Well, January is already more than half way through. And what a wet January it has been so far! I feel for anyone affected by the flooding :( We had severe flooding here in Gloucestershire in 2007 - for more details click this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/gloucestershire/floods/
Our house wasn't touched by water in any way (other than our back garden and patio being very, very soggy) so we were lucky there. We didn't have electricity for just over 24 hours - but the worst bit was no running water at all for 16 days. It was the very start of the Summer school holidays - we wore clothes for days and days and went to relatives and friends further afield in the county for a bath/ shower every few days (making do with strip washes and baby wipes in between) and to do a load of two of washing. We flushed the toilets with rain water, scummy washing up water, cooking water..... it wasn't much fun after the first few days. However, there was a great sense of community and people were looking out for one another, which was lovely.
Back to the here and now - Mr G is still job hunting - he had an interview yesterday, so fingers crossed for that one! We had large food supplies in the garage before this (tins, rice, pasta) - they have come in handy and are now much reduced. We aren't yet watching every penny totally - we did indulge in a £10 takeaway this week - it was the end of a long, tiring week. I did choose what we had with regards to cost, though - so was mindful. It was much appreciated - all the more so for being a very occasional thing now. I have a budget for food, toiletries, cleaning things, newpapers (an occasional Sunday Observer) and guinea pig food/ bedding of £300 for January (2 adults, 2 teenagers, 2 primary school children & 2 guinea pigs) - it's going to be tight, but I'm doing my best to achieve it! The takeaway will come out of that budget, too (eek!)
Am having a pottering about sort of Saturday today. The small two had swimming lessons this morning, but after that it's been 'a bit here and a bit there' sort of day. I've made robot suits with the small two from two large-enough-for-them-to-wear cardboard boxes, toilet roll tubes, bits of scrap/ recycled ribbon, a lot of sticky tape and colouring in with felt tips - they've had a great time! Other than that, I've done the usual washing, kitchen cleaning, tidying, vacuuming - but it's felt quite indulgent because I haven't felt rushed to HAVE to do something/ be somewhere. I have a small grocery shopping list of about 6/7 items, which I will do tomorrow. I *do* need to go into town to do some banking for various things, but that can wait until Monday or Tuesday, depending upon the weather.
I've been in the kitchen a lot this week, making various things, including a spinach, mushroom and lentil dhal/ curry type thing, courgette and tomato soup, lentil and bacon soup, a lot of croutons from crusts to go with the soups, cornflake flapjack (using up the 'dust and tiny crunched bits at the bottom of the box), 3 root mash (parsnips, carrot and potatoes) to go with leftover slow braised lamb shanks from a couple of weeks ago and Paul Hollywood's lemon drizzle (see this link on another blog - http://whatwouldnigellado.com/lemon-drizzle-cake/) I made it as both a loaf version and as 12 cupcake/ small muffin sized ones. The loaf version was nicer, in my opinion. I chose his recipe rather than my usual one because a- I thought I should try a recipe from his book which I had for Christmas and b - I wanted to use lemon curd up and my usual recipe doesn't use lemon curd (I could have added it, I know) Paul's version isn't lemon-y enough for my taste. Next time I would replace one third to half of the milk with lemon juice and also add zest to the batter. And double the amount of curd! I rarely keep a recipe 'as is', preferring to play and make my own changes to suit my taste and storecupboard.
I shall try adding some pictures later!
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