I need to reduce my weight for health reasons as I have not lost some of  the weight that I gained during the pandemic.  It has made me examine more closely what I consume, and [...]

  My Autumn meal plan for this week is all about eating from the fridge, cupboards and garden whilst providing hearty meals.  The temperature has dropped dramatically and it is starting to feel chilly.  I [...]

I wanted to make something nice for lunch to have with salad from the garden.  I  needed to make something quickly and have been meaning to make this air fryer smoked cheese and apple quiche [...]

We are officially into Autumn now and the last of my summer crops are finishing.  I am still hanging on hoping that some of my tomatoes may go red but I have harvested a lot [...]

I grew a new crop to me called Amaranth. I had heard that you could grow it like Quinoa that I tried for the first time last year. I am always interested in things that [...]

A memory came up on my FB from 2 years ago when we made short bread to take as a present to my great, great aunt, and for the neighbours who had been keeping an [...]

My friend said that she needed to go to the supermarket as she had nothing in to feed the 3 of them tonight.  However, she had no money. I had none to lend her. She [...]

It took me a long time to learn to be gentle with myself when I was feeling down.  I felt like a failure, and guilty. I am writing this today for a friend in the [...]

I have a conservatory on my house. I bought it with some of my retirement money in 2015. It was an extravagance but I had always dreamed of having a garden room. Every one warned [...]

If we can avoid the supermarket and make things ourselves, we will.  This is especially true if they are made out of home grown produce.  Baked beans are really cheap from the shops but they [...]

I tend to spend less time outside in bad weather and in winter.  This is mainly due to the great British weather. Although I have all the correct wet weather gear, I hate getting wet [...]

This is a blog I wrote on another forum a number of years ago about feeling different.  In lots of ways I  feel different to many of the people around me still today.  I am [...]

We have a very tight food budget and so there is not a lot of spare money for sweet treats.  Compote has therefore become a treat that we make every week for very little cost. [...]

The fruit that we forage plays a massive part in our nutrition over the winter and means that we can have lovely desserts at low cost. Locally we find black berries, cherries, raspberries, pears and [...]

We felt like something 'dirty' and unhealthy to eat the other day for lunch.  We have been trying so hard to stick to a healthy diet but some times I just need something 'forbidden' to [...]

We made this for Mr S the other day as it is low in sugar but does not have any bananas in it (which he hates).  It is a healthy recipe that Mr S learned [...]

A lot of people have asked me recently how I changed my life. How I became happy even though I had little. The thing that made all the difference was swapping my victim mindset to [...]

I am on a quest to eat more healthily. I especially want to cut out sugar. We have an abundance of foraged apples, and I bought some reduced over ripe bananas the other day which [...]

Every year as Autumn approaches I always start to feel down.  The nights draw in, I  start to worry about energy costs, and I don't get out in nature as much as I want to [...]

At last I have built up enough tomatoes to make some sauce to use during the winter and so we canned some yesterday. Last summer was the first time that I had tried water bathing [...]

I am still trying to find ways to use the blackberries so that I don't waste them.  This black berry balsamic vinegar/glaze makes a lovely dressing for salad, is nice with game, or can be [...]

We are still using up the apples that we have foraged on a couple of occasions and have picked from our garden.  I have stored some wrapped in newspaper and preserved some by dehydrating, making [...]

My home has started to look tired and shabby.  I spend too much time in the garden and don't really notice most of the time! Sometimes I am a bit too ashamed to invite people [...]

I can hear people shouting at me now as the word Christmas can feel like a swear word in August.  I had the same reaction myself when I saw Christmas items being sold in a [...]

I make fruit leathers as a healthy treat for myself and my grandson.  My own children used to love the bought ones put in their lunch boxes for school and so I thought that I [...]

I have never made apple chutney before but I thought that it would be nice with our home made sausages, in a toastie with cheese, or in a pork mince burger.  We have foraged lots [...]

I noticed that last week the energy companies warned us that there might be outages caused by solar storms.  I have also read about weapons that could be used in a war situations called EMPs [...]

I don't often go in to supermarkets, but when I do I notice how much most things have increased in price.  The cost of many items has nearly doubled, and yet our incomes have hardly [...]

The brambles are finally out.  They provide a lot of treats and free nutrition for us during the winter and so we go foraging for them nearly every day when they are abundant.  Blackberries (called [...]

We had an air fryer Spanish Omelette for breakfast this morning as I was trying to use up bit and pieces in the fridge, including some previously boiled new potatoes left over from dinner a [...]

People seem to think that they have to buy lots of different ingredients to make a meal  plan for the week that is not boring. This is not true.  In order to save money I [...]

We have foraged for apples this week.  They are abundant in our neighbourhood, and a free food.  Some I will store for use in winter, but every year I try new recipes to find different [...]

We love fish but it is very expensive.  We therefore stretch it by making a fish pie.  A pie will feed 4 people with one piece of fish, some vegetables, and a hand full of [...]

For most of my adult life I had a full on, stressful career, was a single parent, studied, and it felt like my life was travelling at a hundred miles an hour and I hardly [...]

My red onions did really well this year and so Mr S made some of his favourite chutney.   He likes it with a cheese toastie and I like it with quiche.  I even add a [...]

What is a prepper? A prepper is someone who prepares for the worst case scenarios and future catastrophes.  I am a bit of a prepper. That doesn't mean that I think that there will be [...]