A week of roses and financial planning

My week of annual leave passed by all too quickly and work looms tomorrow. 

Still, I managed to get done a lot of the things I wanted too, including a trip on Thursday to David Austin's rose gardens and plant centre over near Wolverhampton. Beautiful roses and now was definitely the right time to visit, as almost every rose was in bloom. I have a ridiculous amount of photos of my favourites to pore over for ideas.

The one above is stunning - a ground cover rose called Raubritter.

This one was a lovely mauve colour with yellow centres called Blue for You. Very strong fruity scent.

And this one - Old Pink Moss - was a very close match to the rose that I found in the churchyard when scattering my mother's ashes. Again, very strong scent.

I was incredibly restrained and came away with only one rose - Blue for You.

I do intend to buy Old Pink Moss at some point. Raubritter is also a contender just for its sheer exuberance. It is ridiculously prolific - it immediately cheers me up just looking at it. David Austin does have incredibly healthy good quality roses. I've got some in the garden already. This is Gertrude Jekyll out by the back door. 

-oOo-

 

I was in Lidl's on Friday and I happened upon one of these - the £1.50 fruit and veg box. 

I'd heard about these mythical creatures on various frugal blogs but never actually seen one in the flesh. That's because I was looking in the wrong place. My local Lidl keeps them by the tills, not in the fresh produce section where I had been looking. I decided to road test one. 

Absolutely gob-smacked at the sheer amount of stuff here, especially the amount of fruit. There were  another two large potatoes that aren't in the picture because I put them to the side out of shot when unpacking. This will last us most of the week. I already had a cauliflower in the fridge so today I'm going to use all of it up by doing a large dish of cauliflower in white sauce. I'll freeze half and the rest will be for dinner tonight to go with a lamb casserole I made yesterday. I've also got a vegetable lasagne to do for the freezer to use up some aging veg so I might lose the aubergine in there, perhaps slice it up and use it to replace some of the pasta sheets. 

-oOo-

After my last post Maria asked me about the gluten free cake recipe I used. 

It’s a basic mix that I used for non-gluten free Victoria Sponge cakes but I swopped in Doves Farm self-raising flour and made up only about a quarter of what I normally do, so only 2-3oz of butter, sugar and flour, 1 egg, bit of baking powder and vanilla essence, 1oz of flour for ground almonds and the fruit sliced on top. I gleaned from the internet that the key to gluten free baking is to make it a bit wetter than you think you should so I thought in this case the fruit would add the needed liquid as it cooked down. However, it seemed to make a very damp cake and while very tasty it was thin and fell apart easily. I decided to go back and do it again, this time doubling the amount of mixture to make it sturdier. In effect I was making one layer of what would have been a Victoria sponge.

I should add I also had a plan B, which I believe is essential to successful cooking. If it didn’t work I could dump it in a bowl with some cream and make it look like a deliberate effort at a dessert. 

Good that I had that plan because it didn't work 😁

Well, it sort of worked. The fruit disappeared into the depths of the cake. I see now why sponge flans were invented. 

Still tasted lovely but I may not worry about trying to perfect this. I think this is a case of how fruit behaves in a sponge unless the sponge is baked first and you add the fruit later (i.e. a flan). 

-oOo-

I was heavily focused on financial stuff this weekend. I've worked out that to retire at 55 (in seven years) I need to have a minimum of £350,000 and we're already a good part of the way there, which is encouraging. I used Guiide and Firecalc for the basic calculations, which showed me that £350000 will give me a 91% chance of retiring without running out of money. For a 98% chance of never running out of money I need £400,000. Up until last month I couldn't see how it was possible to build this because we needed the money we had saved to cover the shortfall between Martin's former salary and current pension income. However, a combination of my recent pay increase, Martin no longer having work expenses and our reduced spending has shown me that actually it is possible. This month we are on track to pay all of the bills without touching any of our savings. Every month that the savings stay the same or increase brings my retirement that little bit closer. 

I've not included everything in the figures. Inheritances are excluded, even those we have been told we should get later this year, as to me that is an added bonus. Until that money lands in our bank account it isn't real. I have also ignored the house equity, keeping that 'in reserve'. The plan is that sooner or later Martin and I are going to downsize - perhaps 7-10 years - at which point the remainder of the mortgage will be paid off and we will have some extra cash in the bank for our retirement. If it all goes wrong over the next few years, if the markets take a heavy downturn and take years to recover, if I become ill and can't work or lose my job and can't find another, then there is always that to fall back on.