Getting ready for winter: insulating jobs to-do list

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 24 August 2010 in frugal, green | 0 comments

We moved into our new house at the very end of September last year. The first weekend after we moved in there were gales which felt like they were blowing through the house and then we had the coldest winter in a long time — we very quickly learned how poor the insulation/draught-proofing was here and realised in hindsight how snug our last (considerably smaller) house had been!

I pledged to spend the spring/summer months completing small insulating tasks to get the house ready for winter this year – to save wasting energy and therefore money — but here it is near the end of August and I’ve hardly started, so I think it’s time for a to-do list which will hold me accountable for my actions!

• Check/fix the rubber seals around all the external doors Most of it is there but some of it has fallen off. I’ll restick it into position. As we have a lot of external doors, this should cut down a lot of draughts.
  Subtasks:
  • Find out what glue will be needed
  • Buy glue if necessary

Wild plum/cherry plum jam recipe

Posted by louisa on Monday 23 August 2010 in cooking, growing, preserving, recipes, wild food | 17 comments

So last week, we went fishing for fruit on the mystery fruit tree outside our kitchen window. We collected 5.5kg of the plum-ish fruit, probably sacrificed as much the floor gods, and there is still a fair bit up there (albeit not terribly accessible). We’re not sure if they’re wild plum or cherry plum as everyone seems to have different opinions on what constitutes one or the other. Whatever they’re called, they’re very tart but also very sweet.

John wanted to try making plum wine (more on that another time) so I only commandeered 2kg of the harvest for our first batch of plum jam. (I’ll do another smaller jamming once he’s decided how much wine he is making tonight.)

The recipe calls for preserving sugar but granulated sugar would work just as well – preserving sugar is more expensive but the bigger crystals result in a clearer jelly. You don’t need jam sugar (sugar with added pectin) as there should already be enough pectin in the fruit.

UPDATE: Just a quick note to say that in 2011, I added a few drops of vanilla essence to the jam and it added a lovely round flavour. I can’t remember exactly how much or when (I think it was after the sugar so it wouldn’t be cooking too long, but wanted to mention it anyway, because it was delicious :)

Thoughts on Ken Rockwell’s How To Afford Anything

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 August 2010 in frugal | 2 comments

Already respecting his views on photography, John was interested to find an old article by Ken Rockwell called “How to Afford Anything” a few weeks ago.

Reading it in parallel, we quickly noted that while there wasn’t anything completely mindblowing for us, it was a mostly excellent article, we agreed with most of it and I would highly recommended reading it regularly. But there are a few points that I disagreed with though and I want to discuss them here. (I’ve quoted random bits of the article so it seems very disjointed but I’ve tried for each quote to make sense within itself.)

Don’t eat out: unless you’re eating off the dollar menu at fast food (as I have always done), cook your own food!

I like food too much to never eat out. We ate out more in the past than we do now but we still eat out once or twice a week. We don’t go to the most expensive restaurants but not the cheapest either: we rarely choose where we’re going based on price.

One thing though: we don’t spend a lot of money on drinks. I don’t drink alcohol and John doesn’t drink wine so we might have a soft drink/beer respectively when we arrive but will then switch onto tap water. We also invariably have better tea & coffee at home than the restaurant can offer so that’s another saving. Not having a restaurant-cheap bottle of wine and after dinner coffees saves us at least £20 a meal – and when the food bill is only £30, that’s quite a “saving”. (Ken does touch on this later.)

I’d class enjoying food as a hobby – I would never spend £2000 on a camera like Ken would, I’d spend it on 200+ curries instead.

Everyone has their own luxuries. Speaking of which:

“A luxury, once sampled, becomes a necessity.”

I personally both agree and disagree with this. Yes, some “luxuries” become necessities (the day I upgraded to a decent bra from budget ones was a special, special day indeed: my perky boobs never looked back) but it’s not always the case – we went on a really expensive (for us) holiday a few years ago but I’ve equally loved holidays since then which have been considerably less glamorous & far-flung – and have cost a tenth of the price. I’m also happy to eat frugal homemade food the rest of the time to pay for those two meals out a week – mostly because our frugal homemade food can be super tasty, but I think I’d feel the same way if it was more humdrum. Well placed luxuries provide variety in life.

Fixing runny/solid jam and reusing marrow & squash leaves

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 August 2010 in green | 0 comments

Just a quick heads up that over on Recycle This, we’ve had a few relevant posts this week.

Yesterday, I asked how to fix jam that was too runny or too solid – and lots of other jam related reuse/recycle questions.

And today I’m asking about reuses for marrow & squash leaves, other than just heave-hoing them into the compost. They’re so giant and tough that they seem like they might have other uses… we’ll see what people suggest.

If you’ve got any answers to either question, head over to Recycle This and tell us all about it :)

Fishing for fruit: catching wild plums with a fishing net

Posted by louisa on Thursday 19 August 2010 in wild food | 4 comments

Over the last week or so, we’ve slowly been watching the mystery fruit (on the mystery fruit tree outside our kitchen window) turn from green to deep red. We had no idea that the tree was a fruiting one until green baubles started appearing earlier in the summer and still aren’t quite sure what the fruits are – we think it’s wild plum. As I said the other day, John thought they tasted almost peach-ish but yesterday our friend George taste tested our harvest and declared them to be plum.

Or mostly plum.

Or plum related.

We’re treating them as plums.