Satisfying finds

Since we've moved up here, my yellow sticker snufflings have taken a bit of a beating.

Previously there were several different places I could go to find yellow stickered items on the way home from work. My freezer always had interesting cheap stuff in it. Now I work from home, yellow sticker shopping means getting the car out or walking 50 mins to town at the appointed time and struggling back with heavy bags. In other words, i hardly ever do it any more. I've resigned myself to only having a look whenever I am in a food shop, but often that is during the day and there is very little in the way of bargains. I've found the odd bits of cheap fruit and veg, a free range chicken half price a couple of times, and some M&S soups for 60p instead of £2.00 but nothing to write home about.

Yesterday, for the first time in ages, I was in town at around 3pm and decided to do my week's shopping while I there. I never shop on a Saturday normally because of the crowds, but the intermittent storms during the day had cut down the amount of people shopping and I fancied a charity shop snuffle in the quiet (not to mention read the weekend newspapers in the library!). In supermarket terms, this lack of people meant less food had been sold and a lot of end of day bargains. Normal prices are in brackets.

Amarillo Chilli chicken drumsticks and thighs 99p (£4.00)

2 x Asian style chicken pieces 89p (£3.50)
4 reduced fat beefburgers 64p (£2.50) 
British beef shin casserole £1.24 (£5.00)
2 x asparagas, brocolli and peas 59p (£1.75)

2 x 4 nectarines 59p (£1.50)

Pack of mange tout 84p (£1.25)

That's most of a week's main dinners for £5.78 as oppose to £19.50. Just need to add some extra veggies and salad, a bit of rice and the odd potato. If Martin is very nice to me, I'll do him a crumble with some of the nectarines. 

We had the chicken drumsticks on the right last night with one of the packs of asparagus, broccoli and peas. I cannot honestly see how Sainsbury's can charge £4 for 8 marinaded drumsticks, which apparently would serve 6 people. Are they joking?? One drumstick each and presumably your guests fight to the death for the remaining two. The 99p I paid for that is about the maximum I would pay for yellow stickered flavoured drumsticks, given a kilo of drumsticks cost £1.65 at Lidl. And don't get me started on that £5 casserole.

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Steel Kitten

Investing in your home

 Reading all about Rhonda's remodelling efforts over at Down to Earth made me realise I very rarely talk about the things we're doing here to upgrade the house. There's always something being done. I've seen relatives lose tens of thousands of pounds when selling their properties due to them being out-dated and/or poorly maintained (on one occasion a £40,000 discount). Most of it was being due to either not having the energy or time to do everything needed, often putting things off for so long the task became a mammoth proposition.

I'm like my father in that I completely decorate at least one room/area a year to keep the place up-to-date as it adds value, but I take it one step further and freshen up paintwork and other bits and pieces throughout the year as it is needed. With water-based interior paints that are touch dry in 1-2 hours, painting is a much quicker job to do and clean up after than it used to be.

I had some annual leave a couple of weeks ago so decided to paint the front door. We have a very old white uPVC front door, the type that dulls with age and no amount of uPVC cleaner can bring up once it gets scratched and dirty. As I didn't want to spend £1000 plus on a new front door, I decided to try painting it.  

In the old days, painting uPVC was a no-no but there are brilliant specialised products to do it now. As long as you prep the door exactly as instructed on the tin it will look fine. I decided to use Sandtex's uPVC primer and 10 year exterior gloss in Bay Tree. I washed the door thoroughly with washing up liquid, left it to dry and then started painting. You don't need to sand the door at all, just put the paint on. 

However, round here the second the weather is good enough to paint the exterior of a house the thunderflies descend. As we've spent weeks battling thunderflies, I unearthed some old decorating polythene from the tool barn and stuck that up at the door. It certainly did the job catching them before they stuck themselves to the paint work. It took the full six hours to be touch dry and was recoatable in 16 hours, which is a little irritating. I'm so used to using water-based paints I forget the time required to cure oil-based ones. 

