Friday Links

Posted on February 19, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! Here are this weeks links…

Koalas are on the endangered species list and get chlamydia. The only thing I knew about koalas before that was that they aren’t actually bears and that sometimes they fall out of trees because they get stoned on eucalyptus. Every day is a learning day, so I now know four things about koalas. Also poor koalas.

Temperance drinks. Not drinking is the new drinking…

The Thames Barrier is closer or we’d be flooded. London is actually quite boggy…

A junior doctor on Jeremy Hunt and the doctors strike

Mark Steele on the doctors strike

Why farmers quit farming

Ian Jack on the problems with the garden bridge.

I did say this week that I don’t really do Valentine’s Day and that holds but there were some good pieces on singleness this week. So..

This is the real reason you’re single.

There are the gaps between what is our lived experience and the way we are told we should be living. In these gaps – if you are lucky enough – there is a load of love. It doesn’t look like the love on the Valentine’s Day cards – but it feels like love, nonetheless. And maybe that is why you are single

Cocktails at home

Older renters suffer too. I think I’ve said this before but this has been happening to working class people for ages, I’ve been banging on about the problem with housing for at least 20 years. However, how the middle classes have lost their security the media has picked up on it. Finally.

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Breakfast wraps

Posted on February 18, 2016 by nicdempsey

I am a creature of habit in lots of ways, I like routine and when I like eating something, I tend to eat it a lot until I’m sick of it. I’ve about reached that stage with my breakfasts, the granola pot in the morning isn’t making me quite as happy as it used to, so I need to mix it up.

Because I had five tortillas and some of the black bean and corn taco mix left over from last week. I decided that a breakfast wrap would be the perfect way to do that. Things in a tortilla are so handy, you could fill them with lots of different things and freeze them for breakfasts and lunches. They are a perfect fast food.

The taco mix on its own wasn’t going to do that so I added a leek, a pepper, some mushrooms and five defrosted blocks of spinach which I sauteed before I added the taco mix. That done, I then added five beaten eggs and cooked it all through.DSCF5210 There is no way to make that mixture look good. Ok there probably is but I lack the requisite skills or patience! Anyway, I wrapped the mixture into the tortillas.DSCF5213Wrapped in foil and stored in the fridge. At work in the morning, I took them out of the foil, wrapped in kitchen roll and heated in the microwave.

Breakfast solved!

 

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Food and Budget Update: 06/02 to 12/02/2016

Posted on February 16, 2016 by nicdempsey

It that time of the week! Here’s this week’s recap on what I ate and spent on eating…

SHOPPING 

This was the list for this week, which was quite long

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I tend to split the list into shops, so Lidl first, then Sainsburys, this week I also went to Waitrose for split peas, chickpeas and orzo. They are the same price as they would be in Sainsburys but my Sainsburys has stopped selling dried beans and only sells them in tins. There was no celery in Lidl and I completely forget to pick it up in Sainsburys, I also forgot to buy eggs but I had just enough for what I needed this week, I’m completely out now though.

I also impulse bought some blood oranges because I was really craving oranges and the ordinary ones were looking a bit manky.IMG_3789Here are the receipts, just for clarity, I’ve crossed out the non-food items (laundry detergent, baby bottom butter etc!). I spent £14.34, a whole 66p for the change jar!IMG_3783IMG_3782IMG_3784

Here’s what I bought. (I really need to find a better way of photographing this so it doesn’t include the food processor and/or kettle!)DSCF5207DSCF5209

COOKING AND EATING

Weekday breakfasts were a breakfast wrap and lunches were split pea soup and spinach with a slice of bread (except on Thursday when I had a working lunch). For snacks I had pineapple and marmalade muffins.DSCF5227IMG_3788On Saturday, I cooked this chicken and orzo recipe from Budget Bytes, it was great but I was having a ‘mare of a cooking day. I burnt the onion flatbread, the put too much orzo in the pan, the chicken wasn’t cooked when the orzo was done. Eventually, I hoicked the chicken out and stuck it in the oven for 10 minutes to make sure it was cooked through. So rescued it and it was good, some days in the kitchen are just like that and I wouldn’t be my mothers daughter if I didn’t occasionally burn food into carbon!IMG_3785-0I was going to freeze the remaining two portions of orzo but because I spent most of Sunday afternoon doing food prep I just reheated a portion of the orzo and called it done.

