Merry Christmas to everyone.

I wish all my readers a peaceful Christmas away from the hectic rush that most people seem to experience.
Thank you all for reading over the year, thank you too for all your comments and emails, they mean a lot and the blog wouldn't be here without you all. I have another big year of change ahead and I look forward to sharing that with you.
Merry Christmas.
xx

Greenish Fingers.

When I labelled my last post title as a date it is a stark reminder that 2 weeks has passed since my last entry! Sorry. All is well. After my nasty bug I returned with from London (laid me out for about a week actually) I'm now fighting fit. I have been preparing for winter which doesn't seem to have hit with full (or indeed any) force yet. I spent a few days putting the garden to bed as it were. I have cut things back, laid some mulch and manured some beds. I have spent many an unhappy hour picking cat poo out of the new flower bed (I really love cats but truly this does try my patience) but my favourite job of the last week was to do out the greenhouse. I emptied it, washed a lot of the pots and put them back in good order. I have enough pots to last my a lifetime quite honestly - it is funny how quickly a stock builds up. It got me very excited for next year and the gardening I will do. As I will be away from home less (if at all) I will be able to make better use of the greenhouse this year and with any luck some of my veg from seed will do better. So far my green fingers have only displayed their hue when dealing with flowers, my veg has been a disaster over the last couple of years. Even my leeks which were doing so well, succumbed. Here's me thinking that they could be left out for as long as you want (I'm sure I read that somewhere) and what do I find when I come to use them? slimy leeks. If the weather is okay this week my final garden job of the year will be to clear the raised bed ready for next year. Over Christmas I will have the pleasure of reading through garden seed brochures and decide what I want to try next year. Most of my old seed packets have dregs in that are so old that I doubt they would germinate now so it is time for some new ones. The anticipation is great.
Looks like it will be a sunny day.

December the 1st.

I am back from my last trip to London. I ended up travelling home through the night on Friday rather than staying over which meant that I didn't get in until 3am. Seem to have a sore throat and slight temperature now so looks like some nasty germs from the Capital got me while I was there.
Anyway, London is properly part of my past now.

Thank you all so much for so many positive and helpful comments after my last post, it is very nice to have your support and the advice that some of you gave is great and much appreciated.

Anyway, after a week of concentrating on 'important' things and working in London, yesterday I wanted to relax and do things I enjoyed which, of course, meant an afternoon in the garden - my sanctuary. We seem to have good weather right now, even though December is here, clear skies and sunshine up here in the Pennine hills.
After digging out the large new flower bed a fortnight ago I ended up with a lot of large rocks, as I always do and in the ultimate in recycling I decided to turn them into stepping stones. I have been meaning to get stepping stones in for ages, but at about £5 a stone in my local garden centre I have not done it. Perfect solution, free stones, so now I can get from the house to the corner covered bench without stepping on the grass (which is squelchy and muddy and terrible right now).

I have dug them in and hopefully I will still be able to mow over them easily as they are slightly lower than the ground.

Well it was an enjoyable and rather easy (and free) job and with luck my lawn might begin to improve as I can avoid stepping on it quite so much in the muddy seasons.

New life? New plans.

As I hinted in my last blog post I have made some rather dramatic new decisions.
I have turned down my singing contracts for next year.

Wow, I have actually written it down, it is actually happening.

So what has prompted this decision? Well I don't need to tell you all that I have been struggling a lot with the constant going away, I moved my life here from London but kept my working life based in London which is a very hard, nigh on impossible thing to do (unless you have an income to afford such life-style). I felt that the time has come to put that right and let go of 'the South' altogether. Add to that the almost impossible cuts the arts are getting in the UK at the moment. We hear much about establishments losing arts funding, but what is rarely mentioned is the knock on effect these slashed figures has on people like me, let me tell you my income this year was only two thirds what it has been before and the proposal was to cut it in half again.

Sometimes it just isn't worth it.

Now, for those of you who are saying a horrified 'no don't give up singing' let me assure you that I will never give that up entirely, it is what I am, what I do, and I'm good at it, when all said and done. Let's just say I am diversifying.

Here are some of my plans.

I am writing to all the local choral societies. Plenty of choral societies have professional singers doing the solos in their concerts and it will keep me singing, but it will not require long, long rehearsal periods, in fact most of these just rehearse on the day and so can easily fit in with other things.

I have, in the past, been a competition adjudicator for music festivals, and on a word of mouth basis have yet again been booked for 2 more in 2014. I have the application forms to apply officially for a position as an official adjudicator. It will never give me a full income but there are many music festivals and once you on the list more will come my way and it is a great supplement for your income.

I have set up a recital duo with a friend of mine, another baritone. He will sing and I will play the piano. We have no bookings yet and we need to get our details to anywhere we can think of that puts on classical recitals. So if anyone knows of anywhere, let me know!!! Of course I am available for recitals, with me singing too.

