando was awful, this on Trump and why the people who support him need to stop was about right.

I lack patience, I’ve been working that allotment for a month, why isn’t is all fixed and producing lovely food already? So I needed this. What radishes teach us about time in the garden.

When to help children and how to teach them to suck it up.

Iceland doesn’t have a small mentality but Ronaldo does. Iceland is one of my teams in our family draw for the Euros and I have a feeling that none of them will win and I will be giving my brother £10 (again!), I like them a lot!

Avocado shortage fuels NZ crime wave. What?

 

Posted in Links | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Allotment Adventures: Things are growing

Posted on June 15, 2016 by nicdempsey

That allotment looks pretty good. I keep having to remind myself that it’s only been five weeks and given the limitations of time and money and equipment and knowledge, I’ve done pretty well.

It rained a lot this week and was warm. On Monday, I was watering because it was so hot and on Tuesday the heavens opened. So everything looks green and has had a growth spurt.

This week, Ma and I got a bit more of the weedy wasteland under cover.img_4383I did a quick hoe of the weeds on the beds that do have things growing. The big courgettes have baby courgettes, although, this weekend’s heavy rain has given them a bit of a beating and knocked some of the flowers off! The little ones, may not make it but the aubergine and sweet pepper are surviving, no flowers but alive. All the tomatoes are the in the same state, the cherry tomatoes that Ian gave me and the romas I planted last week. Some of the tiny marigold seedlings I planted survived, others not so much, but the ropey looking sweet peas that I bought because they were reduced to £1 for 12 plants are still alive and starting to climb up the netting. The peas haven’t come up yet, although the french beans I sowed straight into the ground last week to replant the ones that died have and so has the salad, spinach, rocket and nasturtiums sowed last week. All the herbs are still alive.img_4370

Last week I took about 4 pounds of rhubarb off the two rhubarb plants that were going a bit mad. The raspberries are in dire need of weeding and tidying up but have set fruit and the three or four stray strawberry plants have produced about 6 strawberries.

There are tiny plums on the plum treeimg_4376and lots of gooseberries on one of the gooseberry bushes.img_4378Ma was threatening to dig up the afgan poppies unless they flowered and this week. Ma doesn’t mess around and they obviously knew she was serious so flower, they did.img_4379This one is my favouriteimg_4382The california poppies are still looking good but also took a beating from the weather this weekimg_4377You can see that although Ma did a bit of weeding by the lavender, the area around the plum tree needs some attention. The lavender plants are still alive. So I’m calling that a win!

img_4371

And check out the giant rhubarb!

Tasks for the next two weeks are going to be all about the weeding. I want to get more of the ‘wasteland’ under cover, sort out and weed the raspberries (that’s going to hurt!), get the paths mowed and sort out the weeds at the front of the plot where the poppies are.

I want to get as much of that done before the open day on the 25th June, because it’s good to have things to aim for.

 

Posted in allotment, Gardening | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Food and Budget Update: 04/06 to 10/06/2016

Posted on June 14, 2016 by nicdempsey

SHOPPING 


The shopping came to £15.33, slightly over but still pretty good.

COOKING AND EATING

I had a photo issue this week. On Thursday, I had to reset my phone and I forgot that I hadn’t saved the photos on it and lot 4 days worth. So on Saturday, Ma and I ate Leek, Anchovy and Goats Cheese Tart with new potatoes, I didn’t have dinner on Sunday night  and on Monday I had stuffed peppers and vegetables, Tuesday and Wednesday I ate roasted veg on toast (it was that sort of week!). On Thursday, I ate vegetables with a badly fried egg, not a pretty dinner but sometimes it doesn’t matter!On Friday night, I ate flatbread and vegetables.

What did I learn this week?

Migraine week needs planning for easy food because I’m too tired and migrainy.

 

 

 

 

 

LESSONS LEARNED 

 

 

Posted in Cooking, Food, Money | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Life Happened: Meeting, puppies, babies, rain..

Posted on June 13, 2016 by nicdempsey

Last week was a tough week. It wasn’t a terrible week, it was just hard work. That’s because I it’s a busy work week – hello 6 hour meeting, which I have to minute and set up for. It was also migraine fortnight and I did have to go home on Tuesday afternoon because I was migraining. Deep joy.