Other dinners this week were mushrooms on toast, which is just the best dinner ever!

Stuffed pasta and vegetablesDSCF5201On Wednesday I had pasta with onions and capers  Thursday night I didn’t eat dinner at all. I was too tired and was in bed at 8pm!

FNP happened. Spinach, onion and sausage.  LESSONS LEARNED

I’m finding this a really interesting challenge as time goes on because as I start to run out of things finding the space in the budget is interesting. Constantly having to think about what I’m buying and rearrange the menu plan to fit the budget is making me more aware of the cost of food and I thought I was pretty good about that. I’m about two months into doing this and it’s hard to eat well on a budget consistently but I am enjoying finding new recipes and thinking differently about shopping and cooking.

The other take away from this week, it that although I felt like I spent most of the weekend shopping, cooking or washing up, with most of Sunday, it paid off because on Monday morning, I felt organised and in control (which was great because I completely overslept on Monday morning and knowing that breakfast and lunch were already made really helped) which was a marked contrast from the week before.

 

 

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Life Happened: Slogging through February

Posted on February 15, 2016 by nicdempsey

It’s the middle of February and February is the month that everyone has SAD. We’ve got through the difficult dark post Christmas days of January and are rewarded with another dark month. It is getting lighter but by teeny tiny amounts so small they hardly penetrate the gloom surrounding our spirits.IMG_2760February is a difficult month and this week ended with Valentine’s Day which is not  terribly fun if you’re single. Actually, whether I’ve been single or coupled up, I’ve always pretty much ignored Valentine’s Day, I know that some people try to say that it’s just about love and that should be celebrated but essentially it’s a day were couples celebrate being couples and people who get flowers are smug. I’m fine with that but it’s not a holiday for me because I’ll buy my own damn flowers (when I can afford them!) and I’m not in a couple nor would I be inclined to being smug about it because….well it’s not really something you should be smug about, just go enjoy being with the person you love but go lightly on the PDA’s. All that to say, I just ignored it, which wasn’t hard, just stay off social media and don’t go out in the evening, and it was a Sunday so I wasn’t going anywhere (not that this is unusual!).

So my week was pretty much all about being a grown up and getting my arse to work even though I mostly wanted to bawl like a small child denied lego (thanks SAD and PMT), I managed to get through it like the brave little soldier that I am!

My work week involved lots of meetings (the whole of Thursday, no-one needs to be in a meeting that long) and taking minutes so it was busy, if not exciting or enjoyable! Work is pretty much the same, the stuff I can talk about isn’t all that interesting and the stuff I can’t talk about is only interesting if you’re interested in it and the list of people who would be interested in it is small and slightly obsessive. We did have to pack up our desks for the office move on the weekend, so this week I’m sitting in a different part of the office. There was a conversation about hanging out at ice rinks when you were a teenager and I pointed out that my hangout of choice was the library. I choose to embrace that old lady part of my teenage years (it is after all where I met Keir and Stef) everyone else thought it was sad. That’s me, even as a teenager, I didn’t like teenagers…

Outside of work I ended up re-sorting the recycling so it could be picked up (and writing the boys downstairs a note telling them what they had done wrong and asking them politely to do it the goddamn way it should be done i.e. the way I do it – it was very English). This later on involved writing my first email of complaint to the council, which then had to be followed up with a call. I’ve officially become one of those people but I wouldn’t have to be if people just did it right the first time, it’s not hard ok apparently it is hard, but it shouldn’t be and yeah I’m turning into the worse possible version of my mother. I read somewhere this week that we turn into the adults that our parents needed when we were children. Not sure if that is true but I do notice that increasingly, I’m like my mother was when she was married to my father…which basically is cross and not in the mood for anyone’s nonsense…