Thirdly I am setting myself up as a singing teacher and piano teacher. I am very highly qualified to do this and have taught off and on for years (I had my first piano students when I was 15!)

So I have been working on my CV, which I will send to some sixth form colleges and universities that offer music lessons. I will also be teaching from  home and have set up a new website which you can check out should you be interested :-)) on http://danielhowardmusicteacher.yolasite.com

I am also having some flyers printed that I will send to local choral societies and Churches advertising as a singing teacher. There are lots of people who sing in amateur choirs and some may want singing lessons. When all said and done I am good at this stuff and have rather hidden my light under a bushel and I only need a few pupils to keep my head above water.

It is a daunting prospect and after Thursday I will officially be self-employed with an empty diary and we all know what that means - no income. But I have been preparing for this (some may say that frugal living has been preparing me for this for years) and I can probably survive (on little) until May if nothing comes my way from all these plans.

So wish me luck. I have to go to London for the last time at the end of this week, for my final performance there.

What have I been up to?

The weather has been so strange, one moment raining, one moment sunny and then next snow! Last week had some beautiful days, so I got out in the garden and really got stuck in. I have completely dug the new bed now, it looks a bit of a mess, but I am thinking ahead to it being full next summer. It's the largest bed of the garden and I am carefully planning what will be going in there.
Believe it or not, I still have a £40 garden centre gift token from my 40th birthday last May, and I have been waiting for the right thing to spend it on. Now opporunity beckoned. I have put in an ornamental flowering cherry at the back of the new bed, which should be very lovely in a few years, and a couple of sweet box bushes and a couple of roses, one climbing and one floribunda. It's a start. I also have planted anenome bulbs, alliums and sown some ladies mantle (alchemilla mollis) in the border. It looks a little stark so, as always in the garden, imagination is needed.

I have a 2 metre obelisk which I have to put together to go around the climbing rose at the back. It is a pink one called pink perpetué which looks like it will be lovely.

As usual I had to dig out a hundred thousand rocks - the price you pay for living up a hill near a quarry - and they are piled around the corner at the moment. I am taking them to the tip in bagfulls every time I go, except some of the big ones, which can always be useful around the garden as stepping stones, lawn edgers etc. The problem was the weight of them and so I turned my attention to freecycle. Advertised for a wheelbarrow, and within a couple of hours had been offered one from a kind couple 3 miles away. went to pick it up on Saturday morning, fantastic. I love the entire concept and freecycle!

Cost me nothing except petrol and as it was a 6 mile round trip it really wasn't much.

Finally yesterday there was a massive change in the weather and I woke up to the first snow of the season.

It looked magical, but I am glad to say that it has all washed away this morning.

Meanwhile plans are afoot. To say that major changes in my life are on their way is an understatement and I will be unveiling my 2014 plans soon.

The sun has just come out so time to make hay.

Making lists on scraps of used paper.

A lovely reader has made a request of me to talk a bit about how I do my shopping, do my lists, plan my food week, based on my frugal food challenge this month. I am more than happy to do that as it is a pleasure if a blog post can actually be useful to even one person.

Unlike so many, and contrary to popular belief, I am not very organised. My brain is rather haphazard and my memory is appalling - I am one of those that can go to a shop for 3 items and instantly when I get there have no idea what two of them are, I think my head is too full of the complete script of 36 operas and there is not much room left for anything else.
So my answer is lists. I have learnt through bitter experience of wasted shopping trips that if I don't have a list I will not buy most of what I needed, I will spend more money and I will buy something that the clever old supermarket pushed on me without me realising it.
Some people have beautifully drawn up charts of what their menu plan for the week (even for the month in some cases) will be, and I am in awe of these people, I can't be that organised and it is good for me to have a bit of flexibility in my plan. And there is certainly no beautifully drawing up. In fact mostly the plan is written on the back of an envelope as I can hardly ever find a piece of paper when I need one.