On the plus side, we had both rain and sunshine, the Euros started, I got 2 and a half pounds of rhubarb from the allotment, Saturday was World Gin Day and the afgan poppies started to bloom. So at the very least the week had balance!

On Saturday, I went to see S and help her Noah sitting. S has just gained a puppy and a grandson and they take a fair amount of juggling.We took the pup and the grandson for a walk and for lunch and it was delightful to spend the day bibbling about and adoring the baby and the pup!

Ma came for dinner on Saturday night so we could get up early and work on the allotment. We got some more of the weed patch, dug over and under cover.img_4383Until rain stopped play. We got very wet and had to come home and have showers. Ma did my ironing (she says she likes to and I’m not going to complain!) and I sent her home with cake!

I did very little for the rest of Sunday, food prep, some tidying, some reading and an early night.

Posted in How I Live | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Sunday Music: Cocktails for Two

Posted on June 12, 2016 by nicdempsey

Yesterday was World Gin Day and I wanted a song about gin but they are all miserable so I give you Cocktails for Two

 

Posted in Music | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Gin and Tonic Cake

Posted on June 11, 2016 by nicdempsey

World Gin Day is just around the corner (Saturday), so today’s cooking adventure needed to include gin!

I’ve made a gin drizzle cake before, the recipe came from Pudding Lane and it was brilliant but it started with weighing the eggs in the shell and used a lot of gin in the batter, I never object to using more gin but it did seem a waste as the gin flavour gets baked out and most of the flavour of the cake comes from the gin and tonic glaze.

I looked at some other recipes and then started to play. I decided that a basic french yogurt cake would make a good base. I’ve made this before and thought it would make a good cake for glaze because it’s robust and fairly neutral in flavour, I have seen this cake baked in a loaf and toasted when stale (it makes good toast!)For me, no gin and tonic is complete without lime so I added that to the mix. This is what I ended up with.


What

For the cake

  • 120g plain yoghurt
  • 240g sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 360g plain flour
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1/2 a teaspoon salt
  • zest of 2 limes
  • 120ml sunflower oil

For the glaze

  • 100g sugar
  • 100ml gin
  • 100ml tonic
  • juice of 2 limes

How

  1. Line an 10 inch cake tin and preheat the oven to 175C.
  2. Combine yoghurt, sugar and eggs in a large bowl until well beaten.
  3. Add flour, baking powder, salt and lime zest and beat.
  4. Add the sunflower oil to the mixture and don’t worry that it looks like it’ll separate, just keep beating it until it’s all mixed.
  5. Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 30 to 40 minutes, it’s done when a skewer inserted in the centre of the cake comes away clean. Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.
  6. Make the glaze. In a saucepan, gently heat the sugar, gin, tonic and lime juice until the sugar has disolved.
  7. Using a fork or a skewer, make holes in the top of the cake, pour half the glaze on and leave for 30 minutes.
  8. Repeat using the rest of the glaze. Sprinkle with sugar and refrigerate!
Posted in Booze, Cooking, Food | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Friday Links

Posted on June 10, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! It’s been a stupidly busy week

This has been everywhere all wee, if you haven’t read it, you should. It’s long and horrifying and my first thought was who raised this man? Then the father’s statement to the court came out arguing for probation for his son rather than prison. And the only words that spring to mind that aren’t obscene are ‘the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’.

Speaking of which have a read of this. Because it’s about right..

How to lower the cost of homelessness. Give homeless people a home and support because in the long run it’s cheaper than doing nothing…..

The daily latte is not why you’re in debt. Interesting. I think that you need to have a budget so you know where your money is going but agree that giving up the daily coffee is not going to make you rich. Also as your fixed costs get bigger, the coffee seems like the only good thing you’re ever going to have, why give it up?

Did Hilary’s campaign have to be so hard? Interesting to cite the issue in how she’s been treated in the past as well as what’s been happening with this campaign. How she’s got the votes, I find it really interesting that Sanders won’t concede and I do wonder if he would have if the nominee was a name?