Happier things included a conversation with Christelle on the correct way to pronounce Anaé (an-ai-ee), the joy of nieces and nephews (her) and nephews (me), how long it took us to get over our hangovers last week and the statute of Napoleon as Apollo at Apsley House. Narrowly avoiding a migraine with the application of diet coke and adrenalin, going to bed at 8.30 to avoid adrenalin crash I was heading for. Quick trip to the library to take some books back and I checked three in and only took one out which I’m labeling restraint and if anyone thinks it isn’t well we can never be friends….

I also, for the first time since October, wore proper boots. I know that this doesn’t seem like a huge achievement but it’s progress for me. My foot felt fine, so it makes me happy.

Friday did eventually come and I left work at 4pm (those 8am starts are good for something and that thing is leaving at 4pm on Friday and not feeling guilty about it!). Ma came over on Friday night and we had pizza and beer and mini eggs (so four of the basic Dempsey food groups!)IMG_3810-0I wanted to have Saturday as a productive day and Sunday as quieter more resting day. So after breakfast, I ‘leapt’ into action, did food shopping and various other assorted housework. I also went to Grace. It was a good day..IMG_3811On Sunday, after I made sure that I was all ready for the week, I read and napped and ate onion soup….which was lovely.

However, it’s now Monday morning and I have to go to work and arrange my new desk and write minutes. For a change, I have quite a bit planned, I’m babysitting for the Baxters tonight and we have team building on Friday afternoon (yes again!) and on Saturday Ma and I are going to Watford to see the rest of the family and play with the nephews! All I have to do is get through the work week and the fun stuff starts!

 

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Housework Task List

Posted on February 13, 2016 by nicdempsey

Now that the kitchen is under control, I’ve decided to tackle the rest of the house.

So here are the chores that need to be done in for the rest of the flat. I was going to do separate lists for each room but actually I just need to revive the weekly house work tasklist and add to it a bit

So here it is!

Bathroom

Daily (or whenever I shower or bathe!)

  • Wipe down bath, shower screen and tiles

Weekly

  • Clean bath and shower screen
  • Wash out baskets next to bath
  • Clean toilet
  • Clean sink
  • Empty wastebin
  • Change towels
  • Sweep and mop floor

Monthly

  • Clean and declutter bathroom cabinet
  • Clean and sort storage baskets
  • Clean window

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Bedroom

Daily

  • Make bed
  • Put things and clothes away

Weekly

  • Sweep floor
  • Change bed
  • Dust
  • General tidy

Monthly

  • Mop floor
  • Clean window

Every three months

  • Wash rugs
  • Tidy drawers

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Living Room

Weekly

  • Sweep floor
  • Dust
  • Tidy sofa
  • Put things away

Monthly

  • Mop floor
  • Clean window

Every three months

  • Clean rug
  • Clean fireplace

20140327-131500.jpgHall

Weekly

  • Hoover hall and stairs

Monthly

  • Dust

 

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General things

Weekly

  • Menu Plan
  • Shopping
  • Washing (clothes wash, white wash, towel wash)
  • Ironing
  • Water plants
  • Back up laptop
  • Charge kindle, ipad and camera batteries
  • Handwashing

Monthly

  • Wash make up brushes
  • Wash hair brushes
  • Repair clothes
  • Polish shoes

 

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Friday Links

Posted on February 12, 2016 by nicdempsey

Happy Friday! I hope you had a good work week and have fun planned for the weekend. Here are this week’s link…

Grace Dent on holidays. Funny

When economists ignore human behaviour in favour of rationality, things go wrong.

Why a diet of worms could be good for you. Fascinating.

There have been just a handful of human studies: perhaps the most well-known is by Joel Weinstock, a gastroenterologist at Tufts University in Massachusetts, which examined the effect of worms on patients with inflammatory bowel disease. Almost 75% of those who ingested the worms were cured, especially noteworthy given that they had not been helped by more traditional treatments.

