1) Eat less meat. 2) Get a sea fishing rod. 3) Get hens, your kids will love them. 4) Carrots are 39p/Kg in Lidl this weekend 5) Brew your own for 33p a bottle. 6) Grow your own garlic, always re-planting some in the autumn.
We don't really eat much meat these days. There's just a lot of meat mentioned in my 'menu' because that's meals we've had in the last few weeks, but in a typical week, we'll only have one meaty meal per week. Nobody ever catches anything round here I did at one point mention to my dad that I was going to go on the rocks and collect some crabs, like he used to take me to do when I was a kid. He put me off a bit by telling me the rules have changed since then, and apparently you can et done now for the simplest mistakes. I've been promising the family chickens since we moved here, but I haven't got the garden ready for them. I've got wire mesh now, but I just need to get them a house to live in. I can even get the chucks for nowt, as my dad has a hatchery thing and he offered me some of his young chucks recently. I had to decline at the time because I have nowhere ready for them to live. Is it easy? I'm a bit put off because my dad, who is vastly more competent at growing stuff than I am, seems to lose a lot of his garlic. Perhaps its the conditions on his allotment though. Parts of it are prone to waterlogging. I also used to hold the opinion that it wasn't worth growing because garlic puree is so cheap, but it isn't now. It used to be about 25p per tube, which would last us ages, but now its getting on for a quid.
We're just on Freeview, so we can't really save there, except by getting rid of the telly to avoid the license, but if I did that I expect I'd have my own personal civil uprising to fend off
my 3 daughters do the same as us but they each subscribe to either now tv, netflicks and love film they then share their account details as you can log in from up to four different devices , we use watchseries.lt ( this is free) but make sure you have an add blocker
Perhaps his plot is infected with white rot (like swathes of my plot). As I have heavy clay soil I grow all mine in raised beds because they don't like being in waterlogged ground over winter. Start of with some bought cloves and site them in a few different places (in case of white rot) and see where they grow best. And don't put onion waste in compost that will be used on them. Lots of crab regulations about, and they differ between fishery areas. Just checked our Lidl carrots in the kitchen and they look really good.
Possibly. Although his chives seem to thrive no matter what, and he usually gets a good crop of onions, although last year he lost most of his onions (or was it the year before, I lose track). It was quite heartbreaking harvesting them. I went up to help, and they all looked fine, but when we pulled them up, almost all of them were sort of hollow.
Change driving style to Hypermile? I have found this increasingly ineffective as we have upgraded our cars to increasingly more sophisticated frugal models. We now have a Blue Motion VW thingie and I can't even get close to their stated MPG let alone a "Better one" like I used to be able to ... but as Gothilda is old you might find it works for you, particularly on a well repeated route, like the drive to work. I used to Hypermile in a 10 year old vehicle on the school run and I improved my MPG by 30% . Key thing I aimed for was to never use the brakes - there was one bend and one junction at the bottom of the hill, but apart from those I got upset if someone had parked in the wrong place, or pulled out inconsiderately in front of me such that I had to brake!! After a while I knew which landmarks I could coast from (in neutral) and exactly what speed I had to approach at in order to do that. I also used pulse-and-glide effectively, particularly on slightly downhill (although not entirely friction-free) slopes. I drove (and still do) with a 5-10 second gap (that's a LONG way at 40mph or more) so that a car in front of me showing brake lights meant that I knocked it into neutral and bleed speed by the time I got to whatever they were slowing down for. On dual carriageway when the SatNav says "Take the exit in 800 yards" I select neutral and at, say, 60-70mph have usually only lost 10-15mph by the time I get to the slip road. Try www.MySupermarket.co.uk ? It will allow you to "upload" your shopping cart to your preferred online supermarket, but its just as happy to let you use it for a manual-shop (it will print out the shopping list). Its does a couple of things I find handy: 1) Compares prices between supermarkets - and can give you two lists, so you can shop half-and-half for maximum discount. 2) Compared brands / sizes / offers. The first time I used it I thought "Do we really need Andrex bog paper" that we have always used, through habit, since Year Dot so, sceptically, I bought Own Brand. No one in the house complained, so we've done that ever since. That first shop I couldn't believe how much I saved (I'm sure its not comparable and you have already made many of the choices I did on that occasion, but hopefully it will still find worthwhile alternatives for you too). The other thing MySupermarket does is to tell you if there are offers available. For example, if you put a packet of Extra Large Widgets in your basket and Super Small Widgets are on special offer, such that they are cheaper per 100g, then MySupermarket will tell you. That saves me a surprising amount each time I shop (and pisses me off that Instant Coffee in a glass jar is cheaper than a refill pack as I think it is iniquitous that a company should permit that) We bought some Curry Kits from an [online] Asian Supermarket. We think they are actually better than the take away curries we normally get - and the effort to make them is probably less than having to trog into town to pick up a takeaway. http://www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/u-cook-curry-kits-1-c.asp I reckon they are catching something on his allotment; if it is White Rot its VERY hard to get rid of, and very infectious, so people just walking around the allotment will be spreading it :(. Garlic is at the "easy" end of things that you could grow. Be careful about starting with Supermarket Garlic though - can either be wrong type for this climate, or bring its own bugs and diseases with it. Garlic Bulbs for growing on are expensive :( but if you see some discounted in the garden centre worth having a go. Future years you can grow your own that you have saved - provided not diseased of course; it is said that garlic adapts to your conditions over the generations so save & grow your own is to be recommended.
