Harvesting nettles for tea

Its that time of year again. The very top of the nettles is tinged purple from the cold nights, but other than that, they are okay.

I take thick rubber gloves and a metal colander with me and only need to walk about a minute from the house to gather them, down a small walkthrough, that gets next to no traffic. The top 4 big leaves are taken, and pushed firmly into the colander until it is full. 

Once home, the nettles are thoroughly rinsed, spun in a sald spinner to remove the water and left for a short while to dry on a tea towel.

After that, they are placed into my dehydrator and dried for about 6 hours on 100F:

Then I put my rubber gloves back on and crush them into flakes before packing them into a tightly sealed glass jar:

They will be checked every day for a week to make sure they aren't starting to clump together which indicates they weren't dried properly and will get mould. They can be rehydrated in a net bag at this point if necessary, but so far, they are ok.

The above amount 1/3rd filled my glass jar and today, another 6 trays are drying.

Warmer sun but bitter wind still

 We were planning on a sandwich for lunch but it is just too cold. Ransacked the spare pantry and found some close to date tins of tomatoes, sweetcorn and mixed beans. Once cooked with onion, carrots and potatoes, flavoured and thickened, that should warm us up nicely.

We are trying to shed a bit of weight so are adjusting how much bread we eat. Instead of two slices of toast we are having one or one and a half. One slice as a sandwich rather than the usual two. No cakes, reducing our biscuits to two a day, more fruit etc.

Will take an age but it’s more about trimming than stone shedding, as well as forming better eating habits, even though we eat quite healthily.

A weekend away!

 We drove down south for our second granddaughter’s christening. It was a small family affair, the service being performed once again, by the same fabulous locum vicar.

Don’t think we will be able to do such long drives shortly into the future, 5 hours plus stops, was a lot!

We were invited by family (in laws) to tea on the Saturday and had a great relaxing time. A marvellous spread was laid on, enough frankly to feed an army. The baby was in fine fettle, only crying when accidentally biffed in the face by her dad whilst getting changed in the car park, into her long gown. She was a bit sick in the morning so they didn’t want her in it too long beforehand.

Our holiday home was ok but as always, it was great to be back home and in our own beds. Granddaughter 1 was very excited to see us which is always nice. The weather was fine but freezing as it seems to be just lately.

In the bin!

 Honestly, my brain scares me sometimes:)

I decided to make a cover for the oval dog bed we recently bought. Got a lovely fox fleece from Morrisons. Measured, cut and sewed around the outside, leaving a gap to push the cushion on. So far so good apart from the mess from the cut edges.

I had planned on fitting poppers as a closure but it was too thick. Changed over to press studs and sewed the first half of four on one side. So far so good.

Next day, sewed on one of the other halves and yup, the first 4 were upside down:(

Removed just one and turned it the right way. Hooray, one done. I decided to finish the other 3 today. Got the next two on then went to cut the two wrong facing ones off. Promptly cut off the two I had just attached. Doh!

In the bin it went as I had decided that fleece was just too messy and her fur would stick like crazy. I shall rummage in my materials box and see if I can find some cotton duvet to use.

Keeping on top of our pantry inventory!

 We have tried many ways of doing this but a spreadsheet document on the computer, printed out, works best for us.

We have one for items stored in the pantry and one for the freezers, split into indoor and outdoor. It’s not perfect as occasionally, we both forget to cross things off the list when items are used.

The pantry one needed redoing today. DB stood in the pantry and yelled out what we had. Everything is dated in black pen so we rotate to use older items first.

Wasn’t too far out, maybe 10 or so items, some on the list but none in the pantry:( They have now gone on the shopping list.

I am a bit of a prepper regarding food, toiletries and other items. We definitely work on the principle of two is one and one is none. Some items we use regularly, and have quite a few extra ones put away! I have just started to use the frozen bags of our own tomatoes grown last year.

I had never run a pantry this way until I noticed my mother in laws pantry worked like this. She used to say, if only they had known war was coming, a few extra items would have been squirrelled away:) Everyone thought it would be over by Christmas and had no idea just how short they would be of certain items, or the impact years of rationing would have. This made them think about food storage differently after the war.

Expenses galore this month

 Christening accommodation, final large payment on the car and insurance for Ruby. That has dented our savings massively but was planned. Now to get it topped up again. 

Good job at the moment we don’t need to be spending my pension and the increase will help. However, the increase now means I pay tax due to the personal tax allowance not being increased. Win some, lose some!

Apparently here in the UK - update

 From Tuesday onwards, we are supposed to be able to watch the heats and finals of British swimmers, qualifying for the Olympic Games.

It is supposed to be on Channel 4 and the BBC iplayer. So far, can’t find it anywhere on Channel 4. I will have to wait to see if it appears on the iplayer or red button!

Just found this: here.