What’s in your store cupboard/pantry?

Posted by louisa on Thursday 3 November 2011 in meta | 12 comments

(I realise I am a contrary soul – pushing the GET RID OF STUFF NOW!! agenda on one hand and then in this post, advocating stocking up but I think food and household goods are a little different…)

One of my “to-do before winter” jobs is to make sure our store cupboard is stocked up on essentials for us and the animals in case the weather is bad and we’re too lazy to go to the shops in the snow/ice. The obvious next question for me is “what do we consider store-cupboard essentials?”.

I’ll start with the animals as they’re easier: Lily-dog is pretty easy to deal with as she gets 2x15kg bags of biscuits delivered every three months or so. I think she’s got just over a bag left so I’ll order another twin pack in the next couple of weeks and she’ll be fine. The cats need dry food/biscuits (from the supermarket) and canned food (which we currently order online as we’re trying a slightly specialist type to stop the STINKIEST POOP EVER) – we’ll buy at least double the normal quantity (or more if the dry is on offer) next time we do an order/shop. The cats also need some cat litter (since they’re old & lazy) so we’ll make sure we’ve got some extra bags in store too. The chickens need layers pellets – a 20kg lasts us nearly a month and we’ve got just over a bag at the moment — we should get another couple this month. (All the animals get treats as well, but they’re not essentials. Possibly the only thing in the “treat” category that it would be worth stocking up on is chew bones for Lily as they’re good to clean her teeth and she chews sticks otherwise.)

For us, for the kitchen stuff, there is a difference between absolute so-we-don’t-die essentials and things we to give us a reasonably normal, decent, varied diet. I think the latter is more relevant to us as chances are any problems (or laziness) will only last a few days/a week at moment – and if we don’t need them, we’re more likely to use them in the regular run of things. So I’ll consider our food store-cupboard essentials to be: rice (basmati & risotto), various canned/dried pulses (min: chickpeas, kidney beans, pinto beans, red lentils, brown lentils), pasta (spaghetti & some sort of smaller shape), canned tomatoes, tomato puree, tuna, sweetcorn, olives (for eating & for cooking), jars of pickled veg (such as beetroot & chillis), flour (a couple of different sorts for bread & baking), dried yeast, onions, pureed ginger & garlic (we buy big tubs of it), dried herbs & spices (min: chilli, cumin seeds, ground coriander seeds, oregano, basil, mustard seeds, bay leaves), stock cubes/bouillon powder, cooking oil, worchestershire sauce, cereal/porridge (although both would generally need access to milk – possibly get some UHT/rice milk just in case), CHOCOLATE, tea, coffee and sugar, and in the fridge, some sort of cured/smoked sausage (such as chorizo or kabanos) and some parmesan-ish cheese. Assuming short term snow days/being lazy, we’ll obviously have our existing homemade chutney/jam collection, eggs, meat, vegetables and other assorted goodies in the cupboards/freezer to keep us going but I’m going to make sure we have decent supplies of at least the stuff listed above.

Other stuff: bottled drinking water in case we have pipes burst like last year which result in longer water outage, toilet paper, (homemade) soap, painkillers and other basic medication (particularly cold-related stuff), and matches (for lighting the wood burning stoves).

I’m hoping that we’ve already got most of this stuff in store as part of our usual supplies (which are at their peak right now anyway as we did a once-every-six-weeks supermarket run on Monday) but if not, I’ve at least now got a checklist/shopping list to work through.

What’s on your store cupboard/supplies list? Is there anything major that I’ve missed?

By hand or by power: how do you cut your firewood?

Posted by louisa on Friday 28 October 2011 in frugal, wood stuff | 2 comments

I’ve just taking advantage of another lovely autumn morning to cut some more wood for use over winter.

I was enjoying the sweet victory of finishing another log when I accidentally grazed the blade of the saw against my finger. It’s nothing – the hint of a graze, it drew red but not drops of blood – but it did make me grateful for the eleventeenth time that we use handsaws to slice the logs into stove size pieces.

John’s dad bought us a circular saw as a present last year – I believe it was ex-display or similar, so too good to be missed in his eyes – but we’ve not used it. John’s dad uses it when he’s working here (to save bringing his own) and I think John himself has used it once — but after his own handsaw/cut-hand incident a few weeks ago, I suspect he’s unlikely to use it again.

We’re … not the most graceful people. It’s not that we’re inattentive, we’re just clumsy. Sure, it takes longer but it’s not too hard work with a decent coarse-wood saw – we like the exercise that handsawing gives us desk-dwellers and that the wood gets to warm us more than once. We also like our fingers – it’s how we make our money, tip-tap-typing away at our desks – and dislike risking them unnecessarily.

But rejecting the metal menace sometimes feels like a bit of a Luddite manoeuvre. It also feels hypocritical: for example, we’re happy for John’s dad to use his big petrol chainsaw to cut a big tree into splittable logs (the splitting is done by hand) rather than us going at it for half an hour with a two handed saw.

If you use wood as fuel, do you cut it by hand or do you use power tools?

Had your first frost of winter yet?