Try this one. I made it myself and have perfected it after a few years of eating it twice a week. It's pretty versatile as well and have put it on pizzas or added mince to make it a spag bol base too. You could try adding some red peppers if you have any at hand too. Spicy Tomato and Basil Pasta Sauce. Serves 2 Ingredients 1 x Onion, chopped Knob of Butter or Margerine Handful of Chopped Mushrooms (I use the frozen ones you buy from the supermarket) 1 x Tin of Chopped Tomatoes 2 Tsp of Garlic Paste Tomato Ketchup 3 tbsps of Basil 1 tbsp of Parsley 1 tsp of Mild Chilli Powder 1 tsp Of Paprika Melt the butter into your saucepan and then add your onion and cook until softened. Add the frozen mushrooms and reduce the heat until these have been cooked through. Add the chopped tomatoes and stir until combined. Add a drop of water if stretching it for more than 2 people. Add a good dollop of tomato ketchup, then the garlic paste and stir them in. Then add the chilli powder and paprika. Then stir in Add the basil and parsley, then stir. Cook for another minute or two before serving with cooked pasta. It's better to mix it in with the pasta before serving with a bit of grated cheese on top.
Unfortunately the main reason Gothilda drinks so much on the daily commute is because of the nature of the road that makes up most of the journey. I suspect its the same reason that my colleague, doing almost the same route, only gets 30mpg out of hismuch newer diesel motor. It is a winding country road (that's the fastest and most direct route). One thing I've noticed with both Gothilda and my previous 940, Helga, is that if you can let them get up to speed and then just stay there, they become an entirely different animal. In such conditions I got 38mpg out of Helga, and about 33mpg out of Gothilda. When Gothilda gets a chance to drop into overdrive (she is automatic), lots of things happen. The revs drop to barely more than tickover, the turbo goes to sleep, the torque converter locks to reduce transmission losses, and she just sort of rolls along almost silently. Trouble is, on my daily commute, every time she settles into overdrive, we meet a tractor or a lorry or a captain slow, and as its only a single carriageway, you can't just zip past. So we slow down, she drops out of overdrive, and totally outside of my control, starts looking for the best gear for the speed and load. Then when the opportunity to overtake presents itself. More interesting things happen. The gearbox detects the increased engine output, knocks down a gear, spins up the turbo and she goes off like a rocket. I joke at work that if I'm going to overtake, I have to make sure I get it right and don't have to abort, because it costs me a fiver every time she kicks down. That's an exaggeration, but she does turn into a very thirsty beast when that happens. There is another feature of the 940 that probably wouldn't be allowed on new cars today. If you go to full throttle, which I occasionally have to do but I try to avoid it, there is a microswitch on the throttle body that tells the ECU to completely forget all ideas of efficiency or comfort, and to just start shovelling fuel through as fast as possible. You know when she's doing that because the usually quiet smooth engine note suddenly turns into an angry gurgling roar Volvo say in the handbook that that's there for starting off under heavy load such as towing or fully laiden. It doesn't help with economy though. Any I digressed a bit there. The net result is that unless I had the luxury of a motorway to drive on, or very empty roads, Gothilda is unfortunately never going to sign up to the hyper-miling method.
Same as my school run was ... but ... ... its never going to be possible with an automatic :( The Renault Espace I was driving back then, bought around 2003/4 and lets say 8 years old, did around 30mpg and I comfortably got 40mpg out of it on country roads Hypermiling ... but it was manual, and fuel consumption in neutral was very different to light-touch or no-touch on accelerator. Nowadays [in the frugal-fuel cars we now own] no-touch, but in gear, means zero fuel usage I believe, so my hypermiling nowadays is to decelerate in gear and only coast in neutral if I need maximum coasting distance. It takes a lot of concentration to get the elements right and get a respectable outcome! Sounds like the Carb on my V8 300bph Lotus-7 thingie - that switches from Cup to Bucket mode when you press the Loud pedal hard!
Aren't there any shoals of mackerel in summer as mentioned here? or what about lunchtime of after work?
It does sometimes. On dual carriageways and motorways she just stays in overdrive for the entire journey. She does it sometimes on my daily commute, on the rare occasions when the road is quite or traffic is flowing well. Gothilda does it. Don't touch any pedal and as long as the revs are over 1500, she switches the fuel injectors off.