Three questions we need to ask if we want to fix housing. 

An American/Polish view on Brexit. Overwrought I think, but interesting if this is the view of Polish political circles that the author runs in.

Lent: Six weeks for the devout and the not so devout

For the faithful Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of a long, bleak road to Good Friday. And I mean long and bleak. Imagine coming off the M25 at junction 29 and then heading along the A127, but so slowly that it takes you six weeks to reach Basildon, and then when you get there everything’s shut and God is dead and it is still Basildon.

Why Donald Trump is terrifying. Yes and yes and people may say he won’t get elected but if Boris Johnson can be Mayor of London, Trump could be President.

Trump’s other gift — the one that gets less attention, but is perhaps more important — is his complete lack of shame. It’s easy to underestimate how important shame is in American politics. But shame is our most powerful restraint on politicians who would find success through demagoguery. Most people feel shame when they’re exposed as liars, when they’re seen as uninformed, when their behavior is thought cruel, when respected figures in their party condemn their actions, when experts dismiss their proposals, when they are mocked and booed and protested.

Trump doesn’t. He has the reality television star’s ability to operate entirely without shame, and that permits him to operate entirely without restraint. It is the single scariest facet of his personality. It is the one that allows him to go where others won’t, to say what others can’t, to do what others wouldn’t.

Last Saturday was national library day. So here are some library links;

A library is like a room full of friends. In 1971, librarian Marguerite Hart asked famous names in the arts, sciences and politics to write to the children of Troy, Michigan, encouraging them to cherish their new public library.

My own love letter to my library.

Why we should stand up for libraries even if we don’t use them.

Beautiful libraries you could visit

I am deeply envious of all the people who have libraries in their houses, oh for the space. Here are a couple of examples.

 

 

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White Bread

Posted on February 11, 2016 by nicdempsey

My office is full of interesting people, one of them, who shall remain nameless is the food police. He (and it seems that it’s always a he) lost a lot of weight some years ago and now exercises strict discipline over his food intake during the week.

Which clearly works for him because honestly, grown ups should eat the way they want to, but I do find his find his comments on other people’s food choices and his assumption that he makes better food choices pretty damn annoying because ‘better’ is subjective and ‘better’ depends an awful lot on time and ability and budget.

Given how much or maybe because of how much I talk a lot about the food I eat on this blog, I don’t talk much about it in my actual life, so last week when my colleague was bragging that the only bread he eats is the bread he makes himself because cooking from scratch is better for you, I was amused, because that is more or less my mantra. I don’t often buy bread, because making bread at home is easy and in fact one of the earliest recipes I posted was for a basic loaf of bread. I’ve made and blogged about bread rolls, pizza dough, sourdough and potato bread. It’s not a big deal, it’s just what you do, so when I made marmalade last week, I knew that I needed to make some bread for toast for Sunday breakfast, and this white loaf is the one I turned too. Partly because it was the only type of bread I could make because I haven’t replaced the wholemeal or rye flour that was thrown out in the post mouse purge (fortunately for me there was a packet of strong white flour in a cupboard untouched by the rodents) and also because it’s easy and it’s never failed me yet!DSCF5224

It’s an uncomplicated white loaf, it toasts well, is good for sandwiches and will keep for a week, it’s not going to win any awards for beauty or innovation but it’s a good recipe to have in your arsenal because it’s so much better than a sliced loaf but probably assuming you have the ingredients as standard in the cupboard cheaper (sliced bread is pretty cheap and that it a bold claim but I’m making it anyway, given that Lidl sells strong white flour for 89p).  It also freezes well and I often just cut it in half and lob half of it in the freezer for next week. It’s also good in bread pudding.