Posted by louisa on Friday 21 October 2011 in growing | 7 comments

Yesterday I was thinking all autumnal thoughts but for some reason, I’m in winter mode again today – possibly because I’m off to the yarn shop with a winter woolly in mind and when I come back, I need to start work on that winter to-do list… The garden is my biggest worry in that respect as gloves can be worn without being washed & we survived last winter without decent curtains in some rooms etc, but plants will die & (terracotta) pots will be ruined if I don’t do something about them soon.

Which leads me to thinking about first frosts…

We were down to about 2C/36F in our bit of West Yorkshire on Wednesday night but it’s supposed to be a bit warmer for the next few nights – only about 8-10C/45-50F – and long term forecasts, which admittedly aren’t as accurate, say similar, so we might not see our first frost until November at this rate.

How about you?

This year’s winter preparations

Posted by louisa on Monday 17 October 2011 in meta | 7 comments

Yesterday I picked up my crochet hook for the first time in six? seven? months. I can’t stand the feeling of yarn between my fingers during the summer, and the early warm spring this year meant my crochet embargo started earlier than normal this year. Yesterday though, I found my favourite bamboo hook and grabbed a misc selection of DK yarn to crochet a stripey draught excluding snake. Flames flickering behind the stove glass, cats liberally applied around my lap/feet and yarn in my fingers — forget autumn, winter feels like it’s already here for Team Peach.

Due to meh-ness and illness in September, I’m a bit behind on my winter preparations – still a few things to do before the season really sets in. Some people are saying it’s going to be as bad as last year, some people are saying it’s going to be worse and start earlier. I have no idea but I’d rather prepare just in case.

Us & the animals

1. Wash all our winter coats, scarfs & gloves I’m really kicking myself that I forgot to do them during that heatwave week last month, when I washed absolutely everything else in the house made from fabric. My coats (my everyday winter coat and my really big heavy one) might have to be dry-cleaned, I’m not sure. I hate dry-cleaning for many reasons but if I get another year or so out of the old coats, it’ll be worth it.

2. Check we have sufficient quantities of warm socks etc I think we do, and John tells me his vests (which nearly all predate our nearly 10 year relationship) are fine too – worth checking though. I might get a pair of long johns/leggings for under my jeans for dog walking rather than just wearing tights (I hate tights).

3. Make a giant bean bag for the office So the spoilt, spoilt cats & dog can sit near the stove in comfort ;)

4. Make sure we have good supplies of our store cupboard essentials & animal food Supplies being cut off further upstream is always possible in bad weather but a more likely issue is us being too lazy/cold to fancy going to the shops.

House

I wrote a list of house “to-do”s before last winter and while big renovation things have taken a LOT longer to do than I thought (and some not happened at all), we did most of the things on my list. Most recently, we’ve replaced our old falling down single-glazed sun-porch so it’s now less draughty, better insulated & not leaking — it’ll now provide a really useful “air lock” for the front door to stop lots of cold air shooting around the house.

1. Curtains for bedroom One thing from last year’s list that I still haven’t done. We don’t use curtains in the bedroom for most of the year – it faces east into a wood so isn’t overlooked and the morning sun is lovely – but really need decent ones in the winter for heat retention.

2. Check if the thicker duvet needs washing & if so, wash We’ve got an “all seasons” duvet (a thin duvet & a thicker one that click together to make an uber-one). The thin one is still warm enough for now but won’t be for much longer.

How I line dry clothes in winter: my top five tips

Posted by louisa on Thursday 20 January 2011 in frugal, meta | 24 comments

Line drying clothes outside has been a near impossibility this winter – but aside from a load of bedding (including a duvet) that got vomited on (thanks Lily-dog), I’ve line dried everything else inside.

Here’s some of the tricks I’ve used:

1) Get lazier – leave stuff to wash later when the weather is better

Aside from when there have been sick dog incidents, I leave stuff like towels & bedding in the washing basket until they really need doing because our stash of spare clean ones are running low – or until it looks like it’ll be a nice enough day to dry a load outside. Our bedding really needs to line dry outside to blow out the animal fluff.

If heavy things like throws and cushions/pillows get dirty, they just get taken out of use until it looks like there will be a run of decent drying days (even if that means waiting until spring).

If I can’t see myself wearing an item of clothing until much later in the year – some piece of occasional wear like a nice dress or skirt – then they won’t get washed until later in the year either.

I’ll catch up washing everything eventually but in the meantime, it means there isn’t as much congestion for my limited airer space.

2) Get more organised

That congestion on the airer is my main problem so I make sure I wash loads regularly, without too much needing doing at once.

If I do get a backlog – for example when I was ill at the start of the year or when our washing machines pipes froze (then unfroze all over the kitchen), I separate by both colour (light/dark) and by weight of fabric – all coloured t-shirts etc in the first load, then heavier stuff such as jeans & hoodies in the next. The t-shirts will be dry in a day or so, emptying the whole airer for the heavier stuff, which takes three days or so to dry – rather than two mixed loads which would both take a 3+ days to dry. (Another reason to batch wash’n’dry towels rather than doing some in each load.)

Socks & underwear etc are used to fill up space whenever there is a bit of empty space. They get dried on the peg airer thing (see below).