Young people are being stiffed. They need to vote. All of this is true, although I would still argue that the young middle class kid, supported by Mum and Dad is at an advantage when compared to the working class 40-something. I’ve been saying that housing is an issue for over 20 years, it’s only getting attention now because middle class children can’t afford starter flats. What astonishes me is that they don’t vote. Tuesday was the last day to register to vote in the UK referendum, one of the 20 something graduates at work, hasn’t registered and didn’t want to have to queue to vote. Seriously? You can’t stand in a line for 10 minutes to do what is not only your civic responsibility but is also your chance to change something? From the students on Radio 4, complaining that it’s just too much hassle, to the people complaining that registering online is too hard because they need their National Insurance Number. Honestly, I just can’t even. At some point they just need to sort themselves out and be adults.

Saudi Arabia has invested $3.5 billion in Uber. That’s not good. I don’t like Uber. My brother drives a black cab, he works hard, he worked hard to so pass the Knowledge and he’s subject to regular checks. He pays taxes. Uber drivers are un-checked, they rely on sat-nav’s and Uber doesn’t pay tax in the UK.

Posted in Links | Leave a comment

Changing up the cleaning routine

Posted on June 9, 2016 by nicdempsey

Today was supposed to be all about gin and tonic cake but because of a migraine on Tuesday and a pretty busy week, it didn’t happen. So this is about cleaning and routine and how the allotment is taking over everything. I’ll post about cake on World Gin Day (Saturday) instead!

A month and a bit into the allotment adventure, I’m finding that I am completely out of my basic house care routine. I can’t just blame the allotment, although I’m finding that allotments, like babies and pets change everything about how you organise you life! May was a very busy month and so was last weekend and I’ve noticed (thank you fitbit) that when I’m active has flipped on it’s head, my 10,000 to 15,000 step weekdays with less walking at the weekend are a thing of the past. In May, I typically got 7,000 to 9,000 steps Monday to Friday and then massively increased the steps on the weekend. Last week, I walked 97,090 steps, with the busiest day being on Saturday.  img_4352

I’ve been busy every weekend and as that’s the time I usually use for resetting the flat and pottering around, the state of the flat, the laundry and my mental health during the week has taken a hit. Up until now, I have loaded most of the heavy lifting of housework to the weekend. During the week, I clean and sweep the kitchen, make my bed, wipe down the shower after I’ve used it and put things away, I’m not an animal! However, most of the work, laundry, cleaning, shopping, food prep and ironing (if I can’t persuade Ma to do it!) gets done over the weekend. Over the course of the weekend, that takes about a day of my time and that’s not viable if I’m going to hang onto the allotment.  I want the allotment, I’m really happy to have the outdoor space and I really believe that it’ll be good for me mentally and physically, I just need to work out the kinks and settle into a different routine, sooner, rather than later. Summer is coming (yes for most countries it’s already here but I live in England and it all got off to a slow start) and there will be watering, weeding and, with any luck, picking to do. And all that in addition to getting the bits that are only growing weeds, ready to grow plants.img_4315 So now is the time to re-work the housework part of my life to accommodate the allotment part of my life and my need to sit down and read stuff and see my friends.

Which means I’m going to have to start doing more housework during the week. I’m not going to lie, I’m not at all looking forward to it, I like my relatively easy weeknights. Currently,  I come home and cook dinner. Then I wash up and wipe down the kitchen. Then my time is my own, the only other chores I do in the week are attending to rubbish and recycling on Monday nights, and a load of laundry on Thursday.We live in the modern age and I don’t have to spend 6 to 8 hours a day on the flat, as recommended by Kay Smallshaw in How To Run Your Home Without Help (which is a peach of a book for telling you about what was expected of you in 1949 and for having you on your knees thanking God for modern appliances like hoovers and washing machines and fridges!), however, for my life to work, I need to assign an additional 30 minutes to an hour from Monday to Thursday on housework because sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and get on with it. I need my living space to be mostly clean and tidy and this is what has to be done to achieve that!

At the moment, I think the breakdown will look something like this.

Monday – Kitchen

Tuesday – Living Room

Wednesday – General tasks (ironing, sewing, hoovering etc)

Thursday – Bathroom

Friday, I’m having off and I’ll devote an hour of time to the bedroom over the weekend and do shopping and food prep then too.

When I was a child, I honestly thought that being a grown up meant that I’d be able to stay up all night reading and eating ice cream! As a grown up, I realise it’s about doing stuff you don’t want to do when you don’t want to do it, in order to have the things in your life you do want. Being a grown is sometimes not fun!