I think it looks amazing to be honest. The only let down is the handle and the knocker, which are both quite tatty. As a chrome replacement handle is £60+ (big nope!) and the knocker will not come off, no matter how hard we wrench at it, both will have to be cleaned up and maybe painted with something to make them look better. I still have the frame around the outside to do, as that is similarly tatty, and now features a paint drip on it (oops!), but that's task for when I have some annual leave in August. I already have some exterior paint for that so there's no paint to buy. We also need to find a bell so we don't have that ugly wire hanging down.

Finally, yesterday I decided to finish a job that had been outstanding on my list since I started deep cleaning - painting the lobby wall by the front door. All the coming and going had left dirt and knocks all over the wall. I had already painted the skirting and windowsills in June, which made everything else look tatty! 

I didn't know the original colour but purchased six different testers and found one that was almost identical. Of course, it looked completely different once up on a larger area and I could see the difference immediately. The colour I chose was a cool lilac while the old colour had a softer rose hue to it. You can just about see the difference where I made my slight booboo below. 

I accidentally painted part of the next wall instead of cutting into the internal corner. I am hoping once the curtains go up you won't see that but if it is visible, I'll take the paint round onto the next wall. It may end up a complete redecoration job of the lobby. 

It only took 90 minutes to paint. Later today I'll put up the curtain poles and curtains at the windows. I bought new chrome curtain poles to replace the gold ones that are there as I'm not keen on gold (I blogged about that here). I have a third curtain pole to go above the front door so we can put a heavy duty curtain up there during the winter to keep the heat in, but that can wait for now. 

The cost of all of this?

I got the Sandtex primer and topcoat for the door from a Homebase closing down sale for a 40% discount, which reduced them from £19 to £11.40. So total cost of the door overhaul was £22.80. I still have tons of paint left so may do the two sets of patio doors at the back of the house later this year. 

The two little bay trees either side of the front door were £10 for the two in the local factory shop and I planted them up into pots I already had. 

The three curtain poles were purchased from the same Homebase closing down sale for a 50% discount, so cost £11.19 each instead of £22.50 each. Total cost £33.57. 

Finally, the lobby paint was Homebase period colour, which I bought full price from another store as I couldn't find it in the closing down sale. That was £19. 

So overall, the cost of this lobby and front door overhaul was £85.37. 

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Steel Kitten

Rendering lard

Right, after my last post I feel a bit guilty about claiming I have nothing to blog about. All this contentedness has made me a teeny bit lazy (as well as put on 5lb but that's another story!). There was a time when I used blogging as my diary, and have frequently referred to it when trying to remember dates and happenings. Then I've realised that I've stopped doing that and, in doing so, lost a valuable part of my personal history.

So, I sat down and made myself write out all the things that have happened over the last couple of months, then went through the digital photos. It's surprising just how much I wrote down and, in turn, how much could have been consigned to the dusty recesses of my mind to fade away. One of the more memorable things that has happened has been lard rendering so I thought I'd kick off with that.

Our pigs were fat, massively so. A pig should have about 0.5-1.0cm of fat when slaughtered, and this figure is led by consumer demand for leaner cuts of meat. When paying for meat by weight, consumers don't want to pay for too much fat. Our pigs had 2cm of fat on them!! On a pork chop you could see the natural healthy fat attached to the outside of the meat and a whacking great additional 1.5cm laid over the top. There was a visible line between the two layers. I peeled this off all of the meat and ended up with kilos of the white stuff, which was earmarked for making soap, in particular hand soap.

We get through so much hand soap here due to having animals and needing to frequently wash after touching them but the shop stuff leaves our hands quite rough, necessitating a lot of hand cream. That's because manufacturers realised years ago that the natural moisturising glycerine in soap could be extracted and sold separately, leaving behind a product that is drying. Then they cottoned on the fact they could sell us a hand/face/body cream to add the moisture back in and if that didn't work, add 'luxury' moisturising ingredients, like shea butter or almond oil, and charge even more money. It's all one big giant rip-off so that's why I want to render down the pig fat into lard and make hand soap.

So, a few weeks ago I started rendering lard. It was a very stinky greasy week, made worse by the heat. It didn't go as well as I hoped to start with but got better as the week progressed.

