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Saute the veg &chicken for a while and then sprinkle over the flour ,stir in,season with black pepper and salt. Chuck in a glass or so of white wine,half a pint of milk and simmer for about 30 mins. Serve with brown rice. Freeze the left over rice and casserole in two-portion tubs. Popularity:1% [?] Darren and I were lucky enough to be invited to one of his windsurfing/poker mates daughter’s wedding but we were concerned that attending might mean us spending more money than we wanted to on one night’s accomodation. Luckily a little lateral thinking lead us to exploring the option of camping near to the reception which was fanastic! We drove for four ours to rural Suffolk and arrived at the pre-booked campsite which turned out to be the orchard of a large garden. It was a really lovely September evening and as we were early we sat in the sunshine admiring the abdundance of flowers and fruit around us,having pitched the tent in no time. We then pootled over to the wedding reception in a very relaxed fashion. The pitch cost us £8 instead of the £158 pounds some of our fellow wedding guests were paying to stay in the nearby luxury hotel. Popularity:1% [?] A weekly hour long effort on a Monday cleaning and tidying the house using the following checklist keeps the house pleasant to live in. I do also do a daily vacuum of room(s) which need it,as well as all the other daily housekeeping tasks (wipe the loo,clean the sinks,do dishes,clean up after food preparation and meal eating)
Some of these take less than 10 minutes,others take a little longer but I am usually finished in an hour and back playing with the kids or going on an outing with them before they’ve even noticed. I tend to pitch in with this list straight after we’ve all had breakfast as I know that I have some time before the first little tummy starts getting rumbly again or the kids have an arguement over a toy. Rather than thinking ‘Grrr here I am changing the sheets again’I’ve noticed that I’m a lot more productive and happier if I remind myself how very lucky I am to have a nice house with nice people living in it and how grateful I am to be able to look after everything and everyone in our home. Popularity:3% [?] This morning was spent helping my newest local friend Janet tidy up our next door neighbour’s garden. Janet is a trained horticulturalist and has many years of experience under her belt. Despite being retired for several years she maintains a number of local gardens and has a huge wealth of knowledge which I was very fortunate to tap into as we worked together in the strong September sunshine. I learnt the names of loads of plants,how to prune a honeysuckle properly so that it is neat and tidy throughout the winter abut yet promotes vigourous growth in the Spring,why it is best to pull up evening primrosesafter they have finished flowering (they are biannuals and are finished while their seeds will have started growing elsewhere) but need to cut back echinacea (periennial so mustn’t dig up the roots or would damage next years growth). The best bit of wisdom I gained from Janet today however,was how she works systematically round the garden starting at one point and finishing at the same place with a fairly clear goal of doing one type of job (she pointed out that the start/end point was chosen proximity to the bonfire heap so we could easily tip our huge bundle of prunings on to it at the end). This way of working is so different to my scatty,chaotic and distracted gardening style of hopping from one area to the other all the time thinking of the hundreds of other jobs which needed to be remembered and then completed. It is this novice and stressful way of working which makes me think that I dislike gardening but learning from Janet made me remember how rewarding gardening is as a pastime if one works methodically and sensibly. Here is a quick review of how Janet worked this morning. Janet explained we were only doing a quick tidy up and were therefore concentrating on removing all brown/dead stems,straggly overgrown areas and any huge weeds. All the tiny weeds look ok amongst the plant borders as they are green and innocuous. We worked together round the back garden and into the front for about an hour. The garden looked remarkably neater than before Popularity:1% [?] Most UK supermarkets have a no-frills range now in easily identifiable packaging. Since downshifting radically in July 2006 I have become obsessed with how to get maximum value from a minimal household budget especially when doing the weekly supermarket shop). Here is a record of which products are worth buying and which have been a so called false economy due to lack of quality where it’s needed. [NB:Due to ethical stance on organic animal rearing I won't be trialling any cheap meat or egg products] Shower gel (52p) = No. Not if you value your skin. It is like washing with washing up liquid. Dish cloths = Yes. Last forever especially with the occasional overnight soak in bleach. Sweet pickle = Yes. Tastes no different to leading brands such as Branston or Ploughman’s Toothpaste (27p) = Yes. Why didn’t I discover this years ago? I must have got through hundreds of tubes costing over a quid each…Rubber washing up gloves = Ok. Feel a bit thin but they last long enough. No good if you like the comfort of a good thick glove while washing up. Butter = Yes. Brilliant. Rice crispies = No. Taste very unlike actual rice crispies more like soggy polystyrene as soon as the milk hits them. Popularity:1% [?] For every 1lb of blackberries add 1/2lb of apples for their pectin (setting agent),stew with just enough water so that you can see it between the fruit,strain overnight and then add 1lb of sugar for every 1 pint of juice. Preserving sugar not necessary. Pour into warm dry jars (cold ones will crack). Popularity:1% [?] I have a slight wheat intolerance which lead me to discover Pertwee Farm’s organic muesli range a few years ago. At nearly £3 a smallish packet this is no longer a purchase I am prepared to make since saying goodbye to my salary. I now make my own with the following ingredients which is far cheaper and loads tastier:
I mix various quantities/ratios –usually the contents of each of the packets in a cereal store container and this lasts our family for ages,well over a month. The kids love it and ask for it for teatime which makes life very easy for me. Popularity:1% [?] My kids started preschool today which means that I now get a guaranteed two and a half childfree hours each day to crack on with some of the chores &projects I have put off or felt unable to do whilst looking after 3 year old twins. Suddenly I feel overwhelmed by the number of things I want to achieve and how small an amount of time I have each day to achieve my goals (exercise,write more of my book,sell the enormous pile of things we have accumulated on eBay,plant up and maintain the garden,help Darren with his new enterprise,work on the piece of software Darren and I have identified as being needed by lots of people,shop for food without kids etc etc etc). I guess I need a system of prioritising each of these areas so that each gets some of my time and energy but some get more than others. I should also write a list of every single tasks make up the end goals and see which of the tasks can be done with the children around (eg. hoovering,food shopping,cooking),which I could do with low energy reserves after putting the children to bed (eg. researching and writing,household finances admin) and which definitely need the child-free hours (eg. phoning D’s clients to chase invoices). I recently read on Steve Pavlina’s wonderful site that one should dedicate a ratio of 50% of available time to long term projects,20% to medium-term goals and only 10% to things that bring very short term benefits. I’m not sure that I agree with this as being a fulltime mother most of my days are taken up with laundry (washing,drying,folding,ironing,putting away),cleaning (sweeping,vacuuming,wiping,washing up). Perhaps I need to allocate a definite chunk of time each day to ‘project work’and the rest to ‘urgent housework’. The basic principle of little and often is what I will do for now. A 15 minute cleaning session followed by 15 minutes of household finances followed by 30 minutes of gardening etc. The trick which works best for me is setting the kitchen timer for 15 minutes and getting stuck in to a task. Usually I surprise myself at how much I have accomplished within the 15 minutes. The rule I then apply is to move on regardless of how much more of the chore there is left and reset the timer for another 15 minutes for the next job. After a few of these sessions I make sure I have a timed 15 minutes where I have a big drink and a sit down or a walk around the garden. If 30 minutes are spent on a task or a project for just one short month then a whopping great 15 hours of dedicated energy and thought will have been spent on it by the end of that month. Popularity:1% [?] There are hours of fun for all the family when you put together a small collection of old buttons (obtained from charity shops,relatives,spares supplied with clothes,the sewing box). They can be sorted by size,shape or colour (‘These ones are all my favourite colour pink’),put into a long line,counted poured back into the jar,threaded onto stiff thread (we’re using an old reel of christmas elastic) to make bracelets/necklaces,stuck onto card and even bashed with a spoon to see how far they bounce around the room,made into families (‘This one is the daddy,this is mummy,this is sister and that is the baby’),used as money in shopping games…
30 minutes of nice,quiet,absorbed children for Mummy and so much fun for the little ones all for the princely sum of £0! I can’t recommend having a button collection enough for 36+ month children but keep the jar out of sight and out of mind to just bring out under supervision every so often to ensure they don’t get bored with it and surprise them every so often by finding a new stash of different buttons from a new source. Popularity:1% [?] My poor mother is completely perplexed by our move away from high earnings,regular social occasions,City based careers and all the fancy things we wanted to buy. Each time I speak to her on the phone I am invariably enthusing to her about some small achievement in my quest to downshift massively and to Become Domestic (eg. found a new recipe for chutney or plans to have a a major jam making session with the plentiful supply of free local blackberries,or discovering that the secret to a clean house is frequent ®ular but not fanatical cleaning/tidying). Each time my mum then states in a ock horrified voice ‘Good God you really are turning into one of the Stepford Wives!’. Which I took as a compliment about how well I was doing in my new but challenging role of fulltime housewife and mother. Have just looked up Stepford Wives and am less sure that it was an encouraging comment after all… Popularity:1% [?] | ||||||
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