 Before we start we need to talk about yeast. I buy the 125g tin of Dried Active Yeast because it’s more cost effective than buying the sachets or the 100g tin of the Easy Bake Yeast. Anyway the point is that this yeast needs to be reactivated in water and shouldn’t be used in bread machines (as I don’t have one, it’s not a concern for me). If you have the Easy Bake Yeast, use a sachet or weight it out but you won’t need to reactivate it first so just add it to the flour and cut out the first step. (I’ve never done it that way so I can’t tell you if it works but commercial yeast is pretty reliable so it should). I don’t use additional flour when I’m kneading dough and I knead much less than most recipes recommend. When I read The Handmade Loaf I realised I didn’t have to and it changed my life, instead, I oil my hands and the surface I’m kneading on.

What

7g dried active yeast

300ml warm water

500g strong white flour

1tsp fine sea salt

3 tbsps oil plus more for kneading

How

  1. Put the yeast into the warm water, give it a thorough stir and let it sit for 5 minutes or so.
  2. Weight out the flour and salt and mix together in a large bowl.
  3. Add the oil to the yeast and water mixture and then pour into the flour
  4. Mix together until you have a shaggy doughDSCF5216
  5. Turn out onto a oiled board and knead until smooth about 3 to 5 minutes, you may re-oil your board or hands as you go.
  6. Rinse out the bowl if you need to and oil it.
  7. Return the dough to the bowl, cover and leave it alone for at least an hour until it’s doubled in size. You could put it in the fridge overnight at this point and finish it in the morning for really fresh bread.DSCF5217
  8. Take the dough and gently knock it back. Form a rectangle with the dough, fold into thirds and place in a loaf tin.DSCF5220
  9. Leave the dough for another hour or so until it’s risen above the edge of the loaf tinDSCF5222
  10. Bake at 180C for 25 t0 35 minutes, it should be golden brown and sound hollow when tapped.
  11. Leave in the tin for 5 to 10 minutes and then turn out and allow to cool.DSCF5225

 

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DIY Bleach Spray

Posted on February 10, 2016 by nicdempsey

2016 seems to have started as the year that I can’t stop cleaning. This is mouse related but in January I went through 4 bottles of Flash with bleach and although I seem to have seen off the mice, the cleaning is showing no signs of going away so something had to give.DSCF5190

I thought that someone out there must have had a go at making their own version of a bleach cleaner and the internet did not let me down.

So put half a cup of bleach and a teaspoon of washing up liquid in a spray bottle and fill up with water. Job done and it’s just as effective as the Flash. I am my mother’s daughter and quite like the smell of bleach but if you don’t, I guess you could also add some essential oil to it too.

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Food and Budget Update: 31/01 to 05/02/2016

Posted on February 9, 2016 by nicdempsey

This week was potentially the week it all went wrong. I was out on Friday and Saturday and epically hungover/sick (I still maintain it wasn’t all ’cause of drinking because others were sick too!) on Sunday all of which meant no food shopping was done.

I wasn’t capable of food on Sunday, dry toast was the order of the day so it wasn’t a problem. I was still being sick on Monday morning and it was time to call in the big guns, Lucozade for breakfast (the orange one is the only one I drink and only when I’m sick!).

That actually helped and by the end of the work day I was ready to think about food, but I still didn’t feel great so it was emergency shopping, I wanted to try and keep within budget but I was aware that being tired and doing the weekly shop in the Sainsburys local in Paddington train station was not ideal.

(I’m going to go on a massive diversion here to talk about this article in the Guardian on how to shop cheaply. The premise of this article is that you should shop little and often and it is so wrong and so middle-class, I could spit. If you are cash-strapped and especially if you have a full time job, shopping little and often is bad for your budget. Shopping cheaply works like this, look in your fridge/freezer/cupboards, make a menu plan, shop once a week for the things that you need to make the food in the plan. Don’t buy anything else. You know this right? You know that every decision you make uses up your stock of willpower and decision making brain cells and that if you have to go to a shop to buy food a couple of times a week you will end up with the wine and ice-cream and the stuff that’s good in the moment but bad for your health AND your budget in the longer term.)