My first attempt was rendering it in a slow cooker (see above picture). According to the many sources I found on the internet, it was a slow gentle process and should have provided a nice clean white lard. Unfortunately, it 'cooked' the lard a bit and left it slightly orange and with a bit of a porky whiff. I need nice snowy white non-smelly lard to make soap. I haven't shown a picture of this as my camera isn't accurately reflecting the orangeness. So net result was two pints of lard that could only be used for cooking, unless I find a way of getting it pure white and non-porky smelling.

My second attempt was much more successful - I rendered it on the stove top in a large ovenproof pan, pouring off the fat at regular intervals before it had a chance to cook.

My equipment was fairly rudimentary - I just strained the liquid fat through an coffee machine filter into a re-usable soup container.

This was much better - I could see straight away it was a light golden colour, no orange in sight, and it solidified to a snowy white. I reuse microwaveable soup containers for stocks and fat. I actively look for these in M&S when the soup is yellow-stickered to 50p because they are nice and strong.

Now I have something to make soap with, but I have to render down the other few kilos of fat first. Having suffered and sweated in the heat, I've learned my lesson and earmarked that job for a cool rainy day, if we ever get one in the UK!

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Steel Kitten

It won't have escaped your notice...

...but I'm not blogging much lately.

I don't know why, but ever since we've moved to this place I've found it harder and harder to keep going with the blogging. In the old house, we seemed to have untold obstacles which required frugality to resolve and I could blog about that. Since we've moved to this place, we haven't had nearly as many obstacles and I find myself running out of things to say.

We're going through a period of prosperity, both in terms of money and spirit. We have what we wanted and a lot of the problems and people we had to contend with that made us unhappy have gone away. This place is so calming it is almost soporific and things are not happening as fast as they used to, that sense of urgency is not there. 

I find I'm quite happy and content for the first time in my life and the old hunger and drive I once had have taken a back seat. I have my job to keep me busy during the day, and lots of books to read and a garden to tend to when I'm not working. Every now and then I go for a snuffle round the charity shops. The occasional meal with friends and neighbours. This weather is wonderful. It's a good life.

I have the big things I value so I don't seem to be sweating the small stuff. I was sent this by a friend yesterday and thought "too true".

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full.. The students responded with a unanimous ‘yes.’

The professor then produced two Beers from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed……..

‘Now,’ said the professor as the laughter subsided, ‘I want you to recognise that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things - your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favourite passions - and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.. The sand is everything else - the small stuff.

‘If you put the sand into the jar first,’ he continued, ‘there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life.

If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness.

Spend time with your children. Spend time with your parents. Visit with grandparents. Take your spouse out to dinner. There will always be time to clean the house and mow the lawn.

Take care of the golf balls first - the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand.

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the Beer represented. The professor smiled and said, ‘I’m glad you asked.’ The Beer just shows you that no matter how full your life may seem, there’s always room for a couple of Beers with a friend.

Retirement, while 5 years away for Martin and 10 years away for me, will happen if we stay on course. I've crunched the numbers, I've done the spreadsheets, I know how much we have to save every month to achieve the goal and I plug away at that. I'm confident that if we need extra money we can either rebuild a car and sell it or take on some seasonal work. 

Of course there are some dark clouds on the horizon. Mother-in-Law is definitely losing her faculties so caring for her is taking larger amounts of time, effort and commitment than we thought it would. I've unexpectedly got a new boss at work after a management shake-up and I don't know if we will get on. The council has mooted plans to put in a bypass that would run near our smallholding, which could wreck our peace and quiet. Brexit rumbles on and who knows where that will go, we may end up having to scrimp, save and stockpile a bit if there is a recession afterwards. And as ever, developers are longing to build houses and put up wind turbines around the area. But for the moment the impact of these are just possibilities, nothing concrete, 'sand' on the horizon to be aware of and monitor. Nothing that needs action yet. 

I think I've lost my fear of the future because, deep down, whatever happens I wholeheartedly believe we'll be ok. 

And that doesn't really lend itself to interesting blogging!

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Steel Kitten