 

 

Posted in allotment, Gardening, Home, Housework, How I Live | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Plum Gin

Posted on June 8, 2016 by nicdempsey

The year before last I spent some time infusing gin and brandy with fruit. My favourite two were plum gin and damson gin. So on the lead up to World Gin Day (Saturday) and in honour of my newly acquired plum tree! I thought it would be a good time to revisit the recipe for the plum gin.

I used a litre of gin to a kilo of victoria plums and 200g of sugar, and I left it to do it’s thing for 3 months. Then strained it off into another bottle and left it for a month. It was very good.DSCF4777Maybe this year I will get some plums off the tree on the allotment (Joe who used to tend the plot says it’s unlikely as people take plums off it as they walk by!) but even if I don’t, I intend to make this gin again this year. My only change this year will be to use a different gin. I used Bombay Gin for this and it’s has an ABV of 37.5%, I would strongly recommend using a gin with an ABV no lower than 40%, which I did with the damson gin and that worked well.20141102-164402-60242264.jpg

Beefeater and Tanqueray both often come up on offer and are good gins. Supermarket own brand gins are often bottled at 37.5% but Waitrose’s Premium London Dry Gin comes in one litre bottles for £21 and although I haven’t tried it myself, many of my gin drinking friends really rate it. I’m a big fan of Sainsbury’s Blackfriars Gin which comes in at 43% ABV and often goes on offer.

If you can get damsons (one day the allotment will have a damson tree) then do the same thing for a richer, darker gin than the plum gin. However both are good and worth making. When you’ve made the gin you can use the plums or damsons in a crumble or make jam with them! I think a small bottle of gin and pot of gin flavoured plum jam would be a welcome present!OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYou can also make cocktails with the gin. I refer you to the Huzzah!OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

 

 

 

 

Posted in Booze | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Food and Budget Update: 28/05 to 03/06/2016

Posted on June 7, 2016 by nicdempsey

SHOPPING 

This week was a pain shopping wise. 4 shops, Lidl, Sainsburys. Tescos and M&S the total spent was £13.57

This was Saturday’s shop. On Monday, I was in M&S and bought 2 packets of strawberries (reduced to £1 each) and 2 packets of blueberries (reduced to 80p each), I had a voucher for £2 so only spend £1.60! Yay for bargain fruit.

COOKING AND EATING 

On Saturday morning, I basically cooked my way through the fridge. I made the chana masala and froze 4 3 portions in the freezer. Picked the carrots in the fridge. Used the apples and pears to make crumble muffins (a variation on these) and made flapjacks. Half the flapjacks and muffins went in the freezer and some of the flapjacks went home with Ma as thanks for her epic weeding efforts on Monday morning.

Saturday night and Sunday day I was at Christelle and Mike’s so no cooking by me!

Sunday night, Ma stayed and we ate Chicken Marsala Rice. Which I was very happy with. (Next time I cook it, I’ll have to measure the ingredients so I can post it here)Monday morning we ate an apple muffin and flapjack before heading to the allotment. When we came back we had cheese on toast. Monday night I ate some of the leftover rice from Sunday with a fried egg!Tuesday was back to work and for the 3 days I was at work, breakfast was fruit and a muffin.Lunch was veg with yogurt dip and an egg roll.img_4339Tuesday dinner was stuffed pasta with salad.
Wednesday dinner was chana masala with the last of Sunday’s rice and more chopped up vegetables.
And Friday morning we had coffee and a pastry.

Friday dinner was pizza at Kathy and Adam’s, I made the dough, Adam and Kathy cooked the pizza. A fair exchange is no robbery!

LESSONS LEARNED 

I think I did a pretty good job of food this week. I knew what there was and made sure that I ate it. I got organised and made sure that I used the food in the fridge before I went shopping and I need to start doing that again, seeing how many meals I can make for the next week with the food I have in the freezer, before I go shopping. This may not lead me to spend less than my budget on food but should hopefully give me room for more luxuries, which for me is summer fruit, I love blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and cherries. I do have plans to grow more soft fruit on the allotment but nothing is ready yet and the birds got the only strawberry on the allotment at the weekend!

Best thing I ate this week

The things that I didn’t cook or buy so the steak cooked by Mike on Saturday, the dinner at Ma’s on Thursday and the pizza on Friday night!

Posted in Cooking, Food, Money | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment