First non £2 a day post.

I know I haven’t done an update in absolutely ages. In my eyes, it was a well deserved break from having to tediously write about every gram of food that I consumed. Mac and I are still finishing up the cheese from the farmers’ market. I must admit I’m not eager to make up the 11 days that are missing, but I have said that I’ll do it, so do it I will. We’ve also talked about doing it quarterly so that we can have each season represented in recipes. Then we’ll have a £2 a day year recipe book. I would want to do another in probably May so that we can have two months’ worth of recipes in time for the Food Open Day we’ll be doing (we being the Southampton Fair Trade Group and the Southampton & Waterside Women’s Environmental Network).
But enough about food. What else have I been doing?

I’ve worked on the allotment twice and we have 4 beds with one of them raked and onions and carrots planted. We have a rhubarb plant, apple tree and two fruit bushes planted, and we have two compost bins. I’m hoping to win the auction for a greenhouse on eBay, but I’ve lost one already and Chris and Natalie forgot to bid on one the week before. We’ll see how I do.

I'm really excited about the allotment and getting it going, but I am SOOOO sunburned. It was really warm in the sun so I was just wearing a tank top and the whole top of my neck/back/shoulders are all burnt. Luckily it's just the back of them because I made sure I wasn't facing the sun (I did NOT want a horrible sunburn on my face). I'll have to bring sunscreen next time.

Mac and I went to a chilli night at some friends’, we have been out to see bands a couple times, I had toast and jam at Barney’s Log Jam (they’ve started a blog…. ooooOOOOOooooh) and went up to St Albans to have lunch with Helen and Henry (I have GOT to start buying advance tickets). I’ve been to LOTS of meetings and have agreed to have the Transition Southampton social at our house. Luckily I suggested it be a pot luck, so I’ll only clean like crazy, not clean and cook.

I FINALLY cleaned off my desk (although halfway through the process it looked like a cyclone that only affected paper had hit in the room) and everything is now either organised in an accordion file (for my personal financial stuff) or in a box with folders and tabs (for all the voluntary group stuff). I stupidly did not take a before and after picture. I could still take an after picture, but it wouldn’t be nearly as impressive without the before. I’m buying some space from Emiliano online for a project management program called dotproject.net and he’s installing it for me (thank god). I also managed to go through my gmail inbox and got the 238 messages in my inbox down to 25. I know it should be less than that (it should be zero), but tough.

I’m planning to have a craft/soup night soon to use up some of my many many craft supplies and to encourage other people to help me use them up as well. I think that it will be a requirement that anyone who comes for soup has to make something. Maybe I’ll just think about who I invite beforehand.

As for the Buy Nothing New year, I bought a used cookbook off Amazon called The More With Less cookbook—it was written by Mennonites! It’s really nice basic food. I haven’t made anything yet, but I will soon. I’ve managed to only buy vegetables and seeds for the allotment so far, and if I pay for the greenhouse, that will be secondhand. I don’t know how I’m going to get secondhand seed trays, though.

Robin was very kind and sent me a care package with about a thousand pairs of underwear. She said it was in response to Karen who had said, “What if you run out of pants!?!?” when I told her about the year long challenge. It was really about 8 pairs of underwear. I think I might keep four pairs, because the rest are the super skanky kind that are just a couple of strings.

I prefer a tad more fabric. String thongs are just paying lip service to the idea of underwear.

I think I’ll finish here. I’ll try to come up with some interesting facts or information or ideas for my next post.