Like I said, this week wasn’t ideal…so I sort of tore up the list and went for it…

Here’s what I bought…DSCF5196DSCF5198Cheese, carrots, three red onions, three red peppers, mushrooms, a pot of yoghurt, mint teabags, 4 chicken breast steaks (reduced!), a packet of tortillas and a small tin of pineapple.DSCF5195Total cost was £13.04 but £2.80 was for rubber gloves (which is another reason not to use these shops, the value ones from the same supermarket are 46p for 2 pairs) so the total spent on food was £10.24, that left me with £4.76 for any top ups, which lets face it I was going to need…

So what did I do? On Monday, I cooked all of the chicken to make chicken fajitas. I also cooked up some rice and mixed the leftover fajita meat with that, which I then packed up for lunches for the rest of the week. I decided to re-use last week’s carrot trick for the ‘salad’ part of lunch.

The tinned pineapple ended up as the fruit in my usual breakfast granola pot.

Which meant that by Monday night, I had sorted out food to take to work, so I only needed to worry about dinners. The week was not lost!DSCF5204

On Tuesday, I needed to go to the library and I wanted some guacamole for the corn and black bean tacos I was planning to cook (yeah, it’s sort of been tortilla central in my house this week). So I popped into Tesco and bought the tex-mex dips and my favourite brand of pasta was half price. As pasta had been on the torn up shopping list and I only had spelt spagetti, I bought linguine and tortiglioni. Finally, I bought mozzerella for FNP and some squash because water tasted funny!. I spent £4.61 and was done with 15p to spare.DSCF5199

 Tuesday night dinner was the previously mentioned corn and black bean tacos.DSCF5200Wednesday night was free pizza. As I walked through the station, they were giving them away and that was perfect because I was still tired and feeling like I was coming down with cold. Thursday was stuffed pasta with vegetables. In this instance mushrooms, garlic, onion and peppers. Traditionally I have a problem with stuffed pasta, it comes in packets for two people and I think I’ll eat half and have the rest for leftovers. Hardly ever happens. I love pasta and I’m greedy, so chances are that if I cook all of the stuffed pasta, I will eat all of the stuffed pasta. On Thursday in a move mind-boggling in it’s simplicity, I only cooked half of the packet and put the rest back in the freezer. So there you go, living by myself for most of my adult life, I’ve finally mastered stuffed pasta portion control..go me!DSCF5201

Friday night was pizza with Kathy with was totally unplanned but lovely.IMG_3781Major points from this week, food prep is important as is shopping or I don’t eat enough vegetables and everything it a bit too bread heavy. Also never look a gift horse pizza in the mouth!

 

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Life Happened: Not very well

Posted on February 8, 2016 by nicdempsey

So the aims last week were all about sleep

  • Be in bed at 9:30pm so I can be relaxed enough to fall asleep at 10pm, rather than gettting into bed at 10pm and taking a while to get to sleep
  • No screen time after 9pm

I managed that but mostly because I was so tired. I really wasn’t sick, not properly, I was just under the weather, with a mysterious chin rash (which I did not take a photo of but trust me, it was there.)

I was still being sick on Monday morning, but I was still at my desk at 8am (this early morning thing is doing wonders for my work ethic but I am beginning to wonder when I turned into my Grandad!)

The rest of the work week was fairly average, on Wednesday when I was at peak not feeling very well, I was given a free pizza, which was very happy making!IMG_3769However I was also feeling bad enough to have to bring out the big guns of hot lemon drinks…IMG_3777By Friday, I was so ready for the week to be done! Thank goodness for dress down Fridays, I got to wear my new jeans (belated Christmas present from Ma) that fit perfectly and are long enough. I am going to wear these to death! The photo was taken on Sunday when I popped out for pain au raisin and couldn’t face actual shoes!

  On Friday night I called in on Kathy and ended up staying for dinner and catching up!

 The weekend was low key, Ma came for dinner in Saturday

 I just managed to rescue dinner from disaster but the onion bread didn’t make it!

This week I’m all about work, it’s a busy week, so I’ll be concentrating on that and everything about making that happen!

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