Monday 6 July 2015

cuttings and more


Some of my hydrangea cuttings.  I taught myself from youtube to do it.  I used rooting hormone.


This was the donor plant, it was shaded by the trees that were cut down and accidentally mashed up by the tree surgeons.


A new base for a new oil tank.  The old one above is about to be taken away here.


The {Steptoe storage area} grows daily.


This was the view from our hotel for 2 nights over the weekend, for my Nieces wedding.  She looked amazing.  It was all lovely.

Hope you all had a good weekend.

Wednesday 1 July 2015

An Experiment


Above is my attempt at collecting all of the bits from the willow tree.  Many would call it mess, I call it fire starter.  I think Bear Grylls and Ray Mears would be proud.

This post isnt about sticks though.  It is more about the experiment we had, at first we thought it would be for 4 months and it lead to 8 months.  What am I on about?  Well, I gave up work and we lived off of our food stockpile and savings, to see how long we would last.  Nearly 8 months.  Who would have thought.  The Mr carried on working, that was put aside.  This was to see in an emergency how would we do.

Over the last month I have started to restock, after being asked to help on a project.

We did buy fresh veg and milk, and almond milk.  Everything else was from the cupboards or stock pile.  

What did I run out of?  The first thing was lentils, then canned chickpeas (I was really upset about this, but I had dried chickpeas, that I cooked in the pressure cooker), then the nuts went and that was a real blow.  I still had 6 kilos of pasta shells and I think I have 7 500g bags of linguine left.  

I had previously worked out how much chicken I would need to freeze for the 4 months (4 chicken breasts a week for 16 weeks).  We did have some lamb already in the freezer (I dont like that and I dont like the smell in the house after either) and 5 packs of venison we had been given.

The meals were some what repetivitive, and asian cookery books were employed to help out.  The kidney bean burger on the blog 'a girl called Jack', were spiced up and are lovely.  A must try if you like bean burgers, I like the beans mashed only slightly.

What do I still have lots of and what didnt we use?  We have loads of rice.  I think about 12 kilos still.  What didnt we not use? Canned meat balls in a tomato sauce, I was told when I bought them,  I really like them I will eat them.  2 cans gone, 6 left.  I am putting them into the food bank box next time I pass.  I wont eat them as I dont like the idea of them.

There you have it.  Please dont ask me what levels/quantity of any things we had in there, as I didnt have it listed when we started.  Would we do it again?  Not unless it was the real thing.

What would I have the next time around if I was to do it?  More spicy food types.  Say dried fajita mix, and more curry sauce jars, maybe enough for one every other week.

I want to look into chapati flour.  I havent a clue how well that keeps.

Has anyone else done something like this?