I usually write my list, both menu and shopping list on a Sunday night. It doesn't take long, can be done in 10 minutes if you get a move on and don't get distracted by Antiques Roadshow. Two bits of paper, one for a shopping list, one for a 'menu', I start with writing on the shopping list what the house needs, that may be nothing, or it may be stuff like loo roll, washing up liquid, etc. Also it may be a kitchen cupboard staple that I know that I am running low on - sugar or tea or something like that. This week it happened to be baking powder as I noticed when I made some scones last week that my last dregs of baking powder was best before October 2012. No idea if baking powder loses it's oomph but don't want flat cakes.
Then certain things go on every list just about - eggs, butter, milk, cheese. I tend to get through one of these a week, give or take, maybe a fortnight with butter, depending on baking.
Next I just cast my muddled head through the week, and see if there is any day I am going to be out, whether I will need a packed lunch at any point etc. This week happened to be a very easy week. So then it is worked out, 7 breakfasts, 7 lunches and 7 dinners.
Breakfast is easily dealt with as it will always be either fruit, yoghurt or toast, or a mixture of the three. What fruit is in the basket? Do I need yoghurt?. That is breakfast dealt with as I make my own bread.
Lunch I keep simple, something on toast, a baked potato, a sandwich. I need to quickly jot down 7 possibilites. I know that I have certain things left over from last week, I made sweet potato and blue cheese pasties and have 3 in the freezer, 2 portions of Boston Baked Beans in the freezer so these will be remembered as possibilites. So this week had down eggs on toast, mushrooms on toast, baked potato and cheese and coleslaw, my blue cheese and sweet potato pasties, beans on toast. All can be made from stuff I had in, and it doesn't have to be written in stone as some is frozen and can be used any time, next week, next month even if I don't get to it.
Dinner is slightly more complicated in that it takes more cooking and usually has more specific ingredients. I will think what I have in the freezer, if there is some beef that wants using or some pork chops or whatever. Then I jot down enough for 7 meal possibilities. Pizza went down twice, with my blue cheese and pear topping (there is still some blue cheese and some pears from last week, so well worth doing again. Carbonara will do a couple of meals as I really enjoyed that and all I need is bacon, mushrooms and a tub of Quark (these get jotted on the list) and finally I know I have potatoes in the fridge and some minced beef in the freezer so I will make my favourite comfort food meat and potato pie which will do three portions. So that is it. Scan through all of those things and make sure I have the ingredients, if not, pop them on the list.
Finally I will usually try and make one sweet things, either a cake or  a dessert and here I tend to scan through a recipe books. This weeks happened to be some fruity flapjacks, I had most of the ingredients and popped down what was missing.

As you can see, none of my meals are assigned to a particular day and there is a lot of flexibility in what I choose to eat when, but I have a good skeleton frame-work. I will then look down the shopping list and give everything an approximate price to check there is no overspend, if I know something is much cheaper in a particular shop then I will make a mental note to get it there.

This week my shopping list looked like this:

Baking Powder £1
Eggs  £1  (Free range eggs are this price in Lidl and Aldi, more expensive everywhere else)
Onions 80p
bacon  £2
Mushrooms  £1
Milk  £1.30
Butter £1
Coleslaw 50p
Condensed milk  £1
Coconut flakes £1
Cheese £2

That comes to approximately £11.60 I reckon


And my Menu plan looks like this


Meat and potato pie   x3
Pizza x2
Carbonara x2
Cornish Pasties x3
Beans on toast x2
Eggs on toast
Mushrooms on toast
Baked potatoes with cheese and coleslaw

Now I know that there will be leftovers here and there from this week that will go onto next weeks plan, I may not eat all of those pasties or all of the beans. There will probably be a baked potato or two left.

As for timings, well I know which of those things I will be cooking are very quick and which take most time and effort. The meat and potato pie will take most effort so will probably get made on a day when I have lots more time. Baked potatoes get put in the mini oven in twos, to save time and money. One will be put in the fridge until I want it while the other is eaten there and then. I tend to, kind of, decide each morning what I will eat that day, so if something needs defrosting I can get it out, but I am fairly relaxed with it all.

So it is not an exact science with me, just a 10 minute effort on a Sunday night, It actually took me far longer to write this than it does to make that small preparation and it is great when I get into the supermarket with my list in my hand (so long as I didn't leave it on the kitchen table) and zoom from one place to the other, not looking at anything extraneous  and there is a lot of satisfaction when I see that a whole weeks worth of food has come in well, well under £20. It's a game to try and beat what last weeks was, but I know, for example next week will be more expensive as I need loo roll. Pop it on a list!

Frugal drive week 2

Week one was a big success, I managed to spend only £20 for the whole week. Week two has started with a food shop spend of £15 and I have enough ingredients for a weeks food. The strange thing is that with a bit of planning and a good shopping list I have ended up eating far far better, like a king in fact, than I did when bad habits drew me into random shopping. I think because I have planned to actually cook something at a specific time, I just get on and do it, where as without the plan I tend to just grab whatever I can that is easy. The results have been a batch of scones and pear and ginger muffins in the tin and some absolutely delicious meals that have cost me next to nothing. Roll on week two.

The weather is promising today so I will get on and carry on digging the new bed in the garden. It is looking a right mess at the moment, these things always look an awful lot worse before they start looking better. That is why I have left it until November to do, as the garden is looking tired anyway.

This is where I'm up to so far, as you can see, just a bloody great big hole. Eventually the bed will carry on right to the back wall in a, hopefully, perfect arc. That stone was the biggest thing you can ever imagine to dig out, I can barely lift it!
My method is to double dig then put the turf back in at the bottom. Cover the lot up and then put plenty of manure and soil improver on top and let the worms do their work over winter. I'll probably cover the bed with something as last year when I dug a new bed and left it the cats had a field day thinking it was a brand new huge litter tray. I might get some of the plants that are suitable for planting out at this time of year in like roses but for the most part the bed will just be left until next spring planting can start.